You can order Sam and Gifford Keen's book from Divine Arts Media, an imprint of Michael Wiese Productions, and at the following links:
http://amzn.to/1zeaKO8
http://amazon.com/author/giffordkeen
http://facebook.com/ProdigalFatherWaywardSon
http://ProdigalFatherWaywardSon.wordpress.com
Dave Watson: First, congratulations on the book. How did this come about?
Gifford Keen: Initially it was Sam’s idea for us to write a book together, and since I’m an unpublished novelist with a host of glowing rejections, it seemed like it might be a way for me to break into publishing. But for a long time we couldn’t come up with a theme. Then on my fifty-second birthday I was taking a long walk in the high country and got the idea of writing letters to my dad. I sort of suckered him into the process by starting with letters about the positive things he taught me, things I want to pass on to my own kids. But I suspect he has a different story about that.
SK: Really I think the idea from the book grew out of a terrible fight Gifford and I had. He came back to me afterward and said the problem we had was that we kept telling the same stories over and over, and in all of them, I was the monster and Gif the victim. So we needed to find new stories. Gif asked what stories he needed to know about me to understand how I became the man I am today. My father carried many of his stories to the grave and I didn’t want that to happen with us.
DW: Was this the fight on Water Street?
SK: Yes, we wrote about it in the prologue of the book. We were standing on the street outside Pasquals in Santa Fe, screaming at each. Gifford got right up in my face, screaming, poking me in the chest.
GK: It was quite a scene, by the time we were done, a gaggle of tourists had gathered around – at a safe distance - to watch.
DW: Yet the dynamic of the book about healing through explanation, and it goes back and forth between the two. Was it hard revisiting past events?
GK: I would say that it was more about reshaping our emotional responses to each other through conscious storytelling. We had a handful of stories that we told over and over, but we told them in unconscious, routine ways. By re-telling them ritualistically, with clear intentions we come to see the stories that shape us in a completely different light – which allows us to literally change the past. Not the facts, but how we understand it.
SK: And it’s important to tell our stories in a confessional way so that we’re not blaming. Only then can we get past the first layer of mythic stories that have created the lens through which our we interpreted our relationship, and let all the untold stories out.
DW: One incident in the book that comes to mind is the egg.
GK: This is a great example of how an event can take on mythic proportions. What happened was, the family was on a picnic, my sister threw most of her hard boiled egg under the car and my father thought I’d done it. There was a huge row and he made me eat the egg, dirt, ants and all. It was a lesson. But when the truth came out, that it was my sister’s, she didn’t even get in trouble. For years I interpreted this story as one of injustice – I was falsely accused and punished for a crime I didn’t commit. It wasn’t until I wrote the story that a much more basic question occurred to me – from the perspective of being a father now, I couldn’t imagine why my father should fly into such a rage over a five cent egg. When I asked him that question, a whole new set of stories I’d never heard came tumbling out of him.
DW: Do you think this is unique to you and your dad, or do you think it’s more universal.
GK: When we asked our men friends about their fathers, it turned out that all of them had a small handful of mythic stories that defined their relationships with his fathers. The stories themselves were wildly different, some more pleasant, some that made our worst stories look like a walk in the park, but the fact of the few mythic stories was universal.
DW: And your stories are accessible to many; I could see men and women equally deriving much from this book. What did you hope people to take away?
SK: Exactly. Although the book focuses on fathers and sons, the method is widely applicable. Certainly it could work for mothers and daughters, or fathers and daughters, mothers and sons – probably even husbands and wives. In one way, this is a very difficult process. It requires honesty and time. You have to tell your real stories, the ones that matter, and listen to the other’s pain. But in another way this is simple and old as humanity. Everyone knows how to tell a story and everyone has stories to tell. All you have to do is tell them and see what happens.
DW: Speaking of stories, have you seen movies that show good father-son relationships?
SK: Most models of men in movies are horrible.. All you have to do is look at the trailers for movies: mostly you see a guy with a gun who’s a killer, and really angry. Or there are movies like The Great Santini where the dad is a domineering tyrant who whips his son. With East of Eden you have the good son and the bad son. One rare counter example is Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. There’s a model. He’s forthright, tender.
GK: One example of a good parenting relationship is in Secondhand Lions. It’s about a young boy with a neglectful mother who goes to live with his crotchety uncles (Michael Caine and Robert Duvall). They become close and the relationship that develops brings renewed meaning and hope to all their lives.
But in general I agree with Sam: models for men in literature, film, and society are pretty poor; there are warriors, politicians, and martyrs, but all these men have cut away huge chunks of their emotional life. Kevin Spacey in American Beauty wants a full emotional life, and he starts out in a very adolescent way. He’s smoking pot, quits his job, falls in love with a high school cheerleader. But eventually he seems to come back to himself, and nurture his emotions. I really wanted to see what he would have been like five years down the line. But in the movie, they kill him off, and I’ve always wondered if it was because there was no model for what an emotionally intact man might look like – so they didn’t know what else to do.
SK: For me Zorba the Greek was a huge influence. The joyful males were more Dionysian.
DW: Martin Scorsese’s movies, as noted in my interview with Christopher Vogler, deal with a main character, usually male, who behaves outrageously at the expense of those around him. Look at The Wolf of Wall Street. Few Wall Street executives have gone to jail after what happened in 2008.
GK: I was disgusted by that movie. It seemed to idolize all of the worst parts of our greed-based society.
SK: He does go to jail in that movie.
GK: Yeah but we only see him playing tennis in jail, then in the end he’s giving motivational speeches to big crowds and making tons of money. What kind of message is that?
SK: I think of Unforgiven. That’s a model of a broken man who sees the damage he’s done. Our models don’t have to be perfect. Obama, Clinton, Boehner, they have hearts and they have flaws.
DW: Do you see many balanced portraits?
SK: Mostly balance doesn’t create drama, although Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society does come to mind. But in real life, I know many fine men who are profoundly deep, and I can think of 10-15 great male teachers I had.
DW: Finally, do you two have favorite cinematic moments?
GK: For me it’s Secondhand Lions. The scene where Robert Duvall gives the boy part of his what-ever-boy-needs-to-know-to-be-a-man speech, and tells him that there are things that it’s important to believe in whether they are true or not, like power and money mean nothing, honor and courage mean everything and that above all that true love always conquers all. Those are the things worth believing – doesn’t matter if they’re true or not. You can see how as a novelist, that would appeal to me. My favorite movie scene, Kevin Spacey again in The Usual Suspects. The entire third act climax is just him walking down the street, his hand unclenching, his limp dissapearing. Best third act EVER and there's not even any dialogue, but it changes the whole story. Great writing.
SK: For me it’s the vision of Atticus Finch in court. There’s also Places in the Heart. People come back from the dead and gather around. That, to me, is reconciliation.
GK: What about you, Dave? What’s your favorite cinematic moment?
DW: You’re the first person to ask, Gifford! Two very different moments and images that come to mind. The Star Wars jump to lightspeed made me realize where you can go in cinema. Then I realized movies were different, could be different, expansive. It also has the classic male western archetype in Han Solo. The second one is not a male role model to be emulated. It’s from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
GK: Oh, man…
DW: I know. And Martin has said he didn’t realize how much acceptance and identification there would be of that character when the movie was made. It’s the image of Travis Bickle driving around in his cab while it’s raining. He’s in his own little bubble, disconnected yet connected to the world, and thought he represented an entirely different yet identifiable universe.
Clip: Secondhand Lions
Clip: The Usual Suspects
Clip: Places in the Heart
Clip: Star Wars
Clip: Taxi Driver
http://amzn.to/1zeaKO8
http://amazon.com/author/giffordkeen
http://facebook.com/ProdigalFatherWaywardSon
http://ProdigalFatherWaywardSon.wordpress.com
Dave Watson: First, congratulations on the book. How did this come about?
Gifford Keen: Initially it was Sam’s idea for us to write a book together, and since I’m an unpublished novelist with a host of glowing rejections, it seemed like it might be a way for me to break into publishing. But for a long time we couldn’t come up with a theme. Then on my fifty-second birthday I was taking a long walk in the high country and got the idea of writing letters to my dad. I sort of suckered him into the process by starting with letters about the positive things he taught me, things I want to pass on to my own kids. But I suspect he has a different story about that.
SK: Really I think the idea from the book grew out of a terrible fight Gifford and I had. He came back to me afterward and said the problem we had was that we kept telling the same stories over and over, and in all of them, I was the monster and Gif the victim. So we needed to find new stories. Gif asked what stories he needed to know about me to understand how I became the man I am today. My father carried many of his stories to the grave and I didn’t want that to happen with us.
DW: Was this the fight on Water Street?
SK: Yes, we wrote about it in the prologue of the book. We were standing on the street outside Pasquals in Santa Fe, screaming at each. Gifford got right up in my face, screaming, poking me in the chest.
GK: It was quite a scene, by the time we were done, a gaggle of tourists had gathered around – at a safe distance - to watch.
DW: Yet the dynamic of the book about healing through explanation, and it goes back and forth between the two. Was it hard revisiting past events?
GK: I would say that it was more about reshaping our emotional responses to each other through conscious storytelling. We had a handful of stories that we told over and over, but we told them in unconscious, routine ways. By re-telling them ritualistically, with clear intentions we come to see the stories that shape us in a completely different light – which allows us to literally change the past. Not the facts, but how we understand it.
SK: And it’s important to tell our stories in a confessional way so that we’re not blaming. Only then can we get past the first layer of mythic stories that have created the lens through which our we interpreted our relationship, and let all the untold stories out.
DW: One incident in the book that comes to mind is the egg.
GK: This is a great example of how an event can take on mythic proportions. What happened was, the family was on a picnic, my sister threw most of her hard boiled egg under the car and my father thought I’d done it. There was a huge row and he made me eat the egg, dirt, ants and all. It was a lesson. But when the truth came out, that it was my sister’s, she didn’t even get in trouble. For years I interpreted this story as one of injustice – I was falsely accused and punished for a crime I didn’t commit. It wasn’t until I wrote the story that a much more basic question occurred to me – from the perspective of being a father now, I couldn’t imagine why my father should fly into such a rage over a five cent egg. When I asked him that question, a whole new set of stories I’d never heard came tumbling out of him.
DW: Do you think this is unique to you and your dad, or do you think it’s more universal.
GK: When we asked our men friends about their fathers, it turned out that all of them had a small handful of mythic stories that defined their relationships with his fathers. The stories themselves were wildly different, some more pleasant, some that made our worst stories look like a walk in the park, but the fact of the few mythic stories was universal.
DW: And your stories are accessible to many; I could see men and women equally deriving much from this book. What did you hope people to take away?
SK: Exactly. Although the book focuses on fathers and sons, the method is widely applicable. Certainly it could work for mothers and daughters, or fathers and daughters, mothers and sons – probably even husbands and wives. In one way, this is a very difficult process. It requires honesty and time. You have to tell your real stories, the ones that matter, and listen to the other’s pain. But in another way this is simple and old as humanity. Everyone knows how to tell a story and everyone has stories to tell. All you have to do is tell them and see what happens.
DW: Speaking of stories, have you seen movies that show good father-son relationships?
SK: Most models of men in movies are horrible.. All you have to do is look at the trailers for movies: mostly you see a guy with a gun who’s a killer, and really angry. Or there are movies like The Great Santini where the dad is a domineering tyrant who whips his son. With East of Eden you have the good son and the bad son. One rare counter example is Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. There’s a model. He’s forthright, tender.
GK: One example of a good parenting relationship is in Secondhand Lions. It’s about a young boy with a neglectful mother who goes to live with his crotchety uncles (Michael Caine and Robert Duvall). They become close and the relationship that develops brings renewed meaning and hope to all their lives.
But in general I agree with Sam: models for men in literature, film, and society are pretty poor; there are warriors, politicians, and martyrs, but all these men have cut away huge chunks of their emotional life. Kevin Spacey in American Beauty wants a full emotional life, and he starts out in a very adolescent way. He’s smoking pot, quits his job, falls in love with a high school cheerleader. But eventually he seems to come back to himself, and nurture his emotions. I really wanted to see what he would have been like five years down the line. But in the movie, they kill him off, and I’ve always wondered if it was because there was no model for what an emotionally intact man might look like – so they didn’t know what else to do.
SK: For me Zorba the Greek was a huge influence. The joyful males were more Dionysian.
DW: Martin Scorsese’s movies, as noted in my interview with Christopher Vogler, deal with a main character, usually male, who behaves outrageously at the expense of those around him. Look at The Wolf of Wall Street. Few Wall Street executives have gone to jail after what happened in 2008.
GK: I was disgusted by that movie. It seemed to idolize all of the worst parts of our greed-based society.
SK: He does go to jail in that movie.
GK: Yeah but we only see him playing tennis in jail, then in the end he’s giving motivational speeches to big crowds and making tons of money. What kind of message is that?
SK: I think of Unforgiven. That’s a model of a broken man who sees the damage he’s done. Our models don’t have to be perfect. Obama, Clinton, Boehner, they have hearts and they have flaws.
DW: Do you see many balanced portraits?
SK: Mostly balance doesn’t create drama, although Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society does come to mind. But in real life, I know many fine men who are profoundly deep, and I can think of 10-15 great male teachers I had.
DW: Finally, do you two have favorite cinematic moments?
GK: For me it’s Secondhand Lions. The scene where Robert Duvall gives the boy part of his what-ever-boy-needs-to-know-to-be-a-man speech, and tells him that there are things that it’s important to believe in whether they are true or not, like power and money mean nothing, honor and courage mean everything and that above all that true love always conquers all. Those are the things worth believing – doesn’t matter if they’re true or not. You can see how as a novelist, that would appeal to me. My favorite movie scene, Kevin Spacey again in The Usual Suspects. The entire third act climax is just him walking down the street, his hand unclenching, his limp dissapearing. Best third act EVER and there's not even any dialogue, but it changes the whole story. Great writing.
SK: For me it’s the vision of Atticus Finch in court. There’s also Places in the Heart. People come back from the dead and gather around. That, to me, is reconciliation.
GK: What about you, Dave? What’s your favorite cinematic moment?
DW: You’re the first person to ask, Gifford! Two very different moments and images that come to mind. The Star Wars jump to lightspeed made me realize where you can go in cinema. Then I realized movies were different, could be different, expansive. It also has the classic male western archetype in Han Solo. The second one is not a male role model to be emulated. It’s from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
GK: Oh, man…
DW: I know. And Martin has said he didn’t realize how much acceptance and identification there would be of that character when the movie was made. It’s the image of Travis Bickle driving around in his cab while it’s raining. He’s in his own little bubble, disconnected yet connected to the world, and thought he represented an entirely different yet identifiable universe.
Clip: Secondhand Lions
Clip: The Usual Suspects
Clip: Places in the Heart
Clip: Star Wars
Clip: Taxi Driver