Papa As Seen by The Beeb

Fatherhood is not as sexy as sharks. Sorry. True. Sad, unfortunate, not fair, but true ... at least on the telly.

So it seems like a good idea for the BBC to offer a more extended viewing time with The Fatherhood Season (a variety of themed entertaiments and blog) for dad programming rather than try to go mano a animalo against the killers on Discovery Channel's SHARK WEEK, particularly in it's 20th anniversary season. This evening the beeb reminds viewers of a bunch of negative stereotypes about cold indifferent fathers so that they can remind everyone about the warm, (not in)different pops with A Century of Fatherhood.

To Do or Not to Do

Don't want to have the sex talk? Go see a movie.

Daddy I Do, Cassie Jaye's look at abstinence only education (including daddy-daughter chastity balls) was awarded the prize at the Cannes Film Festival in the Documentary category.

Quiet Now, Loud Then

There was a father who told his daughters that they would always be part of one of America's greatest problems (racism, and all because they would forever have white skin). Yet, they still made a complimentary film about him. Disturbing the Universe [Earlier: Daddy Documentary], the tale of radical lawyer William Kunstler as seen through the lens and film editing of daughters Emily and Sarah is still making its way without too much press through festivals and private showings in a so-far very limited release.

Ironic, isn't it, that the film of a very loud man continues to move so quietly?

Daddy Documentary

"While we loved our father's extravagant greatness," Emily and Sarah Kunstler tell Moving Pictures Magazine while discussing the documentary of their legal bomb thrower father William K., "we also suffered his frailty. And we knew that many other children, especially those who were young when their parents died, take a similar adult journey toward reconciling the parent with the person."

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe explores a very difficult man with an extraordinary legacy through the lens of two adult daughters who found their life's work among the shadows he cast.

Share the Pain

What ties fathers around the world together — on the good days — are the joys of fatherhood. But, more often we share the pain.

Now it might be for a good cause, as with the seven men's men from Burnley (U.K.) who hot waxed their legs clean for charity. (At least they were smart enough not to go for a Brazilian!). And it might not be their fault, as with the gentlemen featured in "Fatherhood: Six Men, One City," a documentary created at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Social Work department. Or it might just be in fiction, as aptly described by Pulitzer winner Leonard Pitts Jr. in like Mo Johnson, racing against the onset of Alzheimer's to know his son in the new novel "Before I Forget."

Whatever the pain, the key to remember on one's darkest days is that the pain can be lived through; it is and can be shared.

Father Features

For those planning some couch potato time a few months from, keep an eye on some dads who will shortly be moving from screen to DVD.

The biggest pop in terms of stardom and girth is real-life father of two, Kevin James who stars as a single dad in Paul Blart: Mall Cop — and not the Kevin James who wrote Surviving the Single Dad Syndrome. Released today, the reviews are less than kind, but the slapstick save of his screen daughter who is taken as a screen hostage should keep it on the Blockbuster shelves for a few years to come.

Real life single fathers in Baltimore will be mostly unexposed to the multiplexes prior to the release of their lives to DVD. A dozen stay at home dads and their daily strife and successes are the subject of Michael Ivan Schwartz's documentary Happy SAHD.

A movie, whose distribution will fall somewhere between the megascreen release of Blart and handful of arthouse "success" of SAHD is Peter Bratt's La Mission, the tale of a father who rejects and then rediscovers his son.

Naturally, when it's movie night, make sure you have plenty of POPcorn on hand.

Screen Gems

"We should all be so lucky as to be able to make a documentary about our fathers," according to Mark Everett. The singer, who in addition to creating "Parallel World, Parallel Lives" about the life of physicist/dad Hugh Everett III had previously tried to explain and explore in his book, a bachelor take on "Things the Grandchildren Should Know."

Everett younger takes viewers on a guided, albeit not comprehensive tour of the mind of Everett elder, the man who proposed various proofs for the concepts that other universes exist in places inaccessible to humans. Of course, what he is not discussing are the universes of other dads here on earth that we are just missing ... such as, for example that of central African mountain gorilla king Titus, who used his fathering skills — siring and protecting — to dominate his pack for nearly 17 years. Disappointingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, his many children haven't yet gotten around to learning the necessary movie making skills or adapting to the tools that would let them tell their father's story. So, his is currently a universe glimpsed and imagined only from the outside.

As is the parallel universes that is still be discovered within the mind(s) of a man who went crazy while writing of a man who went crazy. That tale is told by Immy Humes, daughter of burnt-out literary nova Harold L. Humes, whose unfinished novel "The Memoirs of Dorsey Slade" is the story that never got finished within a story within a story of his crack-up.

Perhaps the parallel universes of fathers were what Everett was really getting at and the proof can only be confirmed when we lay all their stories out? In that, we will surely all be lucky.

Telling Tales

How does it feel to tell a dad's story?

Describing the book he wrote about his father in Iraq, Westfield, Ind., second grader Sean DeRue says, "It felt good to write about him, but kind of sad, too."

Meghan McCain says, "I am truly excited ..." (although that might just be the publicists talking) about writing of her dad, presumptive Repub prez nominee John. Her picture book will be part of a trilogy of candidate books due out September. (And, no, Chelsea didn't write of mum Hilz and neither Malia Ann nor Natasha penned the tale of their pop Barack — although one could reasonably assume they are equally excited.)

And the Greenspun children, the force behind “Where I Stand,” the new documentary on Hank G., the former editor and publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, knew they had to have their father's story told. They had, after all, "...a story here of a modern day hero," in the words of son Brian.

** Fathers tell their tale one way, but it's more important what their kids say. **

Double "O" Dads

Should a dad bring his work home or create separate worlds. Such is the premise of the just announced NBC show, "My Own Worst Enemy," starring Christian Slater — real life daddy with an ex-wife to Jaden Zach Haddon-Slater, 9, and and Eliana Sophia Slater, 5 — and set to debut with the Fall 2008 season. Slater will live two half lives (international spy and suburban dad) in one body and whether either will be a quality father will undoubtedly be determined by the Nielsen families.

For a look at what happens in real life, consider Oded Gur-Arie's "The Champagne Spy," a documentary about his father, Ze'ev, an Israeli spy who was gone from the family for months at a time living the high life pretense of an ex-Nazi in Egypt. he was doing something bigger than one family ... and his son got a movie out of it. But, on balance, what's a father to do?

** Every child imagines their father with a secret life, but usually only for a positive impact on his or her own life. **

Influence

Children to learn who they are, in part, through their fathers' stories. Where it goes from there is anyone's guess.

But first the stories have to be told, somehow. In the case of artist/author Leo Polti it is his work and a son's remembrance; Sargent Shriver is memorialized in a documentary by daughter Maria Shriver; and some Texas dads are taking a first big step on their own, composing letters to their kids.

** A father's influence is what he makes with his kids, not just for them. **