Parents Petition Caltrain to Reduce Train Speed In Palo Alto
Gavin Newsom's Mariah Carey-like Interview Demand
How to Keep Your Car Windows Safe In the Tenderloin
Urgent: SF Food Bank Needs Your Help
Gavin Cans Film Commission Head Stephanie Coyote
"I smoke grass," was the shocking line uttered by precocious 4-year-old Sean from Ralph Arlyck's 1969 short-film documentary "Sean," which was set in a Haight Ashbury flat that housed Sean's large family and a rotating frenzy of "free-spirited" folks. Who knows whether adorable, wise-beyond-his-years Sean was telling the truth about his grass-smoking and -eating (he actually preferred eating it), but his matter-of-fact references to the police, riots, speed freaks, and shoes being "creepy," lead you to believe he probably was. Sean's candor captivated Arlyck and made for an endearing and unusual perspective, which enabled mainstream America to miss the point (as usual) and further stereotype our beloved San Francisco.
Luckily, we all get to see how well Sean turns out in Arlyck's captivating follow-up 30 years later, "Following Sean," which has been airing on PBS's POV this week. It airs one more time Sunday night at 10 p.m. on KQED World and KQED HD. See the trailer here. The original short film "Sean," is avaiable for full viewing on POV's Web site through August 31.
We watched the film the other night and were enamored with the way Arlyck weaved together Sean's family history with his own. It was very interesting to hear Arlyck's perspective on briefly living one floor below Sean's family in 1969 Haight Ashbury, where he wasn't very happy and soon moved back to the East Coast, in comparison to Y2K Haight Ashbury, which he described as "caricatures and commerce." He said it was interesting to see how all of the kids had finally gotten everything they wanted though.
See how Sean turns out after the jump!
"Following Sean" | PBS POV on KQED | Sunday, August 5 at 10 p.m. | Available on DVD, at the library, and on Netflix.
1999 Sean seemed to be a well-adjusted guy, who had become an electrician. This was not surprising, since four-year-old Sean had been filmed expertly weilding a hammer and a drill, while building a boat with his family. In addition to working, Sean went to school and developed various patents in his spare time, quite the opposite of the schedule of his freedom-loving, anti-responsibility dad when he was Sean's age. He married a Russian ex-patriate (Arlyck is married to a French ex-pat), but they are now divorced, and they have a son Alex, who in the film was around the same age that Sean was in the original short.
Sean's father Johnny seemed to have never strayed from his freedom/no responsibilities ideals and had therefore lost any sort of emotional connections with his kids. Arlyck mentioned in "Following Sean" that when filming "Sean," Johnny had only ever seemed content or still when he was building the family boat with Sean. Johnny had come from a family of bankers, and it was apparent he had done everything he could to banish his past.
There was't a whole lot of footage of Sean's mom, but there was a memorable line in the original "Sean," where he's talking about everyone's job on the boat, once it was finished. Sean said cleaning the deck was his "mom's job." Sean's mom's parents were very prominent members of the Bay Area Communists. Sean's grandmother Hon still lives in San Francisco and has a hot tub named after her husband, called the Archie Brown Communist Hot Tub. Arlyck's grandparents were also communists, but only dabblers.
It seemed like the underlying theme in "Following Sean" was that the three male perspectives all fall at either end of the working life spectrum. Sean embraced responsibility, whereas Johnny ran from it, and Arlyck was kind of in the middle, where he always had his own schedule as a filmmaker. His parents funded "Sean" and wondered if they'd ever see the end of "Following Sean," which took five or six years to put together. They both died soon after it was completed, within six months of each other.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
This wasn't on KQED Sunday Aug 5th at 10pm???
Unfortunately, it was only playing on the KQED World and HD channels (which I listed above), not on the regular, public channel 9.
The documentary is on DVD though (I'll update the post with this) and is available on Netflix.
Apparently the film played at the Red Vic last fall, so it gets screened here and there too...