Celluloid Antihero: How I Found My Father in the Movies

Growing up in South Carolina, I was the only one in the family who loved the movies, and I usually attended them alone. And when we all went out to a drive-in flick, my father was always looking to get out ahead of the rush--I still remember wistfully watching the flaming ship at the end of "The Vikings" from the car's back window. But there were moments when Dad would comment on a film I didn't realize he'd seen--as when he mentioned the scene in "Radio Days" in which a courting couple rushes home in panic when a "news flash" interrupts the music on their car radio to announce that space aliens had attacked New Jersey. Dad remembered the event, apparently with great amusement.

You bring back great memories of my mother and I going to film retrospectives at the Regency in Manhattan. We both loved the charm and humor of Cary Grant comedies and also the great movies of Katherine Hepburn. A double feature of Grant's hilarious movie The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife one time and then Hepburn's A Lion In Winter and Summertime another. Always ended in a dinner and discussion with my mother saying they don't make movies like that anymore. It was the only thing that got my mother to take the Q60 bus from Queens to meet me at a moments notice. When dementia took her memory and independence our lives changed forever. Thank you for reminding of the good times.

The movies are indeed a special place. Have you ever had that feeling of being somehow detached from the real world after seeing a remarkable movie? It's magical!

Wow - this is really sad. The father was a good father to him because he took him to movies. And the writer seems to be a good father to his children only in that he discusses movies and pop culture with him. The search for meaning continues. . . . or not . . .

Beautiful. Thank you.

Beautiful piece. My dad was also a Depression-era kid with a volcanic temper. I left home as soon as I was legally able, waited about 3 months, then sent him exactly one Christmas card that said, 'We are going to bury this hatchet.' He called me at work to say he was taking me out to lunch. We went to a barbecue joint. I ordered off the frugal lunch menu, he bumped it up to a regular dinner. We didn't say one word to each other throughout lunch. It incrementally got better after that. Twenty-five years later, I was the kid he trusted with his estate.

Lovely piece, with abundant love, understanding and a beautiful climatic moment-

Thank you for this wonderful piece. Being a Queens boy in the 1970's my dad and I would go to The RKO Keith's or The Cross Bay Theater. I remember watching The Sting, Taxi Driver, and many other future classics and on the way home my dad would compare them to his favorites from his childhood. I learned about film noir from my dad, and when I visited him in Brooklyn in the 1980's after he had separated from my mom, we went to see Against All Odds and he told me how it didn't hold a candle to the original, Out of the Past (after seeing the Mitchum classic I agreed). He also took me to every Yankee Old Timer's Day for like ten years in a row even though he hated the Yankees. Yet my dad dad was also a "street guy" who gambled too much, worked too little and was not a very good husband to my mom (until her last ten years when he moved back home to take care of her). But as Jere Hester so perfectly put it, he was absolutely "the best father for me."

Violent, wounded men taking it out on their captive audience / families for decades, but upon entering a fantasy world of film (and, in the case of my ex-husband, film and literature), the beast is temporarily tamed. I didn't realize it was such a formulaic script until I started making Herculean efforts to extract myself and the kids from this situation, and began hearing and seeing this story everywhere. I'm glad that he was the best father for you. My daughter probably will echo your sentiments when she's an adult. My son, at the moment, is relieved to be out of the grasp of the Groundhog Day cycle of viciousness. Me? I'd like the opportunity to write my own script instead of participating in his over and over again.

Perfection exists in memories, and this essay perfectly captures the cinema's power. woody Allen. "The Purple Rose of Cairo." "The Last Picture Show." "8 1/2". "Hannah and Her Sisters". Scenes from a dozen films ran across my interior screen as I read this. Art always inspires insights and hopes, as well fears, whether the pictures is a static cave bear on a stone wall or a film on a huge screen in a glitzy omniplex inside a cavernous mall. But words that resonate as Hester's do here are becoming rarer. This was masterful and humbling. Our daughter - and I -will read and puzzle over our internal movies of me watching old movies and trying to father a little person. "Thanks for the memories."

Thank you Mr.Hester for a beautiful piece.I too grew up with a depression era father.He was physically and verbally violent.Unfortunately the last time I saw him he was being abusive to my mother.He passed away @93.He also had a great love of the movies and big band music.We shared nothing.We never went anywhere,movies,vacations,sporting events.We called him the volcano,everyday he would become enraged over petty things.I moved out married and share with my wife and children a great love of music.Each year we find ourselves @ the Great Xponential music festival in Wiggins Park and the BBT center in Camden.I vowed never to treat my Wife and children this way.I love them dearly.I only wish that there was someway to of been able to communicate through all of my Fathers hurt and pain.At least you had some moments at the movies.

My parents were Depression-era babies, just as your father was. Both of them spent their Saturdays at the movies, and my brothers and I grew up in a household informed by the movies, including the ones you mention. Many of my dad's comments in particular gave me insight into his intelligence and sensitivity. One of my favorite memories is of when I was a grown woman and went to see "Raiders of the Lost Ark" on opening day. I couldn't wait to get home to call my folks in Delray Beach Florida. I knew they would love this throwback to the serials of their youth. I instructed them to get the car out of garage and go see this movie immediately. For years after, my father would chuckle and say, "That's exactly what we did." I only regret he didn't live long enough to see the third one with Sean Connery. He would have loved it.

Thank you for this engaging insight! As I got older I used the perspective of the movies of my mother's time to help explain some her difficult behaviors while I was growing up. I learned to not view her having married 5 times (!) as a character defect but rather as a by-product of the unrealistically romantic movies of the 50's, which would have formed her. Think Doris Day and Rock Hudson. And her extreme fondness for cocktails, it all looked so glamorous on screen (except of course in the riveting 'Days of Wine and Roses'). And I saw that many of the movies didn't depict her how her life was -- single much of the time, my father no where to be found, working as a secretary, always broke -- which may have fueled her constant anger with parenthood and life. Our funny movie experience: She took me to see The Graduate at 13 yrs old--all she'd heard it was about a college graduate. As one can imagine, it was the most uncomfortable, rather horrifying 2 hrs either of us had ever spent together!! She was too imobilized with embarrassment to get up and leave preferring we hide in the dark. Looking to the movies helped me understand her, maintain a forgiving attitude and supportive relationship through the difficult years of her dementia.

Nicely done, cheers!

Lovely piece, lovely comments, both much appreciated this morning. May we all practice forgiveness as best we can. And when we can’t, there’s always the movies. Thank you.

Thank you for this. I am so happy you had your dad and that he was the best dad for you. My dad died when I was 1. We did not even have the opportunity to go to the movies together. He is still the best dad for me though.

"My father, reared during the Great Depression, was too cheap to buy popcorn. But he’d sneak potato chips in Baggies." My dad also smuggled in stuff, popcorn, in his case from the Grand Union, in the 50s. This is a fabulous set of recollections that made me think of my own father, aside from popcorn sneaking. The love of cinema made me think of my favorite all time film, "Cinema Paradiso." Like the author's dad, mine had an erratic and volatile temper, that alternated with periods of magnanimous good humor. Problem was, you never knew the weather report. I believe my father had what today what's called a "personality disorder." We've come a long way towards treating what in the past was tolerated as verbally emotional behavior. No matter, my dad was larger than life, the man who taught me most about it, and my dominant formative influence despite his early passing at 60. I look forward to reading more of Jere Hester's personal recollections on culture and family.

Westatetoyou: Well written. However Peos and I (Mandrill) are now lying on the floor in the fetal position having relived our father's relationship to us ... worse than you father's treatment of you. Wewe, Lele, and Basha had better childhood relation with their parents and try to help us out of our depression.

Thank you Mr Hester for bringing back so many memories of seeing movies in these old Brooklyn movie theaters.

Hester has done it again... provided insight into something I thought I knew about. His Raising a Beatle Baby is much the same, describing his personal experience of international superstars. Thanks!

As perhaps one of the few humans who knows, my brother in law Jerry would say, the ability to project or join the projection (pun intended) of the “movies” into fantasy land is part and parcel of how we sapiens endure the suffering that is a foundation of this (our only scientifically proven) life. The major others are drugs and alcohol.

Brought tears to my eyes. So much of my own understanding of the world has been shaped by "the pictures", for better or worse. You describe that influence beautifully.

Beautiful piece. Your bedside goodbye... very powerful curve ball.

Lovely. Thank you.