More Family Secrets

 

Do you think your family members presented an accurate face to the outside world when you were a kid? Or, if we scratched the surface of the pretty snapshots yellowing in the photo albums stacked in your basement, would a much different portrait of your family begin to emerge—one that is rife with pain, trauma, and a healthy smattering of mental illness? I’m assuming that most families fall into the second category. Mine certainly does. Which is not to say that my childhood wasn’t populated by very loving people who cared about each other and were doing the best they could. It was, and for every dysfunctional moment, there were other happy, joyful experiences to recall. But let’s just say that the smiling photos don’t tell the whole story. They never do.

Last fall I wrote about a documentary called “51 Birch Street” in which filmmaker Doug Block examined his parents’ troubled marriage by sharing excerpts from the journals his late mother kept over the course of many years. That film had the tagline “Do we ever really know our parents?” and my response was that no, we do not, and perhaps that’s all for the best.

Yesterday I saw another beautifully made documentary that fits into this unusual but fascinating genre. Screened as part of the L.A Film Festival, “Must Read After My Death” tells the story of a family over several decades using only home movie footage and a series of audio recordings made by the parents, mostly during the 1960s. The link between the two films is that both couples were involved with psychiatrists who encouraged them to document their innermost feelings on tape—a trend back in the 60s. During that era, technology was seen as some kind of cure-all. After the repressed silence of the Eisenhower era, it was felt by many that if we could only share what was really going on behind those beautifully curtained windows, maybe we could conquer our demons once and for all. Today these artifacts provide a brutally accurate glimpse of “typical” American families.

In this case, Allis and Charley were an unusual, free-thinking couple. Things started out great for the pair, who were both married to other people when they met. They were in their mid-30s when they got together and had four perfect children in quick Baby Boom order. Or at least they thought they were perfect. As we watch the home movies and listen to the family recordings, a devastating portrait of family dysfunction slowly emerges.

It soon becomes clear that Charley is a raging alcoholic, and quite a mean drunk at that, and yet nowhere in their endless psychiatric encounters does anyone ever even suggest that this is a problem. We see that Allis loves her children but despises being a housewife and is deeply unhappy in the role she feels was thrust upon her. The children, seemingly so happy in the early home movies, each have their own problems, exacerbated by their increasingly toxic home environment. It’s painful to listen to the documented fights and hear the bitter accusations leveled at all parties, often loosely camouflaged under the self-help jargon of 1960s-era psychiatry. The family’s shrink, Dr. Lenn, is never seen in the film but he is an ever-present character. Over time, he comes across as a dangerous quack who surely did more harm than good to the family.

The film was made by the grandson of Allis and Charley, a remarkably innovative filmmaker named Morgan Dews. Morgan is the son of the couple’s pretty but troubled daughter Ann who was so desperate to get out of the house she married the first boy who paid any attention to her. I asked Dews after the film whether his surviving family members objected to the use of this painful material. He said that when he asked them to sign the required releases, they refused, telling him to go ahead and make the film and that they’d decide later whether they were okay with it. Dews was poised to cut any of his family members out of the film if they objected, but miraculously they all gave their approval.

Though it depicts many moments of agonizing family history, the film has a lyrical, poetic quality. You feel for all of these characters, no matter how unsympathetic they seem on the tapes. You want to transport yourself into the faded Ektachrome colors of the home movies and help them escape their own misguided coping strategies. “Don’t worry about your son,” you want to shout as they’re committing one of their boys to an ominous looking mental institution, “he’s just dyslexic and can get help!” You want to force Charley to acknowledge his excessive drinking, hire a maid, and stop hocking his wife about the messy house. You long to be a friend and support to poor drowning Allis and encourage her to pursue other interests and stop listening to Dr. Lenn who is trying to blame her for all of the family’s ills. You want to warn Allis and Charley against their progressive but ultimately devastating attempts at an open marriage.

If only all of us could talk to our old family photos and be heard by the well-groomed family members who seem so cheerfully unaware of the horrors that lie directly ahead. Morgan Dews had no idea that this mountain of primary source material existed. He’d seen boxes of audiotapes stored in his family’s garage but assumed it was his uncle’s jazz collection and his mother and uncles never talked much about their childhoods or their parents’ penchant for documenting their acrimonious existence. When Allis died in 2001, her children found her own enormous cache of tapes and diary entries in a box marked “must read after my death.” In the years before her death she had rarely discussed her husband Charley who had died under very mysterious conditions in 1969, but now she wanted her descendants to hear her story. As painful as it must have been to listen to, I can’t help but envy the filmmaker’s luck at finding such provocative material about his family. What a goldmine!

Unlike the families in these films, my parents were not advocates of psychotherapy in the 60s and did not record their arguments or daily experiences. But our family archives aren’t devoid of revealing treasures. My father was a technophile in the 50s and 60s and did make some reel-to-reel recordings during the early years of his marriage, a few of which survive today. Although made during the “happiest” of times, it’s impossible not to hear the threads of future problems as the young couple interacts. Later, as my parents’ marriage was falling apart, my father became interested in the new “portable” video technology. We had a black-and-white reel-to-reel system and recorded some awkward family gatherings just before the two of them split. The tension in the house is palpable which makes my defiantly oblivious 11-year-old self in the videos painful to observe. 

 

The only other smoking gun in our family archives, and it’s a potentially massive one, is a collection of tapes my father recently turned over to my sister. During the worst of the lead-up to my parents’ divorce, all of the phones in our house were bugged. (Was that legal? Is it too late for a citizen’s arrest considering my conversations were also being recorded?) The tapes were never used because my mother did not contest the divorce but legend has it that they contain some extremely nasty conversations. No one has listened to them since they were first recorded over 35 years ago, and every time my sister locates a tape recorder that will play in the irregular speed in which they were recorded, something goes wrong with the machine and we can’t hear the recordings. Is that a sign that we should discard these artifacts from such a miserable period in our family history? Or should we find a way to listen to these long-ago voices so we can get a fuller picture of what went on during that time? Is there any good reason to do so other than prurient curiosity?

Following the screening of this documentary, Kendall and I joined her mother and went to see the disturbing but well done new Julianne Moore film, “Savage Grace,” based on the real-life story of society gal Barbara Baekeland and her terribly dysfunctional, incestuous relationship with her son Antony. This story takes place during the same time period that Morgan Dews’ family was being victimized by misguided psychiatry and yet the Baekelands suffered from an acute absence of such help. Even though Antony showed many signs of schizophrenia in his young life, his father, the heir to the Bakelite plastics fortune, thought that psychiatry was “professionally amoral” and refused to pay for treatment. Ignoring the boy’s precarious condition led to a very tragic outcome for the Baekelands. I wonder what the surviving members of this family think of the film and the book that it was based on. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are outraged at the treatment of Barbara, even if it’s all “true.” Julianne Moore did a wonderful job in a difficult role, but her total lack of any boundary with her son was very hard to watch. I can’t remember the last time I squirmed so much while watching a feature film, but the incest scenes between Moore and her son were so shocking that I audibly gasped and had to look away.

Jesus, do you think that was enough cinematic dysfunction for one day? Hurry, I need to watch a film that will restore my faith in family—something soothing like “The Sound of Music.” Overbearing father, oppressive high-strung Catholics, and bloodthirsty Nazis. Aaaaahhh, what a relief!

Comments

[cruisin-mom]

wow Danny, I'm exhausted just reading this. Your honesty about yourself and your family never ceases to amaze me. I'm not so sure I'd want to hear those tapes. As for Savage Grace, I think I may have to skip that one. A nice light musical with Nazi's sounds just about right. ( I think Mel Brooks already had that idea)

[Roberta Lipp]

Wow.

As my scrutiny of Mad Men intensifies, so does my hunger for information on life in the 60's... as it was, not as it was portrayed. Sounds like this film is a must-see.

[lizzy]

Both movies sound too painful to watch, for me, but I'm a total wimp with emotionally stressful film. But thanks for the write up. That I can handle.

I often look at families in public, who seem happy enough, and scrutinize them for signs of distress and dysfunction. People's public faces so often try, and even succeed, to mask private struggle. Which makes living in a difficult family so much harder, because you compare yourself to the illusion of other family's happiness.

I suppose, though, that family happiness, like much other happiness, is experienced in small moments, which build incrementally in our memory banks.

[Liza Cowan]

Sorry, wrong name and url above.

[Your big brother, Bruce]

Danny,

I have an audio diary I kept during that period. Whenever I dictated into the recorder I would tune my radio to WLS and turn it up, because I thought it would be cool to hear the hit music of the day years the future.

During the height of the mishegas in our house, my entries focus on one single problem almost exclusively. That my amplifier wasn't powerful enough to hear the keyboard I played in the band.

Can you spell D-E-N-I-A-L ?

[Danny]

WHAT?! You have an audio diary from back then that I never knew about? Maybe we SHOULD make a documentary about our family! (Of course I would never use the tapes without your permission...gulp!)

[Pam G]

No. I don't think that my family presented an accurate picture of our level of dysfunction then or now. My mother has chosen to end her days as she has lived her life: in a sepia-hued bubble of denial. This post brought to mind two episodes from my life: (1) a woman who lived near me from 1963-1983 who apologized to me as an adult for not intervening in my hellacious childhood because her husband wouldn't let her, saying the guilt of knowing what we went through had bothered her for years; (2) a happy family lunching together I observed in an office break room only to hear the next day on the news that this husband tried to murder his wife that evening.

Will we ever know what drives these family dynamics? Probably not, but films such as you reviewed in this post can help us delve into the "maybes," if we wish much as "Mommie Dearest" did for me in exploring my family realities for the first time years ago.

Finally, yes, I do look at our faded happy Easter Sunday dress-up pictures circa 1968 from time to time and wish I could help/warn/comfort. I suppose there's a book in this somewhere but I haven't written it yet for fear of libel charges, perhaps?

[churlita]

Sometimes I wish I could go back to that messed up girl I was in the seventies and early eighties and assure her that everything would be so much better after she turned eighteen and moved out. I suppose there's no going back. It's just important to remember that now we have power and try not to keep repeating the same bad patterns we learned as kids. So tough.

[Elaine Soloway]

Thanks for a wonderful post, Danny. Will try to catch the documentaries you mention. As to another look at a marriage in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, watch for the 2009 release of the fictional, "She's Not The Type."

Love from your fake mommy,
Elaine

[Jane]

Okay, two movies added to the list. Great commentary as usual, Danny.

I'd suggest you dig out your old Charlie & the Chocolate Factory so that you can see that in the end, life, although a sideways ride, brings about a guarantee of chocolate even on the worst days -- at least for the sane, humble, and deserving!

[Dave]

I vote for not listening to your tapes. I know it's a wealth of information, perhaps insight into aspects of your family that you may not be familiar, but I can't help but think of it as an invasion of privacy.

In my case, I can't help but want to think of my parents not as they are, necessarily, but as they wanted me to think of them.

My family was, and is far from perfect. But I feel I owe it to them to take them at face value, because they tried to provide a safe and secure environment for me. And if it actually wasn't as safe as I thought it was, or as secure. I was none the wiser. And, for me, that's what counts.

As always a great post Danny.

[Sue Katz]

The institution of the nuclear family is a dodgy one - so often full of "Secrets and Lies" (my favorite movie about the dysfunction of families). I've always considered it a potentially dangerous place, not the least for children. I guess you have to figure out what it would contribute to your life to hear these tapes, especially made in patriot-act-like stealth. I don't think I'd want to know - but then I was running away from my family as soon as I learned to walk.
Thanks for always being so smart, Danny,
Sue

[Judy]

I loved this post..got me to remember how I used to wonder after witnessing another harrowing parental friday night argument if my friends at high school had things like this going on in their homes. No one mentioned anything, and like the others i never mentioned my family's secrets to anyone. Did your father threaten to hit your mom and did she scream she'd kill him in self defense? Was he drunk or dying to have an excuse to run out of the house and disappear all night, after he picked a fight. Later to come home drunk or wake us up in the middle of the night with Chinese food for us all to eat? Was it 1:00AM? Is this fun? No wonder we had weight problems.

[V-Grrrl]

My parents died years ago. What would I want to know that I don't already know?

I've mentioned this before, but I have more than 30 years of diaries and journals and a life time of letters from friends plus my blog. I expect my kids to read my blog one day. The rest? Hmmmm. I recently ditched a lot of letters. Plans to toss out more. I simply can't keep carting my past with me, physically or psychologically. I feel the more I try to carry all of the past forward, the less progress I make in my life.

[Morgan Dews]

Wow. Thanks for the props. I'm starting to be shocked at how much the film resonates with people. I'm really fascinated that you have your dad's wiretap tapes. That's a treasure trove in its own right. Have you listened to them? Even the innocuous conversations from that era must be pretty amazing. There's something about the records my grandparents made, some feeling that as they are talking they know these recordings might outlive them. With the wire-tap they would have had no idea. CRAZY!! Crazy that marriage in that era seems to have driven people to such total war. I always had the impression when I looked at this body of material Allis had amassed that it was her federal case against Charley.

Thanks for coming to see my film and for sharing about your own family. It always makes me feel better to hear that I'm not the only one :)

-Morgan Dews
www.mustreadaftermydeath.com

[tamarika]

I heard Salmon Rushdie yesterday being interviewed and he talked about how we all have a profound need to tell our stories. Our family stories and how we all came to be who we are, are the most important stories we have to tell, I believe. For, it is the very "denials" that we all experienced that desperately need to come out and be validated.

I will never forget how you encouraged me to tell mine, Danny. My stories were validated. Powerful. Very powerful. Like this post.

[La Framéricaine]

Danny,

Thank you very much for letting me know today that you had written this post after seeing "Must Read After My Death" at the L.A. Film Festival last June. Naturally, I do not know if you will ever see this comment but it means a lot to me to have read your post here and, particularly, to have read the comments that it inspired. I am currently, as you know, in the throes of a once-in-a-lifetime upheaval in terms of my intention to relocate to France with no notion of returning to the USA. I have no idea how it will go but I'm rolling the dice and taking my chances. I'm also taking my family baggage with me with the firm intention of exploring it further in genealogy and in writing/blogging because I have estranged nieces and a nephew who were completely cut off from the knowledge of their paternal (my brother) ancestors. That is an unacceptable state of affairs for me and I want to have a hand in changing it, no matter how long it takes.

Well, let me not go on and on. Thank you as always.

Amitiés,