Community Notebook

A Wild Child: Now & Then

Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck

Ralph Arlyck was one of the first filmmakers to show hippies from the inside out. His 1969 short film Sean was about a kid growing up in San Francisco’s legendary Haight Ashbury. Sean’s ever-shifting family arrangement included card-carrying Communist grandparents and a host of drug-doing houseguests. In his eerily mature baby voice, Sean talked about smoking and eating pot. Many eyebrows were raised. Arlyck won over a dozen awards for the film.

On a recent visit to his Poughkeepsie home, Arlyck served a pot of tea and talked about his latest project, the feature-length sequel to Sean called Sean: Now and Then. In this film, Arlyck sees what has become of Sean and his free-floating, extended family. In a blend of interviews with 30-something Sean, flashbacks to the original film, home movies, and rare footage of Bob Dylan and Tim Leary, it’s clear that Arlyck has mixed feelings about the ‘60s.

“I definitely don’t want the film to be a nostalgic trip and I do have some ambivalence about the sixties,” said Arlyck, throwing a few cold raisins into his tea, his trick for both cooling the tea and plumping the raisins. Politically liberal, Arlyck was trained as a journalist and is naturally somewhat removed and observing. He lived on the Haight too, but even in the ‘60s he could see it was a bit dysfunctional.

“There was a lot of sad business going on, a lot of people strung out, homeless people. It was in some ways a heavy scene. It wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to jump into and say, ‘Boy this is the life!’” Arlyck said.

Filmmaker's subject: Sean

The adult Sean is fascinating. He’s still whip smart and challenging and is an excellent match for the filmmaker. Over the course of the film, the ‘60s becomes a backdrop to a timeless father/son story. The central tension, Arlyck agreed, is that Sean’s father Johnny is seriously committed—even politically so—to avoiding responsibility. Sean actively pursues the opposite.

“Johnny was completely taken with the sixties, and Sean paid the price for that,” Arlyck said. He’s quick to add, however, that he is in no way condemning Sean’s father. “Johnny just never bought the basic concept of modern life which is that you’re supposed to spend most of your time doing what you don’t want to do. What’s wrong with that? There’s a logic to that. Why spend your whole time fulfilling other people’s expectations?”

Arlyck falls somewhere in a third camp.

“I see myself kind of ambivalent between the two. I see compelling notions on both sides and don’t quite know where I fit in. That’s one of the things the film is trying to communicate, that notion of growing up, and responsibility, and your obligations, especially coming out of this generation that said ‘Do your thing.’”

The film’s premise sounds similar to Michael Apted’s 7 Up or 28 Up series of films, which track a group of people from childhood and is a formal discussion in a controlled environment. But Arlyck’s film is nothing like this. It’s much more quirky and intimate, Arlyck’s signature style.

In more than 30 years making films (he’s made over a dozen and received twice as many awards), Arlyck is known for being a memoirist trapped inside the body of a documentary filmmaker. Sean: Now and Then is no exception. Arlyck parallels his own life in loving interviews with his parents (who also dabbled in communism); his wife, Elisabeth Cardonne (a professor of French at Vassar); and his two grown sons who offer hilarious impressions of the ‘60s).

Because people do have preconceived ideas about documentary films, Arlyck and producer Malcolm Pullinger know they have to be sensitive in the expectations they create. They do not want to draw audiences promising a groovy version of the Apted films and then saddle them with footage of Arlyck’s parents arguing in their living room.

“I’m a little torn about that because, in a way, I like for people to come in with one idea and go out with another,” said Arlyck. “It’s a very delicate thing because you don’t want them to feel frustrated.”

The title they’ve been using is troublesome for the same reasons. Sean Now and Then isn’t exactly what the film is about and may contribute to false expectations. “We’re still looking for a title that captures the film so people don’t have to think longitudinally right in the title,” said Pullinger.

Arlyck and Pullinger are editing and fundraising in the final push to finish the second Sean film. (Incidentally, Arlyck is ruminating on a new idea: the link between Poughkeepsie’s Mexican community and a couple of villages around Oaxaca, Mexico, a connection originally attributed to the work of a local detective investigating the victim of a hit-and-run accident in Poughkeepsie. Arlyck will make the transition to video for his next film, no small feat for a filmmaker who has always been dedicated to 16mm.)

For the moment, however, Arlyck and Pullinger have their work cut out for them with Sean: Now and Then. They showed the film as a work-in-progress at the Independent Feature Project Market in New York and the Woodstock Film Festival.

At the Woodstock Festival, Arlyck ignored the usual director’s question and answer session and came out asking for criticism. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked the crowd. Soon Arlyck was moderating a lively debate about the film and the director’s presence in it. The audience’s generous input re-inspired him all over again, he said.

“I really liked showing it in Woodstock, partly because that is a community that feels a certain affinity with the sixties,” said Arlyck. But the audience was more than a Woodstock crowd.
Response to the film was a favorable, encouraging experience, Pullinger said, adding “Wait until it’s finished and pristine.”

—Kate Schultz