Fatherhood the Gilmour Way

Anonymous's picture

David Gilmour raised two fascinating issues, to say the least.

The first one is, at what point of suffering do let your kid step outside the “normal” track? One viewer (Lisa, on the home page) already has made clear her view that Gilmour made a mistake letting his son drop out of high school.

However, when you watch the program it is clear that, as he said, Gilmour believed that “high school was killing” his son and that he couldn’t stand by and watch it happen.

The second issue is Gilmour’s – also impassioned – statement that “boys need their fathers.” Gilmour claims that the really important result of their three movie a week regimen was that (because of the confluence of Gilmour’s temporary unemployment with his son’s crisis) it allowed father and son to spend much larger amounts of time together at that time in life than is usual in our society.

What do you think?

Odile's picture

Hey Greg, Two reactions to

Hey Greg,
Two reactions to your questions: 1. that anything you HAVE to do with your parents when your 16 is not that fun...even if it is watching movies. I personally think school is a great escape from family life. So, I say Jesse was not simply somebody trying to avoid difficulty. School was just not fitting him. I think Lisa may be judging the kid a bit fast.
2.Gilmour's comment about fatherhood applies to parenthood in general. It's hard to keep the communication going with any teen. I tip my hat to Gilmour cause it must have been real work for him to get his kid to watch these movies, to talk about them and to come back for more!

Nessa's picture

Greg: I think Gilmour needs

Greg: I think Gilmour needs therapy. What was his relationship to HIS father? Did he have one? What does taking the boy out of school teach him about life's difficult lessons? You can hide behind Daddy? (And Gilmour's a big guy) You don't have to do what seems to be too difficult? What about a different school? The entire thing irritated me no end, not the least because I found Gilmour to be too facile. And all that cringe-making false modesty about being a not very good film critic, unemployed etc, etc. An ass, as I said before. And he was actually waffling about censorship.

Nessa