The Kids Grow Up

IDFA Q&A with Marjorie

Doug — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:22:49 +0000

If you’ve seen the trailer for The Kids Grow Up you know that during the year the story primarily takes place my wife Marjorie came down with a serious episode of depression. It was horrendous to point a camera at her in that condition, and a very brief interview was all either of us could withstand. But destigmatizing depression is very important to her, and the footage wouldn’t be in the finished film had she not seen it early on in the editing and given her blessing.

Still, seeing the completed film for the first time before an audience of over 200 people is quite another matter. Marjorie arrived in Amsterdam last week just in time for our second IDFA screening. I had her join me for the audience Q&A immediately afterwards and, sure enough, the very first question was whether it was difficult to see herself so exposed on screen. Here’s her answer in a short Flip clip…

Leaving for IDFA

Doug — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:59:56 +0000

With the Sat night world premiere screening of The Kids Grow Up looming, and the whole production team heading off for the airport in a few hours, we’re buzzing around doing all the usual things we’ve left for the very last minute. Updating the 3-minute trailer was the most important, since the previous version ended with temp music that wasn’t exactly the right tone (a bit too melodramatic). Not to mention, not exactly licensed. Now it’s entirely scored by our hugely talented composer, H. Scott Salinas, and has the right bittersweet feel.

Anyway, posters and postcards – check. International replacement cell phone – check. An email announcement to attending IDFA buyers and press – check. An itinerary to make sense of all the screenings and meetings and parties – check. Ambien for the red-eye flight over – check!!!

We had a private screening on Monday for a small group of distributors, industry folk and friends at Soho House and the audience reaction was all I could have possibly hoped for. It’s clear this is a film that works better on a big screen with an audience, so I’m a bit calmer heading into IDFA than I would have been. But we’ll see.

I have my Flip video camera with me, and I’ll try to post a couple of Flip Clips during the festival if I can find the time and wherewithal. And I’ll definitely post about how things are going. And now, fingers crossed…

Trailer

admin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:37:46 +0000

From the director of 51 Birch Street, a funny and deeply
moving look at modern-day parenting.

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LATEST NEWS

The Kids Grow Up will have its U.S. premiere at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, April 8 to 11. Detailed program and screening info to follow shortly.

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, April 8 to 11.

World Premiere of THE KIDS…

Doug — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:47:00 +0000

THE KIDS GROW UP will have its’ world premiere next month at IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), the largest and most prestigious of all documentary festivals. It’s playing in the Reflecting Images: Masters section, along with new or recent docs by, well, there’s no other term, masters such as D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus, Frederick Wiseman, Michael Moore, Joe Berlinger, Susan Froemke, Julien Temple and Michael Winterbottom. So it’s quite an honor and my hat size has swelled accordingly.

I’ll post the screening dates and times when they become available (on Nov 7th, we hear), but the festival itself runs from November 19th thru 29th. The huge international success of 51 BIRCH STREET was pretty much a direct result of our European premiere at IDFA in 2005, so it promises to be really exciting. Three of our four broadcasters are located in Europe (ZDF/Arte, Channel 4 and VPRO), and it will be helpful to talk over future projects in person with them there. And, if that weren’t enough, Lori and I are producers of another film that’s having its’ world premiere at IDFA: Amy Hardie’s THE EDGE OF DREAMING. It’s an extraordinary personal documentary that’s screening in the competition for feature-length documentary, and I’ll be writing about it much more in the near future.

Done at last!

Doug — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:28:16 +0000

Hard to believe but tomorrow is the final layback of mixed soundtrack to color corrected picture and then… The Kids Grow Up is done. It’s a bittersweet moment.

I’ve been living with this film, in one form or another, for over 20 years. Or, to be more precise, from the moment my daughter Lucy was born. Not that I knew right away she would someday be the subject of a film. But because as I continued to tape with her over the years, and really only a little at a time, I began to suspect there was the makings of a film there.

Lucy is my only child and she’s always been a precocious one. The camera has always loved her. And for many years, she loved the camera back. Then she became a teenager and began to rebel against it, which was interesting, too.

It was a little over two years ago, when Lucy was about to enter her senior year of high school, that it occurred to me what the story of this “Lucy film” was about. Because suddenly I knew the ending. In exactly one year, she would be leaving home for college, and I’d be left facing the empty nest with my wife.

I knew it would be a turbulent year for the entire family. I just had no idea how turbulent.