4/9/23
Newsletter #302
The Crack of Dawn
My dad never liked my Uncle Lou, my mother’s brother. First of all, my dad thought he was smarter than Lou, which isn’t surprising because my dad thought he was smarter than everybody. And though no one ever mentioned this, Lou was better looking – I thought he looked like Victor Mature. My dad and Lou both went into the real estate business in the late 1950s. My dad started his own company; Lou went to work for his brother-in-law, Don Kaufman, at his new, Detroit-based company, Kaufman & Broad. My dad’s business slowly expanded over the years, and he did well. Kaufman & Broad became the largest residential home builders in the world. At perhaps fifty years old and living a fabulous life in a beautiful house in Bel Air, Lou made the ballsy decision to quit his job as Executive Vice President of K&B and start his own company. My father predicted doom, but Lou quickly turned it into a very successful company, made even more money, and drove a Ferrari.
This was the lengthy intro to a silly, though personally satisfying, story. Maybe twenty years ago, my dad called me at 8:00 in the morning and asked if I’d like to go out for breakfast. My house was between his house and his office. When he did this I assumed that someone else had just canceled a breakfast meeting. Anyway, I always accepted. We didn’t have much of a relationship and these surprise breakfasts comprised a great deal of it. As a note, my dad’s view of my life went like this: the movie business is a stupid business; ergo, anyone who would knowingly go into a stupid business is stupid. I couldn’t really argue with his logic, although I once did reply, “Oh, you mean stupid like Stanely Kubrick was stupid?” My dad gave me a long look that said, “Son, I have bad news, you’re not Stanley Kubrick.”
My dad once asked me, “How much is a roll of film?” I said, “Four hundred feet of 35mm film is about a hundred bucks.” My dad said, “So, there’s a hundred dollars of inherent value in that item. Then you get your hands on it, ruin it, and it’s now worth nothing.” I was able to counter with, “Or it’s ET, and it’s now worth a billion dollars.”
Anyway, we’re having breakfast at a restaurant that he used to own. He sold it to the parents of a kid with whom I used to go to camp. So, I’m forty-five and well into my moderate career, and he’s seventy-five, successful (for metro Detroit), drives a little Lexus sports car, is still wheeling and dealing, and still smokes and drinks like a kid, unaware of an impending, imminent heart attack. And this particular morning he was hot on his favorite subject: money, which is not my favorite subject. Dad’s theory of the day was, “Society’s yardstick for measuring success is money. How much money you make determines how much you’re worth. As a man.” Thankfully, I was on my game that day. I said, “OK, money is the yardstick to measure your worth as a man. Therefore, Uncle Lou is ten times the man you are.”
My father’s countenance hardened. His jaw clamped shut, his eyes narrowed, and he went into his killer mode. He whispered, “You don’t understand.” I grinned and said, “No, I finally understand. By your rules of measurement, Lou is ten times the man you are. Did I ever mention that he reminds me of a Jewish Victor Mature?”
My dad never brought up “Society’s yardstick” again.
In ten hours I will wing my way back to America. This week went by like a lovely, warm, Mediterranean dream. Barcelona is the nicest, cleanest, most friendly, beautiful, historic city I’ve ever been to. I have a feeling that I’ll be back.
Have a great day. I know that I will because I mistakenly booked my return flight Air Canada to Toronto, where I have a five and a half hour layover to catch a one-hour flight to Detroit. But as my old Yiddishe grandmother would say, “It’s good to leave, and it’s good to come home.”