Nobody's Business (1996) - full transcript
A portrait of the director's father, searching for the extraordinary in the subject's seemingly normal existence.
The story's told about a man
who went to an artist,
and said, "I wanna have a picture made."
The artist turned to him and said,
"Look, there are two kinds of pictures.
"There's a portrait and a landscape."
He said, "Well, which is cheaper?"
The artist said, "The landscape."
He said, "Well, can you make a landscape of me?"
Testing one, two, three.
Testing one, two, three.
How long do you think this is gonna take, Alan?
'Bout and hour.
Tell me about this picture?
It looks like you're about to sing,
It looks like you're about to sing
or give a speech somewhere.
No, that's not so, I'm just posing.
For whom, for what?
I'm just posing for the picture to be taken.
There's no story behind the image?
Well, you want me to make up stories?
Alan, before we go any further,
let me tell you something.
I'm just an ordinary guy
who's led an ordinary life.
I was in the army.
I got married.
I raised a family, worked hard,
had my own business.
That's all, nothing to make a picture about.
Someone in the audience is watching right now
and saying, "Why am I here watching this film
"about this guy?"
I would ask too, 'cause I don't know
what the heck they're doin' there.
I'm being honest with you.
You should be honored.
I'm not.
Your life not only can be...
My life is nothing.
My life is no different from I don't know
how many billions of people.
Who the hell would care about Oscar Berliner?
Who the hell am I?
You know, it's ridiculous.
Everyone has a life
that has something special about it.
No.
Your life has nothing special?
- No.
- Nothing?
- Look...
- How could you be
- so convinced about that?
- We all,
you're tryin' to make something of nothing.
You're my father.
I have to do it.
I need to do it.
You don't have to do it.
I have to do it.
Alan, you're gonna do what you wanna do
whether I want you do it
or don't want you to do it.
I'll tell you, you're wasting your time.
Oh, shit.
Oh fuck, all right.
What's the matter?
Nothing.
What happens now?
I just wanna be open and honest
right up front.
But I wanna know everything there is to know
about you and our family.
If it gives you satisfaction, be my guest.
Where are you from?
I'm from America, born and raised in America.
What else do you wanna know?
No, you're the child of immigrants.
Do you know how many children
of immigrants there are?
That's exactly right and...
A jillion.
That's right, and each one has a story,
and they wanna know your story.
Ah, OK are you commit to that?
I'm not.
All I know is that my father came from Poland.
My mother came from Russia.
Period, that's it.
Where in Poland?
Who the hell knows.
My father never told me.
You never asked.
Course not.
Who would know?
There's nobody left but me,
so who the hell would know?
Well, maybe I'll ask all the first cousins.
Maybe they'll know.
I know little, they know even less.
Russia.
Do you know where in Russia?
No.
I was always told Russia and Poland.
And if they said, "Where in Russia and Poland?"
I have no idea.
- No, I don't have the faintest idea
of any details.
- Basically, Russia or Poland,
the other side.
- I would say Russia.
Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot
of information in that regard.
- Where is your mother's family from?
- Germany.
- OK, and they say, "Where in Germany?"
- I guess Berlin.
- It's almost as if the history, for me,
began here in the United States
rather than in Europe.
- I just never asked.
- I never asked, they never said.
- I think I may have known at some point,
but it was not terrible important to me.
- I don't know any of that history.
- You'd like to know it though?
- It would be interesting.
I don't know how much of an effort
I would expend to know it.
Maybe you'll discover it for us.
- May I ask you a question now?
- Sure.
- Where'd you get all these papers from?
- I just came back from
the Family History Library
in Salt Lake City, Utah.
I found social security
records and census records,
marriage certificates, birth certificates,
maps, immigration papers.
This is a certificate of naturalization
which is a document that your father filled out
when he became a citizen of this country.
And it shows that your father was born
in 1877 in a town called Rajgrod.
And at the time, Rajgrod was in Russia,
but now it's in Poland.
- Whether they came from this town or that town
is terrible unimportant.
- This is where Rajgrod is on the map.
- Let me tell you something.
- I just wanna show you where
- it is on the map of Poland.
- Can I tell you?
- About 45 miles northwest of Bialystok,
northeast of Warsaw.
- OK, I see it now, but this could be anywhere.
Big fuckin' deal.
- This is a drawing of what the town
of Rajgrod looked liked in 1913.
- What does it matter?
- Your ancestors walked on that block.
- Really, what does it matter?
- By the way, I was looking
through some family documents in Russian.
This is how you write Berliner in Russian.
Did you ever see that before?
- Course not.
- That says Berliner.
Solomon Isacc Berliner, your grandfather.
What do you think about the way he looks?
- He's like an old Jew.
He looks like another Jew with a yamaka.
What else can I tell you?
Well, I have no emotional response.
It means nothing to me.
- That's your grandfather.
- You want the truth from me
or you don't want the truth?
- I want the truth.
- The truth is I don't care.
It doesn't interest me.
I don't know this man.
I never saw him.
I heard one thing about him
that he was a Hebrew teacher.
What they called in Hebrew a melamed.
That's all I know about him.
- This is a photograph of your grandmother,
your father's mother.
Her name was Rachel Sutker.
- I don't know what is it
- that you want me to do?
- These are
your ancestors.
- What do you want me to tell you?
Oh, I love you.
I don't give a shit about them.
They could be taken out of a storybook.
I don't know them.
- I'm introducing you to them.
- They're nobody.
- I'm introducing you to them.
I'm thinking of going to Poland.
- For what?
- To film in the cemeteries where they're buried.
- So what is that gonna prove?
What are you gonna do?
Take my word, but you won't find it.
It's too long already.
Too many years have passed.
- These people are part of the trunk
of our family tree.
- I don't care about the family tree.
- The more you say you're not interested,
the more I wanna make you change your mind.
- You have one bad habit,
and you'd best get over it.
You think that if something's important to you,
it's gotta be important to somebody else.
But, everybody has his own sense of values.
It's important to you, great,
not important to me.
I don't care about it.
And let me tell you this, if you intend
to make this a focal point of the motion picture,
you're building up a flop.
A guaranteed flop because you're talking
about people nobody knows,
nobody knew, and nobody cares about.
- Let me read you this letter.
It's from your grandfather to your father.
- Read it, go 'head.
Who cares?
- "My dear Benjamin,
"when you were two years old,
"you already exhibited signs
"of heightened ability to learn."
- Ugh.
- "And as you are my first-born son,
"before you saw even a single Hebrew letter,
"I had already taught you many good
"and exalting teachings by heart.
"By the time you were six years old,
"you'd excelled to be the finest
"in the city amongst those your age.
"That is when hope danced in front of me
"and showed me my son exalted above others
"as an important man.
"When you reached the age of 12,
"I put you in the Yeshiva.
"And after six months, you returned
"with a tulement under your arm,
"blooming with many learned teachings
"that beautifully flowed from your lips.
"But as you got older, times changed.
"For I thought,
after I give you away as a husband,
"your wife will give birth to children
"and they will remain mired
in poverty as I am today.
"Why should you spend any time here
"in Poland for nothing and without hope?
"Therefore I said, you should try
"to find fortune and success far away.
"On the day of our parting,
"I wanted to say many things to you,
"but the tears of my wounded heart
"overflowed all of their banks,
"and I was not able to open my mouth.
"Because you, son of mine who had been destined
"to be a great rabbi,
"was now about to seek his faith in America."
You don't get goosebumps when you read this?
- No.
- It doesn't make you proud of your father?
- No.
- Not at all?
- No.
- You know, your father was one
of almost two million Jews,
Eastern European Jews,
who came to this country between 1880 and 1920.
- So?
So, he was one of two million, big deal.
He came to America because they were told
the streets were paved with gold.
- Were they paved with gold for your father?
- No, hardly.
I was gonna say,
my father was a typical immigrant.
A typical immigrant who was a success.
What did he become?
A tailor?
- Your grandfather had hope
that your father would've succeeded here,
and then been able to bring all of the family
from Poland to this country.
So in effect, your father very
much disappointed his father.
- It's not the first time or the last time
that a son ever disappointed his father.
- Your father never saw his family again?
- Never.
But, I will tell you this about my father.
My father was a brain.
My father was an intelligent man.
Not always does intelligence go
with a complete personality.
- Benjamin Berliner was a very stubborn,
tough, strong,
domineering individual.
- I think he scared me a little bit.
When one got to Grandma's house,
and one went into the
bedroom, kissed Grandpa hello,
and usually didn't see him again
until one was leaving and went
into the bedroom and kissed him goodbye.
- His father was a very unfriendly man.
I don't think I have ever said more
than two words to him
when I was first introduced to the family.
He was a loner.
He always had a long face.
I don't think he ever smiled.
- I don't think any cousin will ever tell you
that Benjamin Berliner picked
them up and hugged them
or said that he loved them.
Any cousin.
I would venture to say,
he never did it with his children.
That's a very cold man.
- We are a different breed,
say from your mother's family
with all the hugging and
kissing and all that crap.
The Berliner's are not that way.
- I remember my Aunt Bea when I would
come to Florida to see her.
I would come bouncing out of the taxi,
you know, ready for a big hug.
And she would say to me with her arms like this,
"I'm so glad to see you."
And that was the end of it.
Finished, no hug, no kiss.
You know, and then when I would leave,
I would get his little peck on the cheek.
- His mother, on the contrary,
was the life of the family,
and she made everything good.
She made everything happy.
- She was a nice little old lady.
- She used to sit in one particular chair.
She had terribly bowed legs.
- This little woman, you would have
to understand what a giant she was.
11 children, seven boys and four girls.
- I was number 10 of 11.
I never for one minute doubted
my mother's love and affection,
care and concern for me.
I think my love for you and Lynn.
Where'd that come from, my father?
My father had nothing to do with us
when I was a kid.
It was my mother.
The love that I have, I'm able to express,
for my children, to my children,
I think I inherited from my mother.
- There were 13 live births,
but only 11 children lived to adulthood.
- Do you know what they died of?
You know any of the circumstances?
- No, I don't.
- Why don't you ask your father?
- Tell me...
- I don't wanna talk about it.
- Tell me why you don't wanna talk about it?
- I want on the next question, and that's it.
That's it or the interview...
- Something...
- The interview's gonna
- be over soon.
- Why you doin' this?
- I'm telling you...
- Why?
- I'm telling you!
- Why?
- It proves nothing and it means nothing.
You're talking about something
I know nothing about.
I don't remember witnessing or nothing.
- Don't push me.
- All right, I'm pushing you.
- Let it go.
- By the way, I was just curious,
what's your parents wedding anniversary?
- Never knew it.
- They were married more than 50 years.
- I never knew it!
- You never went to a wedding anniversary party
- of your own parents?
- You can't jog
my memory because I never knew it.
- How 'bout your birthday?
What's your date of birth?
- November 1st.
- What year?
- 1919.
- Well, get ready for this,
the 1920 census says quite precisely
that in 1920,
you were two and seven twelfths years old.
- So, what do you want me to do?
- You might actually be older
than you think you are.
- Well, I'd rather be younger.
And actually, at this point in my life,
it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
- Can you remember your mother's birthday?
- I can't remember 'cause I never knew it.
- I know my mother's birthday.
- Alan, what does that prove?
It proves nothing.
- How 'bout your father's birthday?
- I have no idea.
- Never knew?
- Never knew.
We never talked about birthdays.
We never celebrated birthdays.
They came and they went and
nobody paid attention to it.
We were in the throws of a depression,
and things were tight and tough.
In all my years, I can't remember once,
except maybe for my bar mitzvah.
I don't remember any birthdays at all.
What are we gonna do now?
- I wanna look at some of the army pictures.
- I was servin' the army, big deal.
11 million men served in the army.
You could make me out a big hero,
maybe I won the war by myself.
I came to Japan in a matter of days
after the dropping of the atom bomb.
And all the time I was in
Japan for almost a year,
I was never into a Jap home.
- It's Japanese.
Don't say Jap.
- Ah, we called 'em any,
you see it's hard for me to discuss it
with you because I was a soldier
with the conquering army and these were the fuckin' enemy.
And you're tellin' me that
they're treated with kid gloves.
You don't ever think of them
as the perpetrators of Pearl Harbor.
How those son of a bitches did
to us at Pearl Harbor while they were
talking peace in Washington.
You never think about that.
- We punished them for that terribly.
- I'm just sayin'...
- And I wanna tell
you something, you are not now, not ever,
get me to approach Japanese the way you do.
- You were champions.
It's a championship team.
- This group was part of my life.
I can relate to them.
Forgotten a lot of their names.
But, I can relate to them.
- You can relate to your army buddies
more than you can relate
to your own grandparents?
- Yes.
Absolutely, no question about it.
I lived with these guys seven days a week,
and we were training to kill or be killed.
I think until the day I die,
I'll never forget about 'em.
- You've said to me that war years
were the best years of your life.
- No question about it.
I had a special deal with the army,
because I had a high IQ,
I was able to get out of the infantry.
- How did you know you had a high IQ?
- I was told.
- What was your IQ?
- 130, 140.
- That's almost genius status.
- I'm no genius.
I always thought of myself
as being relatively smart,
but brilliant, no.
Yeah, these are the days
when I was lookin' good.
- You kinda look like you're on top
of the world in these pictures a little.
- Oh yeah.
Hey, I owned the world.
I was a handsome young man.
- Looks like you had a pretty active social life.
- Oh yeah, and all the women I wanted, all.
- Were you ever serious with her?
- No, I had a good time with her,
but I never serious with her.
- I mean, it's clear that you're having
a romantic relationship with her.
- No question about it.
- Yes or no,
did you ever spend the night with her?
- The answer is no.
Can you move onto something.
Can't we talk baseball?
- I just want the truth.
- Forget about the truth.
- Why?
- Alan, get off that subject would ya?
I don't wanna talk about it.
I'm your father, forget about it.
What am I, a buddy of yours, a braggart?
I'm your father.
It's an area of respect.
- If you could imagine, imagine it, fine.
If not, forget about it.
- I was hoping I'd have a chance
to hear you sing a little bit.
- I'm not much of a singer.
- Well, try anyway.
♫ Gonna take a sentimental journey
♫ Gonna set my heart at ease
♫ Gonna make a sentimental journey
♫ To renew old memories ♫
I went out with a lot of girls,
and they all left me with
something to be desired.
- I met your mother.
- I was foreign.
- She was an Egyptian.
- I was Sephardic.
- She was young.
- I spoke many languages.
- She was very pretty.
- I was involved in the theater.
- She was very entertaining,
not at all like these ones I'm talking about.
- I was different beyond
his realm of comprehension, Alan.
- She was so different.
It was not even apples and oranges,
'cause apples and oranges are fruit.
- One of the first things he told me
when I met him was never mention
that I had been in the French theater.
The family would not appreciate it.
- I don't know why his tastes ran
for exotic at that moment
because I don't think he ever liked,
you know, exotic things.
That was out of character for Mr. Berliner.
- What a heck of an ego trip
that had to have been, you know, for him.
But he had charm, Alan.
There was something about him
that was, I would think to a lot of
ladies, irresistible.
- He was handsome.
He treated me very nicely.
He was older than I was.
I felt he was wiser.
He was kind and gentle and sweet.
He was a go-getter.
He was an entrepreneur.
- I was in the ladies' sportswear business,
pants, skirts, etc.
I did most of my best work as a salesman.
Selling was my forte.
- He was someone who could
sell virtually anything to virtually anybody.
I mean, he was that personable.
- At one time, I owned a factory in Chinatown.
I think about 40 Chinese women there.
When I came to them and I told 'em
that I was selling the factory, they cried.
And then, as a going away gift,
they gave me big Buddha with two matching vases.
And I've taken it wherever I've gone,
and I have it here too.
- So, you've always had some sense
of yourself as being special in that way?
- My being fair and square with them,
to me was not anything special.
It was normal.
- So, tell me more?
- Oscar Berliner's name was synonymous
with trustworthiness.
- I came from a very strict Sephardic background
with a very strict father who wouldn't let me
go away on weekends.
Wouldn't let me date unless
he interviewed the people.
- She married me to get
out of her father's house.
- That's the only reason?
- That's the only reason.
- You don't think she loved you?
- I mean, I had some feelings for him.
I didn't do that completely
to get out of the house.
I just felt that love would grow.
- Did you love her?
- How the hell do I know?
You talk about when you were young and stupid,
and you didn't care.
You did what you did, that's all.
- And what was it?
- I was ready to get married.
- We crossed paths in a
head-on collision I guess.
He was ready to get married,
and I was ready to leave my house.
- This marriage was not made in heaven.
Do you think every marriage is made
out of a big love affair?
Not so, not so at all.
- Mazeltov.
♫ It's not a pale room that excites me
♫ That thrills and delights me, oh no
♫ It's just the nearness of you
♫ It's just the nearness of you ♫
- He married the wrong woman.
That was the start of it all.
They were a beautiful looking couple.
I have pictures.
They were outstanding together,
but end of sentence, end of paragraph,
end of story.
- So, I married her.
Did I do right, did I do wisely?
I can't give you the answer.
- What's your answer?
- Your question should be would I do it again?
No.
It didn't take me very long
to realize it was a mistake.
And I had second thoughts about it,
and I wish I hadn't done it.
- Did you know pretty early on in the marriage
that it was not gonna work out?
- Yes, Alan.
- How early?
- After a few years.
- Then why did you have two children together?
- You're tryin' to bring logic
to an emotional situation and it doesn't work.
Sometimes you have children
and it helps cement the marriage, sometimes.
- He was a wonderful father,
really a great father, especially with you Alan.
He would read to you.
He would feed you.
He would change you.
He adored you.
- Alan, all these are tying a lot
of responsibilities of a father to his son.
I showed you love and affection outwardly.
A lot different from how I was brought
up, far different.
- I'm much closer to you
than you were to your father.
- No question about it.
- Unbelievably so.
First of all, I wouldn't dare.
I wouldn't dare talk,
even ask my father these questions.
I don't recall ever sittin' down with my father,
having a man-to-man talk, never.
- What do you see of yourself in me?
- I see brains.
I see smartness.
And the way your personality is,
is a lot my mine too.
What do you think you inherited from me?
- Well, we both have strong wills.
I'm meticulous like you.
- I think you're a perfectionist.
- I think we have a similar sense of humor.
- I think so too.
- Sometimes I think that our faces
have the same shape.
Also, our body types are similar.
What also worries me a little bit.
- Hmm?
- What also worries me a little bit
is that I like to spend time
alone by myself like you do.
- I don't think there's much doubt
that you're my son.
- Do you know how many genes we share?
- Hmm?
- Do you know how many genes we share?
Do you know that I have half of your genes
and have of Regina's genes?
- I don't know.
I'm not a doc, I'm not a biologist.
- But, you know basics?
- I just don't know.
Just because you understand,
don't mean I understand.
I just don't know.
And how do I even know what you're talking about?
- I inherited half of my
genes from you and Regina,
a quarter of my genes from each of your parents,
and 1/8 of my genes from
each of your grandparents.
- You're boring me.
Look at that, you're boring the shit out of me.
I don't talking about him.
Let's talk about something else.
I don't know where we're going with this.
- What do you think I inherit from you?
- I've given you a little
bit of artistry I think.
A good outlook on life,
poise,
intelligence,
a nice way of dealing with people.
I think you're very good with people,
and that's very important, very important.
I see some of my personality in Lynn.
- What aspects?
- She's happy.
She's got an up personality.
She smiles readily.
That's not a Berliner trait to smile readily.
- I'm paranoid like Father.
I'm hard-working like him.
I'm organized like him.
We're both picky slash peculiar eaters.
♫ I love you just the way you are ♫
He was always there for me
when I was growing up.
And it's the least that I could give back to him
to just be the type of daughter
that I look out for him.
I look out for him.
It's innate, I just do it.
I do it with my mother too.
I do it with my brother too.
I do it with you too.
- So, what do you think's been
your most important
contribution to your children?
- As a role model.
- A role model for what?
- For a fine, upstanding citizen,
to do good, to do right
and accept responsibility.
- Why did you take all
of those eight millimeter home movies?
Why did you take all the
eight millimeter home movies
of our family?
Why did you take all the
eight millimeter home movies
of our family?
- I can't hear you.
- Home movies!
Why did you take the home movies?
Home movies!
You took eight millimeter home movies
of our family.
- What about it?
- Why did you take them?
- What'd I save them?
- Take them!
Why did you shoot them?
What are you doing?
- Turning the volume up.
- How do you do that?
- I got a gadget in here.
See the little button here?
Turn it towards the front of my face, it goes up.
Goes down.
- How did you lose your hearing?
- You're talkin' to a man
who's had brain surgery twice.
My major loss was a loss of hearing
in my right ear,
which today is still totally deaf.
The brain tumor was sitting
on the auditory nerve,
and that was it.
Luckily for me, it was benign.
My left ear is almost 80% deaf
which I believe is hereditarian.
Unless I can read your lips,
I can't make you out.
- So, if I were to talk now,
and move my lips but not speak.
- Yeah, I could understand
what you're saying, yes.
- How?
- By your lip movement.
I forgot the question.
You gotta talk a little louder Alan.
- I was asking you about the home movies.
I don't wanna see these pictures.
They bring back sour memories.
I don't wanna look at them.
I got over them.
I'm over them.
- If you're over them then you...
- Look at 'em all you want,
but leave me alone.
- I wanna ask you about them.
- No, you're not gonna ask me about 'em.
I'm not gonna answer you.
You keep on hounding me and pounding me.
- But I don't understand what the problem is.
- That shows your lack of understanding.
That shows your lack of sympathy,
your lack of empathy.
That shows your lack of feeling what this means.
- A son is allowed to ask his father.
- When the fuck did I consent to this?
- Look, come on, don't do that.
- These fuckin' things.
Leave me alone.
- Tell me what the problem is.
- Just tell me why...
- Leave me alone!
I don't have to tell you anything.
What are you tryin' to get out of me?
- I've been tryin' to make sense
of the divorce all my life.
This is my chance to talk to you.
- It's nobody's business.
- What?
- What went on between your mother and myself.
It's nobody's business.
These are things that should be discussed
between you and me.
But you brought it up, I'll tell you this.
The single bar to that marriage
was the age factor.
The difference in the ages.
- How much older are you than she is?
- Who the hell knows.
- 12 or 13 years?
- Something like that.
And it becomes more pronounced as you grow older.
- More than that,
there was a cultural difference,
a complete background difference.
And that sort of doomed the marriage also.
I felt I was sublimating my life, so to speak,
and I joined some theater groups.
And I was in many plays and many musicals.
- And as the rehearsals progressed,
they become more and more to the point
where they were every night in the week.
- But I always had dinner on the table.
I always bathed the children.
It was just a question of
getting out after dinner,
and doing my thing which was the theater.
- What that does to a marriage
is you think I'm alone every night.
The kids go to sleep.
They had to go to school the next day.
- Did you resent her for all that?
- It wasn't a matter of resenting.
I was lonely.
- As lonely as you were
during all the time that she was performing,
you still would've wanted to
keep the marriage together?
- Absolutely, I thought that was important
to my children to have a complete home life.
I come from a background, when you get married,
you stay married.
You make the best of what you have,
and do the best you can,
and that's what I was doing.
- That was put to you, Alan, one night.
He shook you up a little and
put you against the wall,
and said, "Would you rather have mother happy,
away from us or unhappy and with us?"
I can still see your face in front of me,
shaking and saying, "Unhappy and with us."
I could understand Alan.
I could understand.
- Living in a house with unhappy parents,
fighting and not together as a partnership
was the worst time of my life.
- If I tell you the difficulties
and the heartaches and the hardships,
and the heartbreaks, and the sleepless nights.
- It hurt me that I had to do it,
but I waited 17 years.
I just had to get out of the marriage.
- Was that the biggest
disappointment of your life,
the breakup of your marriage?
- I would have to say yes.
- It was also the most
traumatic event in my life.
- I believe that.
And Alan, I'll tell you something else.
I am not fooled.
In your own tenacious way,
you're getting what you want.
You're making me talk and talk,
and eventually, you're getting what you want.
- Maybe it's that I make
you face up to some things.
- Whatever it is, you're final result is
I'm here like I am right now,
looking to go into a nursing home because of her.
- You think so?
- Well, because if I had a wife
I wouldn't have to think of it.
I would have a wife to take care of me.
- You could've remarried.
- Yeah, once burned, twice shy.
- People say that time heals.
- Not always.
- I told him "time heals".
- What did he say?
- Not always.
- In most cases, time is the only healer.
So, maybe he's not so ordinary,
'cause an ordinary average
person should be healed by time.
- I guess he must have loved me a lot,
or else pride Alan.
The fact that he was rejected.
That is a terrible thing between two people.
- Well, your mother would like to believe that.
I don't believe that.
I don't care who you talk to,
whether it be a man or woman,
nobody gets out of those
kind of situations unscathed.
- It's amazing that we're OK.
- You think we're OK?
- I think we're OK.
I think that we'll have to
always work on being OK,
but I think that we're OK.
And I think it's made a relationship
between the two of us
stronger than most siblings.
You've never let me down when I've needed you.
And I would think that you know,
I would never let you down.
Having Oscar as our father
unites us in a way that we both just know.
I don't have to speak it.
You don't have to speak it.
In fact, when we exchange stories about him,
on outside I might say.
- Why didn't he remarry?
- We know.
- Good lookin' man.
- We have an understanding.
- He never dated even.
- Why?
- I think that your father to this day
still is either in love or still has
a lot of feelings for your mother.
- You know, it's more than 25 years later?
- Doesn't matter.
- No, I don't think that my father's
still in love with my mother.
Nah.
He's not in love with anything.
He'd rather be by himself.
You can't get hurt that way.
- You don't really have any friends.
I'm being blunt.
You don't have any friends.
- I'm not gonna get into it.
I don't wanna start feeling sorry for myself.
- How does it turn out
that you don't have any friends?
- I am now a product
of what my life has done to me.
I've had some hard knocks.
I've had some hard knocks in my life.
- He is the last of 11.
That's frightening.
He's also had a couple of major operations.
That scares him every day.
The man is afraid.
- I never stop thinking
about your being alone everyday.
- Don't go back to that.
- Never.
- I don't wanna go back to that.
- It hurts me that you've been sad for so long.
- It's not that I choose to be alone,
I have to be alone.
I can't cope.
When you're head hurts you,
when you feel lightheaded all the time,
when you can't walk.
When making conversation's a problem.
When being present is a problem.
Who the hell do you look for except to be alone,
and be left alone?
And to get through the day.
You don't, you don't look for anything.
You look to get by that day, one day at a time.
I wake up at 7:30,
then I go into the kitchen and I have my juice.
Then I have my toast and my hot water
with milk, my cereal.
Then, I make the bed.
I make my bed every morning,
and I go to shave.
And then, I go back and I finish dressing.
I go down, I buy the paper.
I do my shopping, and I come back.
Then it takes time to read the paper.
Then, it's about time for lunch.
All this time, I haven't spoken to a soul
except if you call or Lynn calls.
Usually about 3:00, I go down again,
and I'll talk to whoever's on duty.
Maybe a tenant or two.
- You go down to talk with them?
- Sure.
- On purpose?
- Yeah, because the loneliness is cumulative.
I get to the point where half these clients
I'd like to talk to.
You don't wanna not talk to anybody.
I'll forget the English language.
And I come back and I read the
paper, like I mean it.
If you're occupied doing something,
whether it be reading or writing or watching,
time doesn't drag that slowly.
But, if you're doing nothing,
just looking and thinking
and waiting for time to go by,
time drags very heavily.
Then about 5:00, 5:15, I go down to eat.
I can't go on this way going
to restaurants every night.
Going to restaurants by myself every night.
And then, I take a shower, watch television.
By 10:30, a quarter to 11, I'm in bed.
- Some people say that you never tried to change.
You could've done things to make things better.
- Coulda, woulda, shoulda.
Alan, if the rabbi's wife
had balls she'd been a rabbi.
You're talkin' water over the dam.
What's the good?
What's the use?
You're beating a dead horse.
Whatever it is, some people.
Who the hell are some people?
Now what do some people know?
- My father has tried.
My mother has tried.
Other members of the family have tried.
- He doesn't have a friend.
He's alone.
He lives in his head,
but I tell him all the time
that where it really counts,
he's the luckiest man in the world.
He's got two children that give a shit about him.
That really, really care about him.
- By the way, are you having fun so far?
- Yeah.
- You enjoying this?
- Yeah, I'm getting a little tired,
but that's OK.
- Let's talk about our
extended family a little bit.
You know, wherever I go, I often look
for Berliners in the telephone book.
- I've looked through the phone book.
- Do you feel a connection with them?
- N-O, no!
All these Berliners that you're talking about,
wherever they are, God bless them.
I don't care about them.
- Is that the phone?
- Yeah, well go ahead,
finish your point.
- I am not interested in any Berliners
that are not directly related to me,
and whom I have not had experience with.
- I had known some way or other
that there was another branch of the family
that we didn't know about.
Here you were,
calling up and telling me it was true.
- At this stage of my life,
I don't need 'em.
You want 'em, fine, you can have 'em.
Leave me out.
- How are we related?
- Your great-grandfather, Solomon Issac,
and my grandfather, Wolfe, were brothers.
- Wolfe had a child whose name was Ben, OK?
And Solomon had a child whose name
was, I'll get this, was Ben also.
- My mother's mother is
your grandfather's sister.
- Our great-grandfathers were brothers.
- My great-great-grandfather was the brother
of your great-grandfather.
- Ben on this side, he had a grand,
I'm his great-grandson.
And Ben, on the this side, is your grandfather.
So, we're one generation separated.
- Your father and my father were first cousins.
- Your grandmother and my grandfather
were brother and sister.
- That makes us third cousins, once removed.
- We're strangers.
We're related, but actually we are strangers.
- We're sort of relatives and sort of strangers.
- We're strange relatives.
- If I met you on the street,
I would have no idea who you were.
- Me and any random person might share
a whole lot of genes.
And you and I would share just
that little tiny bit more.
I guess that means something.
- We're strangers who
share a common history.
- The people that gave me my culture.
- We came from the same
thing with your background.
- Give you your culture.
- Our parents and grandparents
probably experience
a lot of the same things,
which means we experienced
a lot of the same things.
- I know they're from Poland.
- I know very little, probably nothing...
- Anymore than that.
- About that history.
- I asked my grandfather.
- No one ever talked about it.
- He doesn't know.
The one we share is the one thing
we all know nothing about.
- It's very sad.
- So, what is it that makes us cousins?
- We're cousins because we were born that way,
because they made the word cousins
to represent what we are.
That's all.
- I feel that somewhere there's a bond.
I can't identify it.
I can't really give a name to it,
but there's something that we share
that I don't share with a stranger.
- I would guess just an
emotionally or moral support,
just knowing that there's someone else out there.
- Being related to me?
I would certainly give you more consideration
than I would give to strangers.
- If a cousin asked me to do something,
I'll be glad to do it,
and that's why I'm sitting here.
- So, at what point could you and I
consider ourselves family?
- Probably when one of us
pisses the other one off
and we accept it.
That's what makes family in my household.
- Yeah, by act or birth
we are related.
We have nothin' to do with each other.
Nothing.
What makes family is the fact that you
know people that you are close to them,
you share their victories and defeats,
their ups and their downs.
In former years,
your uncle lived two blocks away,
a subway ride seemed like thousands of miles.
You don't know if they're comin' or goin'.
You don't know.
They're nothing.
The element of distance has made us strangers.
The element of distance has make us strangers.
- I would not know you if you were not my cousin.
- So, you're content just to see
your immediate family at
weddings or funerals basically?
- At the moment, I would say yes.
But, I do have a senior uncle recognition
of what my responsibilities are.
Be friendly with them, be cordial with them,
be on good basis with them.
That's all.
That's called tough shit.
- That's a Berliner trait
if that's the way he can say it.
That's the only way he can say it.
But, he's a Berliner.
He doesn't extend himself.
- You know, there is some genealogists
who say that no human being on Earth
can be any further related than 50th cousin.
And that most of us are a lot closer than that.
That the family trees of each of us
merge into a kind of broad human family tree
when you go back about 50 generations.
- If you're tryin' to convince me
that the whole world is cousins,
I don't believe it.
- If you double the number of ancestors
for each generation back in time,
by the time you get to 30 generations,
the number of ancestors that
you would theoretically have
would be in the trillions.
But, there were never trillions of people alive.
- Ugh, what a bore.
- It's because when you go back in history...
- It's a bore.
- Cousins were marrying
cousins much more commonly than people realize.
- You think I'm like I was a nuclear scientist.
I'm not.
What's that gotta do with my biography?
- Didn't you bring me up
to be open-minded and curious about things?
- Alan, don't make me a brother or a cousin
or whatever to a black, a Japanese
a Hindustan or Indian, I'm not.
- But don't you see the social
and political implications?
- I'd be willing to bet that more people
will agree with me than with you.
If I were to walk up to somebody on the bus,
and say, "You know, we're related,"
they'd call the policeman.
They'd have me arrested.
- Can't you just share my fascination?
- The answer's no, zero, no.
Next question.
- I didn't find their graves.
- I told you so.
I told you you're wasting your time.
I told you.
- I know they're buried there somewhere.
- I don't care.
- I couldn't find them.
- I don't care.
- I care.
- Why?
- Because that's as close as I'll ever get
to my great-grandparents.
- I'm sorry Alan.
I'm deeply and truly sorry
that I cannot work up the enthusiasm.
- Look what the Jewish cemeteries have become.
There are many Jewish cemeteries
in Eastern Europe just like this.
- Alan, people live, people die,
and they're buried.
What the hell are we tryin' to prove with this?
- I can't make you feel...
- No.
- Emotional about this.
- Absolutely not.
Absolutely nothing.
- There was one tombstone
that was standing all alone by itself,
and I kinda chose that one symbolically
as that or your grandparents.
- Hooray for you.
- I'm wearing thin.
- Just wait one...
- I'm ready to quit right now.
- Just relax for a second.
Have you ever given any thought to any
of our unknown relatives
who died in the Holocaust?
- Not on a personal level,
or not on a kinship level.
- Your father had brothers and sisters
who never came to this country,
and they had families who almost certainly
died in the Holocaust.
- I don't know this.
- You know, you're telling...
- I'm telling you.
It's a certainty.
- I sympathize with them.
Beyond that, no.
I know it as a matter of religious persecution
of the Jews of whom I am one.
And there but for the grace of God go I.
You cannot bring new subjects like that
to me now 'cause I'm not interested.
- I'm talking about our family.
- It's too late in the game to change me.
Forget it.
You're talkin' to a senior citizen
for whom life is now in its sunset.
- You could live for another five, 10, 15 years.
- I don't think so.
At my stage of the game, 10 years,
you could be an old decrepit man.
I don't wanna reach that stage
where my son or daughter has
to put me in and out of bed or a nurse has
to bring me out of bed.
I'd rather die.
- So, what do you think
is the healthiest attitude towards death?
- To what?
- Towards death.
What's the healthiest attitude?
- The healthiest attitude towards sex is...
- Death.
- Death rather.
The healthiest attitude towards death,
there was an old saying of my mother's,
may she rest in peace.
Translated into English it said,
"When you remind yourself of death,
"you become less certain of living."
Alan, I am your father,
and the day will come when
I will run out of time.
Nobody lives forever.
- Well, let's see how he looks at things
when a grandchild arrives.
Perhaps that will brighten up his life a bit.
- Jade is like a burst of sunshine
in what would usually be
a very cloudy day for him.
If for nothing else, Jade gives Daddy reason
to keep going.
- Being a grandfather has not changed my life
except it has given me some real enjoyment.
I just enjoy being around her.
She's just a, how you say?
Melt.
I'm guilty, I love her.
You have to be a grandfather
to understand what I'm talkin' about.
- You know, Jade is to you
as you are to Solomon Isaac.
- But there's a difference.
I know Jade and Jade knows me.
I don't know Solomon Isaac.
I never knew him and he never knew me,
and we'll never know each other.
- But someone could say the same thing
about you one day.
- So what do you want me to do?
Why in the hell is this so important?
- Outside of Salt Lake City in Utah,
there's a nuclear bomb-proof vault,
deep inside a granite mountain.
And inside that vault are microfilm records
for more than two billion people
who've lived and died over the last 500 years.
It's the largest collection
of geneological material
in the world.
- Means nothing to me.
You're making one mistake.
You're tryin' to put your head on my shoulders
and it won't work.
There's an old saying, "You can't teach
"an old dog new tricks."
And I'm that old dog.
- One day, when you pass away,
all of your records, your birth certificate,
your marriage certificate,
your death certificate,
your army records, your social security records.
All of those and more will be microfilmed
and stored inside the Granite Mountain Vault.
- Proves what?
- Means what?
- You're gonna become
part of the permanent archival
cemetery of the human race
'cause in a way, that's what it is.
- They are papers with physical statistics,
that's it.
- They can also be precious family documents.
- Simply because you say it,
doesn't make it precious.
- They allowed me to learn at least a little bit
about your grandparents, my great-grandparents.
And someday, some of your descendents
might wanna learn something
about you through them.
- Look, they may or may not,
that's their business.
- Doesn't it matter to you how you're remembered?
- I have never, never given
any consideration to what people
will think of me after I'm gone.
When I'm six feet under, what the hell do I care?
I want to be remembered like we're talking now,
a man who has all his marbles.
And when you think back and say,
"Hey, my father was, he wasn't so bad after all."
- You know, I've always felt
that you're never sharper, never more alert,
in many ways, never more alive
than when we have these conversations.
It's as if they're kind of
mental exercise for you.
- Bullshit.
There's no other expression.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- You don't think it's an expression of love
from me to you that I'm doing this?
- No.
- You don't see it at all like that?
- No.
- I think what you're doing is great
because it keeps him going.
I think your father's a type
of person who can take it
because to a certain extent,
that's his personality too.
- Sometimes, I think, when you and your father
get together it's a meeting
of the irresistible force
versus the immovable object.
And you are the irresistible force,
and he is the immovable object.
- He'll never be the person
that you wanted him to be.
And he might've let you down in ways
that he doesn't even begin to understand.
But, I suppose just final acceptance
for the last years of his life
will help you when he's not here.
- Whoa, we're not done yet.
- We're not finished yet?
- No.
- Ah, would ya Alan,
for Christ sake.
What now?
♫ Happy Birthday to you
♫ Happy Birthday to you
♫ Happy Birthday dear Daddy
♫ Happy Birthday to you ♫
- Thank you.
I always felt, and I've said
this to Lynn more than once,
that with your intelligence, with your brains,
you could've been an accountant.
You could've been a lawyer.
You could've been an engineer.
You could've been any one of the professions.
You chose this?
In my opinion, you are absolutely
wasting your God-given talents.
This is nothing.
You make this picture, you make
some other commie picture next year.
In two or three years, and it's run its course,
and then where you'll be?
What have you built?
What have you built?
I am your father,
and I am telling you what I honestly
believe to be the truth.
And for your own benefit,
whether you wanna hear or not.
- But I show my films all over the world.
- That's nonsense.
Let me tell you something.
I've been a working stiff all my life,
hard worker.
Never asked anybody for anything.
My son's a liberal who all he knows
is you get something for nothing.
- How do I get something for nothing?
- You're looking for handouts.
- What are you talking about?
- You're lookin' for handouts.
To me, a grant is a handout.
I don't care how you use it, how you say it.
- Do you know how hard it is
to get the grants and the fellowships...
- Alan, I don't give a damn
what they're hard to get.
The fact of the matter is,
you don't have a job.
You don't have a business.
You're working on handouts.
I'm convinced that you're doin' the wrong thing.
- Do you have anything else to say
before we stop?
- I think I've said enough.
- Make a wish Dad.
who went to an artist,
and said, "I wanna have a picture made."
The artist turned to him and said,
"Look, there are two kinds of pictures.
"There's a portrait and a landscape."
He said, "Well, which is cheaper?"
The artist said, "The landscape."
He said, "Well, can you make a landscape of me?"
Testing one, two, three.
Testing one, two, three.
How long do you think this is gonna take, Alan?
'Bout and hour.
Tell me about this picture?
It looks like you're about to sing,
It looks like you're about to sing
or give a speech somewhere.
No, that's not so, I'm just posing.
For whom, for what?
I'm just posing for the picture to be taken.
There's no story behind the image?
Well, you want me to make up stories?
Alan, before we go any further,
let me tell you something.
I'm just an ordinary guy
who's led an ordinary life.
I was in the army.
I got married.
I raised a family, worked hard,
had my own business.
That's all, nothing to make a picture about.
Someone in the audience is watching right now
and saying, "Why am I here watching this film
"about this guy?"
I would ask too, 'cause I don't know
what the heck they're doin' there.
I'm being honest with you.
You should be honored.
I'm not.
Your life not only can be...
My life is nothing.
My life is no different from I don't know
how many billions of people.
Who the hell would care about Oscar Berliner?
Who the hell am I?
You know, it's ridiculous.
Everyone has a life
that has something special about it.
No.
Your life has nothing special?
- No.
- Nothing?
- Look...
- How could you be
- so convinced about that?
- We all,
you're tryin' to make something of nothing.
You're my father.
I have to do it.
I need to do it.
You don't have to do it.
I have to do it.
Alan, you're gonna do what you wanna do
whether I want you do it
or don't want you to do it.
I'll tell you, you're wasting your time.
Oh, shit.
Oh fuck, all right.
What's the matter?
Nothing.
What happens now?
I just wanna be open and honest
right up front.
But I wanna know everything there is to know
about you and our family.
If it gives you satisfaction, be my guest.
Where are you from?
I'm from America, born and raised in America.
What else do you wanna know?
No, you're the child of immigrants.
Do you know how many children
of immigrants there are?
That's exactly right and...
A jillion.
That's right, and each one has a story,
and they wanna know your story.
Ah, OK are you commit to that?
I'm not.
All I know is that my father came from Poland.
My mother came from Russia.
Period, that's it.
Where in Poland?
Who the hell knows.
My father never told me.
You never asked.
Course not.
Who would know?
There's nobody left but me,
so who the hell would know?
Well, maybe I'll ask all the first cousins.
Maybe they'll know.
I know little, they know even less.
Russia.
Do you know where in Russia?
No.
I was always told Russia and Poland.
And if they said, "Where in Russia and Poland?"
I have no idea.
- No, I don't have the faintest idea
of any details.
- Basically, Russia or Poland,
the other side.
- I would say Russia.
Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot
of information in that regard.
- Where is your mother's family from?
- Germany.
- OK, and they say, "Where in Germany?"
- I guess Berlin.
- It's almost as if the history, for me,
began here in the United States
rather than in Europe.
- I just never asked.
- I never asked, they never said.
- I think I may have known at some point,
but it was not terrible important to me.
- I don't know any of that history.
- You'd like to know it though?
- It would be interesting.
I don't know how much of an effort
I would expend to know it.
Maybe you'll discover it for us.
- May I ask you a question now?
- Sure.
- Where'd you get all these papers from?
- I just came back from
the Family History Library
in Salt Lake City, Utah.
I found social security
records and census records,
marriage certificates, birth certificates,
maps, immigration papers.
This is a certificate of naturalization
which is a document that your father filled out
when he became a citizen of this country.
And it shows that your father was born
in 1877 in a town called Rajgrod.
And at the time, Rajgrod was in Russia,
but now it's in Poland.
- Whether they came from this town or that town
is terrible unimportant.
- This is where Rajgrod is on the map.
- Let me tell you something.
- I just wanna show you where
- it is on the map of Poland.
- Can I tell you?
- About 45 miles northwest of Bialystok,
northeast of Warsaw.
- OK, I see it now, but this could be anywhere.
Big fuckin' deal.
- This is a drawing of what the town
of Rajgrod looked liked in 1913.
- What does it matter?
- Your ancestors walked on that block.
- Really, what does it matter?
- By the way, I was looking
through some family documents in Russian.
This is how you write Berliner in Russian.
Did you ever see that before?
- Course not.
- That says Berliner.
Solomon Isacc Berliner, your grandfather.
What do you think about the way he looks?
- He's like an old Jew.
He looks like another Jew with a yamaka.
What else can I tell you?
Well, I have no emotional response.
It means nothing to me.
- That's your grandfather.
- You want the truth from me
or you don't want the truth?
- I want the truth.
- The truth is I don't care.
It doesn't interest me.
I don't know this man.
I never saw him.
I heard one thing about him
that he was a Hebrew teacher.
What they called in Hebrew a melamed.
That's all I know about him.
- This is a photograph of your grandmother,
your father's mother.
Her name was Rachel Sutker.
- I don't know what is it
- that you want me to do?
- These are
your ancestors.
- What do you want me to tell you?
Oh, I love you.
I don't give a shit about them.
They could be taken out of a storybook.
I don't know them.
- I'm introducing you to them.
- They're nobody.
- I'm introducing you to them.
I'm thinking of going to Poland.
- For what?
- To film in the cemeteries where they're buried.
- So what is that gonna prove?
What are you gonna do?
Take my word, but you won't find it.
It's too long already.
Too many years have passed.
- These people are part of the trunk
of our family tree.
- I don't care about the family tree.
- The more you say you're not interested,
the more I wanna make you change your mind.
- You have one bad habit,
and you'd best get over it.
You think that if something's important to you,
it's gotta be important to somebody else.
But, everybody has his own sense of values.
It's important to you, great,
not important to me.
I don't care about it.
And let me tell you this, if you intend
to make this a focal point of the motion picture,
you're building up a flop.
A guaranteed flop because you're talking
about people nobody knows,
nobody knew, and nobody cares about.
- Let me read you this letter.
It's from your grandfather to your father.
- Read it, go 'head.
Who cares?
- "My dear Benjamin,
"when you were two years old,
"you already exhibited signs
"of heightened ability to learn."
- Ugh.
- "And as you are my first-born son,
"before you saw even a single Hebrew letter,
"I had already taught you many good
"and exalting teachings by heart.
"By the time you were six years old,
"you'd excelled to be the finest
"in the city amongst those your age.
"That is when hope danced in front of me
"and showed me my son exalted above others
"as an important man.
"When you reached the age of 12,
"I put you in the Yeshiva.
"And after six months, you returned
"with a tulement under your arm,
"blooming with many learned teachings
"that beautifully flowed from your lips.
"But as you got older, times changed.
"For I thought,
after I give you away as a husband,
"your wife will give birth to children
"and they will remain mired
in poverty as I am today.
"Why should you spend any time here
"in Poland for nothing and without hope?
"Therefore I said, you should try
"to find fortune and success far away.
"On the day of our parting,
"I wanted to say many things to you,
"but the tears of my wounded heart
"overflowed all of their banks,
"and I was not able to open my mouth.
"Because you, son of mine who had been destined
"to be a great rabbi,
"was now about to seek his faith in America."
You don't get goosebumps when you read this?
- No.
- It doesn't make you proud of your father?
- No.
- Not at all?
- No.
- You know, your father was one
of almost two million Jews,
Eastern European Jews,
who came to this country between 1880 and 1920.
- So?
So, he was one of two million, big deal.
He came to America because they were told
the streets were paved with gold.
- Were they paved with gold for your father?
- No, hardly.
I was gonna say,
my father was a typical immigrant.
A typical immigrant who was a success.
What did he become?
A tailor?
- Your grandfather had hope
that your father would've succeeded here,
and then been able to bring all of the family
from Poland to this country.
So in effect, your father very
much disappointed his father.
- It's not the first time or the last time
that a son ever disappointed his father.
- Your father never saw his family again?
- Never.
But, I will tell you this about my father.
My father was a brain.
My father was an intelligent man.
Not always does intelligence go
with a complete personality.
- Benjamin Berliner was a very stubborn,
tough, strong,
domineering individual.
- I think he scared me a little bit.
When one got to Grandma's house,
and one went into the
bedroom, kissed Grandpa hello,
and usually didn't see him again
until one was leaving and went
into the bedroom and kissed him goodbye.
- His father was a very unfriendly man.
I don't think I have ever said more
than two words to him
when I was first introduced to the family.
He was a loner.
He always had a long face.
I don't think he ever smiled.
- I don't think any cousin will ever tell you
that Benjamin Berliner picked
them up and hugged them
or said that he loved them.
Any cousin.
I would venture to say,
he never did it with his children.
That's a very cold man.
- We are a different breed,
say from your mother's family
with all the hugging and
kissing and all that crap.
The Berliner's are not that way.
- I remember my Aunt Bea when I would
come to Florida to see her.
I would come bouncing out of the taxi,
you know, ready for a big hug.
And she would say to me with her arms like this,
"I'm so glad to see you."
And that was the end of it.
Finished, no hug, no kiss.
You know, and then when I would leave,
I would get his little peck on the cheek.
- His mother, on the contrary,
was the life of the family,
and she made everything good.
She made everything happy.
- She was a nice little old lady.
- She used to sit in one particular chair.
She had terribly bowed legs.
- This little woman, you would have
to understand what a giant she was.
11 children, seven boys and four girls.
- I was number 10 of 11.
I never for one minute doubted
my mother's love and affection,
care and concern for me.
I think my love for you and Lynn.
Where'd that come from, my father?
My father had nothing to do with us
when I was a kid.
It was my mother.
The love that I have, I'm able to express,
for my children, to my children,
I think I inherited from my mother.
- There were 13 live births,
but only 11 children lived to adulthood.
- Do you know what they died of?
You know any of the circumstances?
- No, I don't.
- Why don't you ask your father?
- Tell me...
- I don't wanna talk about it.
- Tell me why you don't wanna talk about it?
- I want on the next question, and that's it.
That's it or the interview...
- Something...
- The interview's gonna
- be over soon.
- Why you doin' this?
- I'm telling you...
- Why?
- I'm telling you!
- Why?
- It proves nothing and it means nothing.
You're talking about something
I know nothing about.
I don't remember witnessing or nothing.
- Don't push me.
- All right, I'm pushing you.
- Let it go.
- By the way, I was just curious,
what's your parents wedding anniversary?
- Never knew it.
- They were married more than 50 years.
- I never knew it!
- You never went to a wedding anniversary party
- of your own parents?
- You can't jog
my memory because I never knew it.
- How 'bout your birthday?
What's your date of birth?
- November 1st.
- What year?
- 1919.
- Well, get ready for this,
the 1920 census says quite precisely
that in 1920,
you were two and seven twelfths years old.
- So, what do you want me to do?
- You might actually be older
than you think you are.
- Well, I'd rather be younger.
And actually, at this point in my life,
it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
- Can you remember your mother's birthday?
- I can't remember 'cause I never knew it.
- I know my mother's birthday.
- Alan, what does that prove?
It proves nothing.
- How 'bout your father's birthday?
- I have no idea.
- Never knew?
- Never knew.
We never talked about birthdays.
We never celebrated birthdays.
They came and they went and
nobody paid attention to it.
We were in the throws of a depression,
and things were tight and tough.
In all my years, I can't remember once,
except maybe for my bar mitzvah.
I don't remember any birthdays at all.
What are we gonna do now?
- I wanna look at some of the army pictures.
- I was servin' the army, big deal.
11 million men served in the army.
You could make me out a big hero,
maybe I won the war by myself.
I came to Japan in a matter of days
after the dropping of the atom bomb.
And all the time I was in
Japan for almost a year,
I was never into a Jap home.
- It's Japanese.
Don't say Jap.
- Ah, we called 'em any,
you see it's hard for me to discuss it
with you because I was a soldier
with the conquering army and these were the fuckin' enemy.
And you're tellin' me that
they're treated with kid gloves.
You don't ever think of them
as the perpetrators of Pearl Harbor.
How those son of a bitches did
to us at Pearl Harbor while they were
talking peace in Washington.
You never think about that.
- We punished them for that terribly.
- I'm just sayin'...
- And I wanna tell
you something, you are not now, not ever,
get me to approach Japanese the way you do.
- You were champions.
It's a championship team.
- This group was part of my life.
I can relate to them.
Forgotten a lot of their names.
But, I can relate to them.
- You can relate to your army buddies
more than you can relate
to your own grandparents?
- Yes.
Absolutely, no question about it.
I lived with these guys seven days a week,
and we were training to kill or be killed.
I think until the day I die,
I'll never forget about 'em.
- You've said to me that war years
were the best years of your life.
- No question about it.
I had a special deal with the army,
because I had a high IQ,
I was able to get out of the infantry.
- How did you know you had a high IQ?
- I was told.
- What was your IQ?
- 130, 140.
- That's almost genius status.
- I'm no genius.
I always thought of myself
as being relatively smart,
but brilliant, no.
Yeah, these are the days
when I was lookin' good.
- You kinda look like you're on top
of the world in these pictures a little.
- Oh yeah.
Hey, I owned the world.
I was a handsome young man.
- Looks like you had a pretty active social life.
- Oh yeah, and all the women I wanted, all.
- Were you ever serious with her?
- No, I had a good time with her,
but I never serious with her.
- I mean, it's clear that you're having
a romantic relationship with her.
- No question about it.
- Yes or no,
did you ever spend the night with her?
- The answer is no.
Can you move onto something.
Can't we talk baseball?
- I just want the truth.
- Forget about the truth.
- Why?
- Alan, get off that subject would ya?
I don't wanna talk about it.
I'm your father, forget about it.
What am I, a buddy of yours, a braggart?
I'm your father.
It's an area of respect.
- If you could imagine, imagine it, fine.
If not, forget about it.
- I was hoping I'd have a chance
to hear you sing a little bit.
- I'm not much of a singer.
- Well, try anyway.
♫ Gonna take a sentimental journey
♫ Gonna set my heart at ease
♫ Gonna make a sentimental journey
♫ To renew old memories ♫
I went out with a lot of girls,
and they all left me with
something to be desired.
- I met your mother.
- I was foreign.
- She was an Egyptian.
- I was Sephardic.
- She was young.
- I spoke many languages.
- She was very pretty.
- I was involved in the theater.
- She was very entertaining,
not at all like these ones I'm talking about.
- I was different beyond
his realm of comprehension, Alan.
- She was so different.
It was not even apples and oranges,
'cause apples and oranges are fruit.
- One of the first things he told me
when I met him was never mention
that I had been in the French theater.
The family would not appreciate it.
- I don't know why his tastes ran
for exotic at that moment
because I don't think he ever liked,
you know, exotic things.
That was out of character for Mr. Berliner.
- What a heck of an ego trip
that had to have been, you know, for him.
But he had charm, Alan.
There was something about him
that was, I would think to a lot of
ladies, irresistible.
- He was handsome.
He treated me very nicely.
He was older than I was.
I felt he was wiser.
He was kind and gentle and sweet.
He was a go-getter.
He was an entrepreneur.
- I was in the ladies' sportswear business,
pants, skirts, etc.
I did most of my best work as a salesman.
Selling was my forte.
- He was someone who could
sell virtually anything to virtually anybody.
I mean, he was that personable.
- At one time, I owned a factory in Chinatown.
I think about 40 Chinese women there.
When I came to them and I told 'em
that I was selling the factory, they cried.
And then, as a going away gift,
they gave me big Buddha with two matching vases.
And I've taken it wherever I've gone,
and I have it here too.
- So, you've always had some sense
of yourself as being special in that way?
- My being fair and square with them,
to me was not anything special.
It was normal.
- So, tell me more?
- Oscar Berliner's name was synonymous
with trustworthiness.
- I came from a very strict Sephardic background
with a very strict father who wouldn't let me
go away on weekends.
Wouldn't let me date unless
he interviewed the people.
- She married me to get
out of her father's house.
- That's the only reason?
- That's the only reason.
- You don't think she loved you?
- I mean, I had some feelings for him.
I didn't do that completely
to get out of the house.
I just felt that love would grow.
- Did you love her?
- How the hell do I know?
You talk about when you were young and stupid,
and you didn't care.
You did what you did, that's all.
- And what was it?
- I was ready to get married.
- We crossed paths in a
head-on collision I guess.
He was ready to get married,
and I was ready to leave my house.
- This marriage was not made in heaven.
Do you think every marriage is made
out of a big love affair?
Not so, not so at all.
- Mazeltov.
♫ It's not a pale room that excites me
♫ That thrills and delights me, oh no
♫ It's just the nearness of you
♫ It's just the nearness of you ♫
- He married the wrong woman.
That was the start of it all.
They were a beautiful looking couple.
I have pictures.
They were outstanding together,
but end of sentence, end of paragraph,
end of story.
- So, I married her.
Did I do right, did I do wisely?
I can't give you the answer.
- What's your answer?
- Your question should be would I do it again?
No.
It didn't take me very long
to realize it was a mistake.
And I had second thoughts about it,
and I wish I hadn't done it.
- Did you know pretty early on in the marriage
that it was not gonna work out?
- Yes, Alan.
- How early?
- After a few years.
- Then why did you have two children together?
- You're tryin' to bring logic
to an emotional situation and it doesn't work.
Sometimes you have children
and it helps cement the marriage, sometimes.
- He was a wonderful father,
really a great father, especially with you Alan.
He would read to you.
He would feed you.
He would change you.
He adored you.
- Alan, all these are tying a lot
of responsibilities of a father to his son.
I showed you love and affection outwardly.
A lot different from how I was brought
up, far different.
- I'm much closer to you
than you were to your father.
- No question about it.
- Unbelievably so.
First of all, I wouldn't dare.
I wouldn't dare talk,
even ask my father these questions.
I don't recall ever sittin' down with my father,
having a man-to-man talk, never.
- What do you see of yourself in me?
- I see brains.
I see smartness.
And the way your personality is,
is a lot my mine too.
What do you think you inherited from me?
- Well, we both have strong wills.
I'm meticulous like you.
- I think you're a perfectionist.
- I think we have a similar sense of humor.
- I think so too.
- Sometimes I think that our faces
have the same shape.
Also, our body types are similar.
What also worries me a little bit.
- Hmm?
- What also worries me a little bit
is that I like to spend time
alone by myself like you do.
- I don't think there's much doubt
that you're my son.
- Do you know how many genes we share?
- Hmm?
- Do you know how many genes we share?
Do you know that I have half of your genes
and have of Regina's genes?
- I don't know.
I'm not a doc, I'm not a biologist.
- But, you know basics?
- I just don't know.
Just because you understand,
don't mean I understand.
I just don't know.
And how do I even know what you're talking about?
- I inherited half of my
genes from you and Regina,
a quarter of my genes from each of your parents,
and 1/8 of my genes from
each of your grandparents.
- You're boring me.
Look at that, you're boring the shit out of me.
I don't talking about him.
Let's talk about something else.
I don't know where we're going with this.
- What do you think I inherit from you?
- I've given you a little
bit of artistry I think.
A good outlook on life,
poise,
intelligence,
a nice way of dealing with people.
I think you're very good with people,
and that's very important, very important.
I see some of my personality in Lynn.
- What aspects?
- She's happy.
She's got an up personality.
She smiles readily.
That's not a Berliner trait to smile readily.
- I'm paranoid like Father.
I'm hard-working like him.
I'm organized like him.
We're both picky slash peculiar eaters.
♫ I love you just the way you are ♫
He was always there for me
when I was growing up.
And it's the least that I could give back to him
to just be the type of daughter
that I look out for him.
I look out for him.
It's innate, I just do it.
I do it with my mother too.
I do it with my brother too.
I do it with you too.
- So, what do you think's been
your most important
contribution to your children?
- As a role model.
- A role model for what?
- For a fine, upstanding citizen,
to do good, to do right
and accept responsibility.
- Why did you take all
of those eight millimeter home movies?
Why did you take all the
eight millimeter home movies
of our family?
Why did you take all the
eight millimeter home movies
of our family?
- I can't hear you.
- Home movies!
Why did you take the home movies?
Home movies!
You took eight millimeter home movies
of our family.
- What about it?
- Why did you take them?
- What'd I save them?
- Take them!
Why did you shoot them?
What are you doing?
- Turning the volume up.
- How do you do that?
- I got a gadget in here.
See the little button here?
Turn it towards the front of my face, it goes up.
Goes down.
- How did you lose your hearing?
- You're talkin' to a man
who's had brain surgery twice.
My major loss was a loss of hearing
in my right ear,
which today is still totally deaf.
The brain tumor was sitting
on the auditory nerve,
and that was it.
Luckily for me, it was benign.
My left ear is almost 80% deaf
which I believe is hereditarian.
Unless I can read your lips,
I can't make you out.
- So, if I were to talk now,
and move my lips but not speak.
- Yeah, I could understand
what you're saying, yes.
- How?
- By your lip movement.
I forgot the question.
You gotta talk a little louder Alan.
- I was asking you about the home movies.
I don't wanna see these pictures.
They bring back sour memories.
I don't wanna look at them.
I got over them.
I'm over them.
- If you're over them then you...
- Look at 'em all you want,
but leave me alone.
- I wanna ask you about them.
- No, you're not gonna ask me about 'em.
I'm not gonna answer you.
You keep on hounding me and pounding me.
- But I don't understand what the problem is.
- That shows your lack of understanding.
That shows your lack of sympathy,
your lack of empathy.
That shows your lack of feeling what this means.
- A son is allowed to ask his father.
- When the fuck did I consent to this?
- Look, come on, don't do that.
- These fuckin' things.
Leave me alone.
- Tell me what the problem is.
- Just tell me why...
- Leave me alone!
I don't have to tell you anything.
What are you tryin' to get out of me?
- I've been tryin' to make sense
of the divorce all my life.
This is my chance to talk to you.
- It's nobody's business.
- What?
- What went on between your mother and myself.
It's nobody's business.
These are things that should be discussed
between you and me.
But you brought it up, I'll tell you this.
The single bar to that marriage
was the age factor.
The difference in the ages.
- How much older are you than she is?
- Who the hell knows.
- 12 or 13 years?
- Something like that.
And it becomes more pronounced as you grow older.
- More than that,
there was a cultural difference,
a complete background difference.
And that sort of doomed the marriage also.
I felt I was sublimating my life, so to speak,
and I joined some theater groups.
And I was in many plays and many musicals.
- And as the rehearsals progressed,
they become more and more to the point
where they were every night in the week.
- But I always had dinner on the table.
I always bathed the children.
It was just a question of
getting out after dinner,
and doing my thing which was the theater.
- What that does to a marriage
is you think I'm alone every night.
The kids go to sleep.
They had to go to school the next day.
- Did you resent her for all that?
- It wasn't a matter of resenting.
I was lonely.
- As lonely as you were
during all the time that she was performing,
you still would've wanted to
keep the marriage together?
- Absolutely, I thought that was important
to my children to have a complete home life.
I come from a background, when you get married,
you stay married.
You make the best of what you have,
and do the best you can,
and that's what I was doing.
- That was put to you, Alan, one night.
He shook you up a little and
put you against the wall,
and said, "Would you rather have mother happy,
away from us or unhappy and with us?"
I can still see your face in front of me,
shaking and saying, "Unhappy and with us."
I could understand Alan.
I could understand.
- Living in a house with unhappy parents,
fighting and not together as a partnership
was the worst time of my life.
- If I tell you the difficulties
and the heartaches and the hardships,
and the heartbreaks, and the sleepless nights.
- It hurt me that I had to do it,
but I waited 17 years.
I just had to get out of the marriage.
- Was that the biggest
disappointment of your life,
the breakup of your marriage?
- I would have to say yes.
- It was also the most
traumatic event in my life.
- I believe that.
And Alan, I'll tell you something else.
I am not fooled.
In your own tenacious way,
you're getting what you want.
You're making me talk and talk,
and eventually, you're getting what you want.
- Maybe it's that I make
you face up to some things.
- Whatever it is, you're final result is
I'm here like I am right now,
looking to go into a nursing home because of her.
- You think so?
- Well, because if I had a wife
I wouldn't have to think of it.
I would have a wife to take care of me.
- You could've remarried.
- Yeah, once burned, twice shy.
- People say that time heals.
- Not always.
- I told him "time heals".
- What did he say?
- Not always.
- In most cases, time is the only healer.
So, maybe he's not so ordinary,
'cause an ordinary average
person should be healed by time.
- I guess he must have loved me a lot,
or else pride Alan.
The fact that he was rejected.
That is a terrible thing between two people.
- Well, your mother would like to believe that.
I don't believe that.
I don't care who you talk to,
whether it be a man or woman,
nobody gets out of those
kind of situations unscathed.
- It's amazing that we're OK.
- You think we're OK?
- I think we're OK.
I think that we'll have to
always work on being OK,
but I think that we're OK.
And I think it's made a relationship
between the two of us
stronger than most siblings.
You've never let me down when I've needed you.
And I would think that you know,
I would never let you down.
Having Oscar as our father
unites us in a way that we both just know.
I don't have to speak it.
You don't have to speak it.
In fact, when we exchange stories about him,
on outside I might say.
- Why didn't he remarry?
- We know.
- Good lookin' man.
- We have an understanding.
- He never dated even.
- Why?
- I think that your father to this day
still is either in love or still has
a lot of feelings for your mother.
- You know, it's more than 25 years later?
- Doesn't matter.
- No, I don't think that my father's
still in love with my mother.
Nah.
He's not in love with anything.
He'd rather be by himself.
You can't get hurt that way.
- You don't really have any friends.
I'm being blunt.
You don't have any friends.
- I'm not gonna get into it.
I don't wanna start feeling sorry for myself.
- How does it turn out
that you don't have any friends?
- I am now a product
of what my life has done to me.
I've had some hard knocks.
I've had some hard knocks in my life.
- He is the last of 11.
That's frightening.
He's also had a couple of major operations.
That scares him every day.
The man is afraid.
- I never stop thinking
about your being alone everyday.
- Don't go back to that.
- Never.
- I don't wanna go back to that.
- It hurts me that you've been sad for so long.
- It's not that I choose to be alone,
I have to be alone.
I can't cope.
When you're head hurts you,
when you feel lightheaded all the time,
when you can't walk.
When making conversation's a problem.
When being present is a problem.
Who the hell do you look for except to be alone,
and be left alone?
And to get through the day.
You don't, you don't look for anything.
You look to get by that day, one day at a time.
I wake up at 7:30,
then I go into the kitchen and I have my juice.
Then I have my toast and my hot water
with milk, my cereal.
Then, I make the bed.
I make my bed every morning,
and I go to shave.
And then, I go back and I finish dressing.
I go down, I buy the paper.
I do my shopping, and I come back.
Then it takes time to read the paper.
Then, it's about time for lunch.
All this time, I haven't spoken to a soul
except if you call or Lynn calls.
Usually about 3:00, I go down again,
and I'll talk to whoever's on duty.
Maybe a tenant or two.
- You go down to talk with them?
- Sure.
- On purpose?
- Yeah, because the loneliness is cumulative.
I get to the point where half these clients
I'd like to talk to.
You don't wanna not talk to anybody.
I'll forget the English language.
And I come back and I read the
paper, like I mean it.
If you're occupied doing something,
whether it be reading or writing or watching,
time doesn't drag that slowly.
But, if you're doing nothing,
just looking and thinking
and waiting for time to go by,
time drags very heavily.
Then about 5:00, 5:15, I go down to eat.
I can't go on this way going
to restaurants every night.
Going to restaurants by myself every night.
And then, I take a shower, watch television.
By 10:30, a quarter to 11, I'm in bed.
- Some people say that you never tried to change.
You could've done things to make things better.
- Coulda, woulda, shoulda.
Alan, if the rabbi's wife
had balls she'd been a rabbi.
You're talkin' water over the dam.
What's the good?
What's the use?
You're beating a dead horse.
Whatever it is, some people.
Who the hell are some people?
Now what do some people know?
- My father has tried.
My mother has tried.
Other members of the family have tried.
- He doesn't have a friend.
He's alone.
He lives in his head,
but I tell him all the time
that where it really counts,
he's the luckiest man in the world.
He's got two children that give a shit about him.
That really, really care about him.
- By the way, are you having fun so far?
- Yeah.
- You enjoying this?
- Yeah, I'm getting a little tired,
but that's OK.
- Let's talk about our
extended family a little bit.
You know, wherever I go, I often look
for Berliners in the telephone book.
- I've looked through the phone book.
- Do you feel a connection with them?
- N-O, no!
All these Berliners that you're talking about,
wherever they are, God bless them.
I don't care about them.
- Is that the phone?
- Yeah, well go ahead,
finish your point.
- I am not interested in any Berliners
that are not directly related to me,
and whom I have not had experience with.
- I had known some way or other
that there was another branch of the family
that we didn't know about.
Here you were,
calling up and telling me it was true.
- At this stage of my life,
I don't need 'em.
You want 'em, fine, you can have 'em.
Leave me out.
- How are we related?
- Your great-grandfather, Solomon Issac,
and my grandfather, Wolfe, were brothers.
- Wolfe had a child whose name was Ben, OK?
And Solomon had a child whose name
was, I'll get this, was Ben also.
- My mother's mother is
your grandfather's sister.
- Our great-grandfathers were brothers.
- My great-great-grandfather was the brother
of your great-grandfather.
- Ben on this side, he had a grand,
I'm his great-grandson.
And Ben, on the this side, is your grandfather.
So, we're one generation separated.
- Your father and my father were first cousins.
- Your grandmother and my grandfather
were brother and sister.
- That makes us third cousins, once removed.
- We're strangers.
We're related, but actually we are strangers.
- We're sort of relatives and sort of strangers.
- We're strange relatives.
- If I met you on the street,
I would have no idea who you were.
- Me and any random person might share
a whole lot of genes.
And you and I would share just
that little tiny bit more.
I guess that means something.
- We're strangers who
share a common history.
- The people that gave me my culture.
- We came from the same
thing with your background.
- Give you your culture.
- Our parents and grandparents
probably experience
a lot of the same things,
which means we experienced
a lot of the same things.
- I know they're from Poland.
- I know very little, probably nothing...
- Anymore than that.
- About that history.
- I asked my grandfather.
- No one ever talked about it.
- He doesn't know.
The one we share is the one thing
we all know nothing about.
- It's very sad.
- So, what is it that makes us cousins?
- We're cousins because we were born that way,
because they made the word cousins
to represent what we are.
That's all.
- I feel that somewhere there's a bond.
I can't identify it.
I can't really give a name to it,
but there's something that we share
that I don't share with a stranger.
- I would guess just an
emotionally or moral support,
just knowing that there's someone else out there.
- Being related to me?
I would certainly give you more consideration
than I would give to strangers.
- If a cousin asked me to do something,
I'll be glad to do it,
and that's why I'm sitting here.
- So, at what point could you and I
consider ourselves family?
- Probably when one of us
pisses the other one off
and we accept it.
That's what makes family in my household.
- Yeah, by act or birth
we are related.
We have nothin' to do with each other.
Nothing.
What makes family is the fact that you
know people that you are close to them,
you share their victories and defeats,
their ups and their downs.
In former years,
your uncle lived two blocks away,
a subway ride seemed like thousands of miles.
You don't know if they're comin' or goin'.
You don't know.
They're nothing.
The element of distance has made us strangers.
The element of distance has make us strangers.
- I would not know you if you were not my cousin.
- So, you're content just to see
your immediate family at
weddings or funerals basically?
- At the moment, I would say yes.
But, I do have a senior uncle recognition
of what my responsibilities are.
Be friendly with them, be cordial with them,
be on good basis with them.
That's all.
That's called tough shit.
- That's a Berliner trait
if that's the way he can say it.
That's the only way he can say it.
But, he's a Berliner.
He doesn't extend himself.
- You know, there is some genealogists
who say that no human being on Earth
can be any further related than 50th cousin.
And that most of us are a lot closer than that.
That the family trees of each of us
merge into a kind of broad human family tree
when you go back about 50 generations.
- If you're tryin' to convince me
that the whole world is cousins,
I don't believe it.
- If you double the number of ancestors
for each generation back in time,
by the time you get to 30 generations,
the number of ancestors that
you would theoretically have
would be in the trillions.
But, there were never trillions of people alive.
- Ugh, what a bore.
- It's because when you go back in history...
- It's a bore.
- Cousins were marrying
cousins much more commonly than people realize.
- You think I'm like I was a nuclear scientist.
I'm not.
What's that gotta do with my biography?
- Didn't you bring me up
to be open-minded and curious about things?
- Alan, don't make me a brother or a cousin
or whatever to a black, a Japanese
a Hindustan or Indian, I'm not.
- But don't you see the social
and political implications?
- I'd be willing to bet that more people
will agree with me than with you.
If I were to walk up to somebody on the bus,
and say, "You know, we're related,"
they'd call the policeman.
They'd have me arrested.
- Can't you just share my fascination?
- The answer's no, zero, no.
Next question.
- I didn't find their graves.
- I told you so.
I told you you're wasting your time.
I told you.
- I know they're buried there somewhere.
- I don't care.
- I couldn't find them.
- I don't care.
- I care.
- Why?
- Because that's as close as I'll ever get
to my great-grandparents.
- I'm sorry Alan.
I'm deeply and truly sorry
that I cannot work up the enthusiasm.
- Look what the Jewish cemeteries have become.
There are many Jewish cemeteries
in Eastern Europe just like this.
- Alan, people live, people die,
and they're buried.
What the hell are we tryin' to prove with this?
- I can't make you feel...
- No.
- Emotional about this.
- Absolutely not.
Absolutely nothing.
- There was one tombstone
that was standing all alone by itself,
and I kinda chose that one symbolically
as that or your grandparents.
- Hooray for you.
- I'm wearing thin.
- Just wait one...
- I'm ready to quit right now.
- Just relax for a second.
Have you ever given any thought to any
of our unknown relatives
who died in the Holocaust?
- Not on a personal level,
or not on a kinship level.
- Your father had brothers and sisters
who never came to this country,
and they had families who almost certainly
died in the Holocaust.
- I don't know this.
- You know, you're telling...
- I'm telling you.
It's a certainty.
- I sympathize with them.
Beyond that, no.
I know it as a matter of religious persecution
of the Jews of whom I am one.
And there but for the grace of God go I.
You cannot bring new subjects like that
to me now 'cause I'm not interested.
- I'm talking about our family.
- It's too late in the game to change me.
Forget it.
You're talkin' to a senior citizen
for whom life is now in its sunset.
- You could live for another five, 10, 15 years.
- I don't think so.
At my stage of the game, 10 years,
you could be an old decrepit man.
I don't wanna reach that stage
where my son or daughter has
to put me in and out of bed or a nurse has
to bring me out of bed.
I'd rather die.
- So, what do you think
is the healthiest attitude towards death?
- To what?
- Towards death.
What's the healthiest attitude?
- The healthiest attitude towards sex is...
- Death.
- Death rather.
The healthiest attitude towards death,
there was an old saying of my mother's,
may she rest in peace.
Translated into English it said,
"When you remind yourself of death,
"you become less certain of living."
Alan, I am your father,
and the day will come when
I will run out of time.
Nobody lives forever.
- Well, let's see how he looks at things
when a grandchild arrives.
Perhaps that will brighten up his life a bit.
- Jade is like a burst of sunshine
in what would usually be
a very cloudy day for him.
If for nothing else, Jade gives Daddy reason
to keep going.
- Being a grandfather has not changed my life
except it has given me some real enjoyment.
I just enjoy being around her.
She's just a, how you say?
Melt.
I'm guilty, I love her.
You have to be a grandfather
to understand what I'm talkin' about.
- You know, Jade is to you
as you are to Solomon Isaac.
- But there's a difference.
I know Jade and Jade knows me.
I don't know Solomon Isaac.
I never knew him and he never knew me,
and we'll never know each other.
- But someone could say the same thing
about you one day.
- So what do you want me to do?
Why in the hell is this so important?
- Outside of Salt Lake City in Utah,
there's a nuclear bomb-proof vault,
deep inside a granite mountain.
And inside that vault are microfilm records
for more than two billion people
who've lived and died over the last 500 years.
It's the largest collection
of geneological material
in the world.
- Means nothing to me.
You're making one mistake.
You're tryin' to put your head on my shoulders
and it won't work.
There's an old saying, "You can't teach
"an old dog new tricks."
And I'm that old dog.
- One day, when you pass away,
all of your records, your birth certificate,
your marriage certificate,
your death certificate,
your army records, your social security records.
All of those and more will be microfilmed
and stored inside the Granite Mountain Vault.
- Proves what?
- Means what?
- You're gonna become
part of the permanent archival
cemetery of the human race
'cause in a way, that's what it is.
- They are papers with physical statistics,
that's it.
- They can also be precious family documents.
- Simply because you say it,
doesn't make it precious.
- They allowed me to learn at least a little bit
about your grandparents, my great-grandparents.
And someday, some of your descendents
might wanna learn something
about you through them.
- Look, they may or may not,
that's their business.
- Doesn't it matter to you how you're remembered?
- I have never, never given
any consideration to what people
will think of me after I'm gone.
When I'm six feet under, what the hell do I care?
I want to be remembered like we're talking now,
a man who has all his marbles.
And when you think back and say,
"Hey, my father was, he wasn't so bad after all."
- You know, I've always felt
that you're never sharper, never more alert,
in many ways, never more alive
than when we have these conversations.
It's as if they're kind of
mental exercise for you.
- Bullshit.
There's no other expression.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- You don't think it's an expression of love
from me to you that I'm doing this?
- No.
- You don't see it at all like that?
- No.
- I think what you're doing is great
because it keeps him going.
I think your father's a type
of person who can take it
because to a certain extent,
that's his personality too.
- Sometimes, I think, when you and your father
get together it's a meeting
of the irresistible force
versus the immovable object.
And you are the irresistible force,
and he is the immovable object.
- He'll never be the person
that you wanted him to be.
And he might've let you down in ways
that he doesn't even begin to understand.
But, I suppose just final acceptance
for the last years of his life
will help you when he's not here.
- Whoa, we're not done yet.
- We're not finished yet?
- No.
- Ah, would ya Alan,
for Christ sake.
What now?
♫ Happy Birthday to you
♫ Happy Birthday to you
♫ Happy Birthday dear Daddy
♫ Happy Birthday to you ♫
- Thank you.
I always felt, and I've said
this to Lynn more than once,
that with your intelligence, with your brains,
you could've been an accountant.
You could've been a lawyer.
You could've been an engineer.
You could've been any one of the professions.
You chose this?
In my opinion, you are absolutely
wasting your God-given talents.
This is nothing.
You make this picture, you make
some other commie picture next year.
In two or three years, and it's run its course,
and then where you'll be?
What have you built?
What have you built?
I am your father,
and I am telling you what I honestly
believe to be the truth.
And for your own benefit,
whether you wanna hear or not.
- But I show my films all over the world.
- That's nonsense.
Let me tell you something.
I've been a working stiff all my life,
hard worker.
Never asked anybody for anything.
My son's a liberal who all he knows
is you get something for nothing.
- How do I get something for nothing?
- You're looking for handouts.
- What are you talking about?
- You're lookin' for handouts.
To me, a grant is a handout.
I don't care how you use it, how you say it.
- Do you know how hard it is
to get the grants and the fellowships...
- Alan, I don't give a damn
what they're hard to get.
The fact of the matter is,
you don't have a job.
You don't have a business.
You're working on handouts.
I'm convinced that you're doin' the wrong thing.
- Do you have anything else to say
before we stop?
- I think I've said enough.
- Make a wish Dad.