Back Tuesday David Gilmour
“I loved David Gilmour’s sleek, potent little memoir, The Film Club. It’s so, so wise in the ways of fathers and sons, of movies and movie-goers, of love and loss.”
— Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls
“If all sons had dads like David Gilmour, then Oedipus would be a forgotten legend and Father’s Day would be a global film festival.”
–Sean Wilsey, author of Oh the Glory of It All
“David Gilmour is a very improbable moral guidance counselor: he’s broke, more or less unemployed and has two children by two dissimilar women. Yet when it looks as though his teenage son is in regards to to go off the rails, he reaches out to him through the only subject he knows anything about: the movies. The result is an object lesson in how fathers must talk to their sons.” –Toby Young, author of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
At the start out of this brilliantly unconventional family memoir, David Gilmour is an unemployed movie critic attempting to convince his fifteen-year-old son Jesse to do his homework. When he realizes Jesse is beginning to view learning as a loathsome chore, he offers his son an unconventional deal: Jesse could drop out of school, not work, not remunerate rent – but he ought to watch three movies a week of his father’s choosing.
Week by week, side by side, father and son watched everything from True Romance to Rosemary’s Baby to Showgirls, and films by Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, Billy Wilder, amongst others. The movies got them talking when it comes to Jesse’s life and his own romantic dramas, with mercurial girlfriends, heart-wrenching breakups, and the kind of obsessive yearning normally seen only in movies.
Through their film club, father and son discussed girls, music, work, drugs, money, love, and friendship – and their own lives changed in surprising ways.
From Publishers WeeklyIn this poignant and witty memoir, Canadian novelist Gilmour (A Perfect Night to Go to China) grapples with his decision to concede his teenage son, Jesse, to leave school in the 10th grade provided he promises to watch three movies a week with his father. Determined not to strength a formal education on his son, former film critic and television host Gilmour begins the film club with Truffaut’s The 400 Blows—with Basic Instinct for dessert. There are no lectures preceding the films, no quizzes on content or form: just a father and son watching movies together. Expertly tracing the tryouts and tribulations of teenage crushes and heartbreak, Gilmour explores not only his choice of films but also Jesse’s struggles with his girlfriends and burgeoning music career. There are units on everything from undiscovered talent (Audrey Hepburn’s Oscar-winning debut in Roman Holiday) to stillness, exemplified by Gary Cooper’s capacity in High Noon to steal a scene without moving a muscle. Gilmour expertly tackles the nostalgia not only of film but also that of parents, watching as their children grow and invent discerned lives. With his distinctive blend of film history and personal memoir, Gilmour’s latest supplying will as deserved win him new American fans. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From BooklistIn this sensible memoir, Canadian film critic and novelist Gilmour tells of the bargain he struck with his son, 15-year-old Jesse, who was unhappy at school. Gilmour would grant Jesse to drop out if he would agree to watch three movies a week with his dad. Over the next three years, the two would wrangle over movies that the elder Gilmour thought his son would love but didn’t (A Hard Day’s Night) and experience the irrational thrills of “guilty pleasures” (Showgirls). More important, they edged slantwise, in typical male fashion, into more personal discussions of huge topics, such as sexual jealousy (Last Tango in Paris) and alcoholism (Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry). At the same time, Jesse dealt with severe heartbreak, while his father was struggling to find steady work and worried incessantly over whether he had made the right decision in permitting his son to drop out of school. Both for it is smart, engaging movie talk and for it is touching depiction of a father-son relationship, The Film Club gets two thumbs way up. –Joanne Wilkinson
Review“Tender . . . a beautiful, unvarnished portrait of fathers and sons-irregular, flawed, full of heartbreak and heart.” (Newsweek Peg Tyre )
“Dynamic . . .heartwarming . . . With ironic wit and self-introspection, [Gilmour] beautifully analyzes the slow but transforming effect the films had on his son . . . Perfectly balanced recollections, brimming with pathos leavened by sardonic humor.” (Kirkus Reviews )
“I was hooked on Gilmour’s spare, limpid style, and on the tenderness, bitter sweetness, and the film education that I could feel unfolding from the introductory page . . . THE FILM CLUB is a deep pleasure to read, almost as much fun as – or perhaps more than – going to the movies.” (The Huffington Post Elizabeth Benedict )
“Gilmour expertly tackles the nostalgia not only of film but likewise that of parents, looking at as their children grow and create discerned lives. With his distinctive blend of film history and personal memoir, Gilmour’s latest supplying will as deserved win him new American fans.” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review )
“Wise, hilarious and once in a while screwy . . . an inspiring change of pace from the way fathers ordinarily are depicted . . . [Gilmour's]advice to Jesse with regards to his painful girlfriend difficultnesses is warm and wise, with just the right amount of adult bluntness. THE FILM CLUB is a highly lovable book.“ (The Portland Oregonian )
“Both for it is smart, engaging movie talk and for it is touching depiction of a father-son relationship, The Film Club gets two thumbs way up.“ (Booklist )
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Back Tuesday David Gilmour Pic
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Most helpful client reviews
52 of 57 humans found the following review helpful.
 A father and son watch movies together. But that’s just the plot, not the point.
By Jesse Kornbluth
His grades started dropping in the ninth grade. In the tenth, they toppled. He swapped to a private school. No difference. Jesse Gilmour just didn’t give a damn.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: “A FATHER & SON MULTI-LEVEL COMING OF AGE STORY.”
By Rick Shaq Goldstein
Because my Father was the greatest Father in the world I always wanted to be a Father, and then I was blessed with the biggest son. Since the two roles in my life; son, when my Dad was alive, and Father now, are so special to me, I’m always enthusiastically fascinated in any creative writing of recognized artisti value with regards to the magical union of Father and Son. The author of this book David Gilmour has been amid other things the national film critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and has written six novels. David was confronted with a personal and family crisis when his fifteen-year-old son Jesse was failing each subject in school. Jesse had no real desire to carry on going to school so David had to make a gut wrenching decision… a decision that wasn’t discussed in the “Being A Father” manual that you weren’t given when your initial child was born. David gave Jesse the freedom to quit school with one proviso: he had to watch three movies a week with his Dad, and his Dad chose the movies. Jesse gleefully accepted the deal. What the author wound up receiving was three years of indescribable time together that involved way more than just looking at movies. The Father cleverly became a skillful teacher without standing up in the front of a classroom and announcing I am “THE TEACHER!” The teacher he became did not have a set curriculum that you would find in any institution of higher learning. The subject wasn’t math, English or history… it was much more important! It was “LIFE”. Though the author shared his lifetime love of movies with his son, the movie subjects were picked, and schedules changed, based on the curve balls being thrown at Father and son by a combining of fate and fate.
13 of 14 humans found the following review helpful.
 Surprisingly dull
By Madisen
The premise of this book intrigued me. When the school scheme fails to engage his son, Jesse, a father allows the boy to drop out, and attempts to instruct him with regards to life through film. And when the book stuck to that plotline, it was actually pretty engaging; I enjoyed the descriptions of a good deal of classic movies, and Gilmour writes regarding them with the passion and noesis of a film critic, yet with language accessible to the intermediate person. However, this kind of thing evidently can’t fill the whole book, so the author pads it out with random things that feel like scenes from the life of your next-door neighbor. Not in the good, relatable, “I feel like the author’s a personal friend” way, mind you. More like an acquaintance who you run into in the grocery store and delays you for 20 minutes chatting when it comes to basically nothing, while you desperately undertake to end the conversation. So in that spirit, we get some rather whiny and self-pitying talk with regards to the author’s troubles finding employment; an unintentionally hilarious account of Jesse’s career as a “white rapper”, which Gilmour relates with a tone of dead seriousness and even pride; and most of all long, excruciatingly dull tales of Jesse’s relationships with respective girlfriends, none of them peculiarly remarkable. In fact, these divisions even made me a tiny bit uncomfortable; I’m no expert on father-son relationships, but is it genuinely normal for a dad to take such an interest in his son’s love life? It’s closely like he’s living vicariously through Jesse. Even the divisions on film commence to wear over time, as Gilmour starts name-dropping the widely known and esteemed people he’s met and dispensing his “expert” views (“Richard Gere would do better to focus on his acting and stop attempting to sound so smart all the time,” he opines). Most annoying is how the author gives Jesse more or less a free pass on all kinds of behavior–trying cocaine, closely getting himself killed in Cuba, taking a occupation scamming people–while continuing to insist, without any sort of irony, that his son is a bright and gifted boy. I read all the way to the end, hoping to learn in regards to the “shocking decision” of Jesse’s that’s advertised on the book’s cover. SPOILER ALERT–it’s no huge deal, the kid just decides to–gasp–finally get his diploma and go on to college. A fine choice, but not surprising or even interesting. And that sentence beauteous much sums up the book, too; it reads as a man’s undertake to glorify and give meaning to events that occur each day, to all kinds of people. And none of them felt the need to write a book when it comes to it.
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