CommitmentNow speaks with Rick Minnich, co-author and director of the documentary, Forgetting Dad

Rick Minnich, co-author and director, along with Matt Sweetwood, of the documentary Forgetting Dad, discusses what it was like to make a film about his dad's sudden and complete amnesia and how that impacted his family.

CommitmentNow: Forgetting Dad is a documentary which tells the story of your father’s sudden and complete amnesia following a minor car accident in 1990.  Your dad then re-christened himself “New Richard” and began a new life, leaving you and your family to wonder what happened to “Old Richard.”  Why did you decide to make a documentary about this painful experience?

Rick Minnich:  When you’re a filmmaker and something as dramatic as this happens in your family, it’s difficult to ignore. My first instinct upon hearing about my father’s amnesia was to start filming him. I was 22 at the time, and was only beginning to make short films. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but it was somehow easier to look at my father through the camera. It took some of the horror out of what was happening, and enabled me to see my father from a slight distance. With the camera between us, he was not only my father, but also a film subject. Some might accuse me of using him in this way, but for me it felt more like a defence mechanism. At that time (the first two years of his amnesia), I didn’t have any plans to make a film. I was simply filming what was happening with my father. It wasn’t until ten years later, a few years after I had become a father myself, that I made a conscious decision to make the film.

CommitmentNow:  What effect did your dad’s amnesia have on your family?

Rick:  It has been absolutely devastating. I knew that everyone had suffered in one way or another, but the degree of the suffering didn’t become clear to me until I began making the film. By the time we began filming, fifteen years had already passed since my father’s amnesia began. Everyone had moved on in life. But there was this central theme of my father’s amnesia that united everyone in my family – it was the thing everyone wanted to talk about, but that no one knew how to. The camera and my questions became a catalyst for exploring what really happened with my father. Along the way, all kinds of emotions errupted. Perhaps I was naïve in thinking that I was all grown up and somehow immune to any kind of deep-rooted emotions from my childhood that the film might stir up. But once we were in the thick of filming, I found myself on an emotional rollercoaster which took me places I didn’t even realize I could go. In retrospect, it was an amazing experience. But at the time, I was an emotional wreck and not pleasant to be around.

On the surface, my half-brother Justin always seemed to be most affected. He was eight when our father’s amnesia began. Suddenly he felt like the odd one out that none of his friends could understand. He began hanging out with other kids from broken homes and started taking drugs. When my father’s marriage to his mother (my father’s second wife; I’m from the first marriage) fell apart three years after the amnesia began, that was the nail in the coffin. Miraculously enough, Justin worked his way through the California Culinary School in San Francisco, and is a fabulous cook. But at 27, he’s still struggling to keep his life together.

While I expected the filming with Justin to be volatile, I didn’t expect it to get as emotional with my twin sisters Anne and Jan. They were 24 when the amnesia began, and seemed to have their lives together. But the filming brought up a lot of painful issues from our childhood that none of us had ever shared with one another such as our father’s abusive perfectionism (my sisters felt like they never lived up to his lofty standards). It was very disturbing for me to hear them talk about the effect our father has had on them and their relationships with me. None of this is in the film because Matt and I felt like it was too personal and drifted too far from the main theme of my father’s amnesia. But the discussions sent me into an emotional state that made it difficult for me to function as the director of the film as well. Fortunately, Matt was there as a good friend and colleague to help keep me on track and focused the best he could. He was definitely worth his weight in gold, and I’ll be thankful to him for this for the rest of my life.

CommitmentNow:  This story of your dad’s amnesia and its effects on your family is a very personal one.  Was it difficult to tell this story in public?

Rick:  Absolutely. But the public aspect of it didn’t really come about until we started showing the film in public. I kept the audience very much in mind throughout the making of the film, but the actual shooting and editing of the film took place in a kind of protected space. We filmed everything I felt might be relevant to the story, and the tough decisions didn’t come until a few months down the road in the editing room: Can we show this? Is it too personal? Will anyone care? Do we really need to see me breaking down on camera? Do we really need to see Justin and his girlfriend fighting? Do I really want to show Justin’s tears as he grapples with his anger at our father? Things like that. With personal documentaries, it’s a very fine line between narcicism and telling a story that other people will find relevant to their lives. I was absolutely focused on telling the latter. We edited off and on for over a year. The last few months was fine tuning and test screenings, in which we meticulously worked out aall the fine details that helped make the film gain a universal appeal. This involved a lot of changes which seemed very minor, but which tipped viewers off in one way or another or impacted their sympathies toward me as the storyteller. In some versions, it seemed too cut and dry what was going on with my father. This made people lose their interest in the story because they could predict the outcome. But I wanted to shake viewers back and forth throughout the film, to put them in my shoes so to speak, and make them feel uncertain about what’s going on with my father up to the very end of the film and beyond. I wanted the audience to go on the same rollercoaster ride my family and I have been on for nearly twenty years now.

CommitmentNow:  While making this film, did you learn anything that surprised you?

Rick:  Definitely. I learned a lot more about my father’s sad and difficult childhood, which clearly had an impact on his ability to work and raise a family. I was also surprised and horrified to discover how widespread mental illness is in my family. Mental illness is still something no one wants to talk about. I think it’s because society views it as a weakness, and especially in US culture, being weak is the greatest sin imaginable (well almost). While making the film, I came to feel that all this mental illness had been swept under the rug for generations only to explode in the form of my father’s utterly baffling case of amnesia – a complete breakdown set off by a seemingly harmless car accident. In talking to my siblings, I discovered that this mental illness has been passed on to all of us in some form or another, and that we all feel cursed in this regard. It’s like some extra burden none of us wants, and that we have to consciously struggle to keep in check. It’s also something I’d love to talk to my father about, but can’t because he doesn’t remember any of this, or at least that’s what he claims.

CommitmentNow:  Forgetting Dad won the “Special July Award” at its World Premiere in The Joris Ivens Competition at The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IFDA), among other awards.  Did you expect that Forgetting Dad would be so well received when you first started working on the film?

Rick:  I had no idea how the film would be received. People were generally intrigued whenever I pitched the film, but I was really worried how they would react when they discovered that they never really get to see my father in the film. That was an enormous challenge for Matt and me: How could we tell a compelling story about my father’s amnesia when he refused to let us film him? Fortunately we had some great home movies and footage of his early years of amnesia to work with.
What has been deeply satisfying for me with this film is seeing time and time again how much it touches audiences around the world. Clearly there’s something universal about the story of loss of a loved one and the pain of grappling with unanswered questions which crosses international borders. For a long time now, it’s been my goal to tell stories with a universal appeal. But this is my first film which seems to have that ability. So apparently my fears that the film would be merely narcissistic and that no one would be interested in it are unjustified. That’s a relief. I can only hope that my father sees the film someday and realizes that his family is not teaming up against him, but that we all love him dearly, and are simply struggling to come to grips with something that probably can never really be understood. All the clichés about the mind being a mysterious thing are sadly true, as my father’s amnesia proves.

CommitmentNow:  How did you first get involved in film making? 

Rick:  Growing up, I always wanted to be a journalist – a Clark Kent-like reporter. But my days in the newsroom of a smalltown newspaper proved very disillusioning. During my undergraduate years at Columbia, I fell in love with arthouse cinema, especially French and Italian films. That’s when I decided to try to move to Europe and try to make a go of it as a filmmaker. But actually, I guess my filmmaking began even earlier. When I was twelve, I won my first Super 8 movie camera as part of the bonus program for being a good paperboy. I began filming my baby brother Ben, and never really stopped filming. I simply filmed what was going on around me, and apparently was laying the foundations for the kind of personal documentary filmmaking I can’t seem to escape. So I guess I owe a big thanks to my mother and step-fathter for having Ben, who surprised us all. And to Ben, too, for being the unknowing subject and inspiration for what has turned into a career.

CommitmentNow:  Where can we learn more about Forgetting Dad and any of your future projects?

Rick:  Check out our website at http://www.forgettingdad.com. It’s full of information about the film, clips, photos, my blog of traveling around with the film, etc. We haven’t yet made a TV deal for the US, but we just put out a small DVD edition on home video and institutional video for libraries and universities. Orders can be taken through the website with easy payment via credit card and PayPal. . I’m sure the film will be available online sometime in 2010.

As for future projects, check in at www.rickminnich.com and www.mattsweetwood.com. Matt’s hard at work on a new film about German beer (definitely a documentary comedy), and I’m working on a new film about two brothers in Berlin, who are struggling with the uncomfortable inheritance left behind by their father – an enormous collection of amateur photos and films of everyday life in East Germany. It’s a fascinating look at daily life behind the Iron Curtain. Another father-son story, which happened to fall into my lap. I’ve been avoiding it for years, but maybe it’s my calling to tell such stories. I suppose I’ve had enough practice at it by now!

Click here to see a trailer of Forgetting Dad.