| Director Doug Block Discovers His History On The Street Where He Lived |
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Page 1 of 2 51 Birch Streetdirected by Doug Blockstarring Mike Block, Mina Block, Carol "Kitty" Block, Ellen Block, Karen Block Engwall, Marjorie Silver, Natasha Saltzman, Rabbi Jonathan Blake ["51 Birch Street" will be broadcast on Cinemax in May and June]  Set in the suburbs of Port Washington, NY, veteran producer and director Doug Block uses his childhood address, 51 Birch Street, as the title of his latest documentary--an intimate look into the flawed relationship between his father Mike and late mother Mina. The Blocks had married in the '40s; dad was the provider and mom stayed home tending to her wifely duties, wants and desires. Mina Block also looked after her brood of three--two girls and a boy, Doug. But as a woman with brains and beauty, she yearned for more--and had a life hidden from her kids. Doug's discovery of his mom's journals after her sudden death coincided with the shocking revelation that his dad was going to sell the childhood home and marry his secretary (several years his junior) from over 30 years ago--and then settle in Florida. Using contemporary interviews, years of home movies, his mom's revealing diaries and his dad's treasure trove of photographs and slides, Block creates a compelling first-person narrative with universal appeal in "51 Birch Street." In the film (which was first broadcast in May 2007), Block demystifies their traditional middle-class Jewish marriage (even his Rabbi played a small part in the film) and develops a deep, though conflicted, understanding of his parents' true relationship. 51birchstreet.com  Director Doug Block's "51 Birch Street" prompted him to discover intimate details of his parents' lives--not all of which were easy to digest  The Block family in 1973. (L to R: Mike, Ellen, Doug, Karen and Mina)  Mike and Mina Block get cozy on their honeymoon in 1947  Doug Block (the little one) with his father Mike in 1960 DB: I didn't look at it as confessional. It's revealing obviously of family secrets. It's odd because it's not a film I set out to make. It's a film that came almost accidentally. I shot a lot of footage with my parents over the years. I've done family history interviews. But it really was for posterity. It was for my sisters and I to have and our kids in the way anybody does home movies. But I'm a professional camera person, so my home movies look a little more like verite than others. This was all sitting on the shelf for years and years and it really only started when I went back right before my father moved…That two-week period when the movers were coming, I went back, discovered the diaries and the weight of our family moving out of that house actually hit me full force. My father started talking to me for the first time about my mother and the marriage. It really happened when I sat down and asked him whether he missed mom and he said, "No." That's when I realized that not only is there a film here, there's a big film here. A really universal film about how we think we know who our parents are, about family secrets, about things not ever being quite what we think they are…very rich primal stuff that I didn't quite have a handle on. When I set out to make the film it really was to tell this story of a father and a son. When HBO got involved, I had a meeting with Sheila [Nevins, HBO and Cinemax President of Documentary and Family Programming]. At the end of a long meeting, she said, "You know, I really think the heart of your film is your mother's diaries." I wasn't even sure I was going to go there in the film at that point because I knew what was in them. I knew what a Pandora's Box that was and how frightening that was on a personal level. The reason [the film has] had such a powerful effect on audiences is because I'm such a small part of the story. They're not sitting there in judgment of me, they're coming along on the ride and thinking "Oh, God, if this were my parents would I do that? Would I read my mother's diaries? Do I want to know if my father ever had an affair?" That's so universal. Q: So you feel this has a certain universality? DB: No matter what the culture, they still have that same issue with their parents that same ambivalence about wanting to know them or not. Q: How did you feel about the details of the diaries? DB: The first years of the diaries were far more interesting because those were an outgrowth of [my mom's] therapy sessions. Her therapist had suggested that she write letters to him and read them in her sessions. Those diaries really were "Dear Ben" letters. Four years later, she went back and retyped the first years of the diaries because she was thinking of writing a novel about a brilliant young therapist and his star pupil who were terribly attracted to each other, but they have this conflict of patient/therapist. That never happened. But that's why the diaries focused on that time period because she was so focused on the marriage. Because they were typewritten, they were easy to read. Something about the act of [my mom] typing them made it seem less invasive than her handwritten ones. But the handwritten ones were more mundane. They were later; they were about who [my parents] saw that day; what they ate and what they talked about. Q: Did the therapy help her? DB: [My mom] claims absolutely that [therapy] saved the marriage. She really was into self actualization. Her whole life was about trying to come to some sort of understanding of who she was; what her role in the world was and what kind of meaning there was in it. I really have come to respect and admire [my parents]. Not necessarily for what they did to keep the marriage together, but who they were as people. I've learned a lot about them. |