This Week's Guest: Conor Patrick
Do you know all of your family secrets? And is it possible that you might be one of them? My guest this week is Conor Patrick, whose work you can catch right now on on Cinemax -- he's a script coordinator on the show Banshee, which is about sinister mysteries hiding in a small town.
As a kid, Conor obsessed over the convoluted family plots of soap operas. His parents were prominent local celebrities in the town where he grew up, which meant his family was always in the spotlight. And that meant HE was always in the spotlight. And the secrets he harbored might someday be exposed as well.
This Week's Recommendation: Billy Elliot
Thanks again to Conor for joining me. You can catch his work as script supervisor on Banshee -- the show's reaching its series finale on May 20th, so it's a perfect time to binge watch.
Banshee's all about hidden secrets and coded behavior in an isolated town, and if you like that sort of story I cannot recommend highly enough the film Billy Elliot. Set during the UK miners strike in the 1980s, it's the story of a rough rural family and a boy who, when sent to learn to fight, instead discovers his gift for dance.
There are a lot of feelings happening in this movie. But at its core is a boy who wants to be appreciated, and a parent who isn't sure he knows his own son. Throughout the movie, they orbit each other, drawing closer and further, experiencing moments of honesty between periods of distance.
As obvious as it is that Billy has a gift, it seems just as clear that his father, a miner, will never understand it. But the most beautiful moment of the film -- and no spoilers -- is its last five seconds. Don't skip to the end, because it won't mean anything unless you've watched it through. But there comes a point at which both characters, Billy and his father, take a leap. For Billy, it's a leap to becoming the man he'd always wanted to be. For his father, it's meeting his son in midair -- despite being at a physical distance -- to finally see someone he thought he knew for the first time.
Clips of Stuff We Talked About
Music:
Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/