The Talent Given Us

My mother used to get so uptight over the holidays because she wanted every Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner to be just so: The table set, the turkey carved and all the family gathered. Instead, she got off-color jokes, my sister belching, arguments about my dead father, and grandchildren spilling juice on her white cloth chairs. I can remember confronting her after one unusually raucous Thanksgiving dinner. She was in the kitchen, in tears, and I yelled at her: "The problem is that you try to turn these family gatherings into a Norman Rockwell painting, when they're really more of a Jackson Pollock."

I'm remembering that scene today, having arrived back from a road trip to Traverse City, where I caught a hysterically funny indie film called The Talent Given Us. It's a family road trip movie, but this ain't no Chevy Chase flick. A couple of 70-year olds and their 30-something daughters set out cross-country in a minivan to visit their absent son in Hollywood. Along the way, we get to see arguments, laughter, revelations of family secrets, lots of eating, hotel-room masturbation and some septugenarian lovemaking.

Talent was written and shot by a guy named Andrew Wagner, and it stars his mother, father and two sisters. Is it fact or fiction? Are the family members acting or being themselves? Doesn't matter. It rings true and it works. We met Andrew, who got us the tickets thanks to our friend Terri Breed, who is also the film's editor. We also met Andrew's mom, Judy, who is tremendous in the film. She's articulate, bossy, intelligent and can drop an F-Bomb with the best of them. ("I'm from New York," she says). Andrew's father, Alan, was there too, but he was parking the minivan and chewing on a straw. His performance in the movie is amazing.

The show was a sell-out, which did not escape festival organizer Michael Moore, another guy who's been accused of blurring the line between fact and fiction in his movies. Moore showed up to introduce the film and then hosted Q&A afterwards. In between, Moore described The Talent this way: "Fresh, original, bodacious, shocking, funny and everything else...all the reasons we love to go to the movies." It's a great movie. Go see it at a festival near you. (Weight: 234 lbs.)