High school or the movies? Dad makes a deal

updated 4:34 p.m. ET Aug. 5, 2008

David Gilmour’s 15-year-old son did not just hate school. He seemed to have a psychological allergy to it.

Gilmour feared he might lose his son forever if he forced him to stay in class, hopelessly flunking. Instead, he did something he recommends to no other parent: He told his boy he could drop out and watch movies instead.

The catch: Jesse Gilmour would have to watch the films with his dad, a novelist, film critic and TV documentary host in Toronto.

That latter job was coming to an end, so David Gilmour had plenty of time to take on this last-ditch attempt at educating Jesse.

“I realized the battle was already lost, that we were deluding ourselves if we felt we could force this kid to do anything in school. It was only a question of whether we were going to lose him, as well,” said Gilmour, who chronicles the experiment in the new book “The Film Club” (Twelve).

“He wasn’t like some belligerent, sullen kid. He was a great, sunny guy who happened to hate high school. He was ill-served by going to school. He likes to talk, and he likes to watch movies, so I thought, let’s give the guy something to do that gives him pleasure and see where he goes.”

After Jesse dropped out of 10th grade in 2001, Gilmour started their viewing off with “The 400 Blows,” Francois Truffaut’s early masterpiece about a Paris teenager who turns to petty crime in rebellion against neglectful parents and a repressive school life.

Jesse’s reaction to “The 400 Blows”? “A bit boring,” he told his dad.

But the movie sparked the first dialogue of the Film Club, Jesse revealing that he had worried greatly about failing school and now feared he might have ruined his life.

Gilmour took that as a positive sign, telling Jesse it meant “you’re not going to relax into a bad life.”

AP "The Film Club," by David Gilmour, recounts remarkably candid talks between the author and his son at a time in life when teenagers and parents often are drifting apart.

They followed with “Basic Instinct,” which Jesse proclaimed a “great film,” making his dad pause it when he had to run to the bathroom.

From that far-flung beginning, they worked through movies grand, good, titillating and awful, from “Mean Streets” and “Roman Holiday” to “La Femme Nikita” and “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”

They did a horror festival (“Rosemary’s Baby,” “Psycho”) and a guilty-pleasures segment (“Rocky III,” “Under Siege”). They watched American classics (“On the Waterfront,” “To Have and Have Not”). They sampled foreign-language masters (“La Dolce Vita,” “The Bicycle Thief”).

The Film Club lasted a bit more than three years, until Jesse was 19. The Gilmour boys watched and discussed about 350 movies.

The book recounts their remarkably candid talks at a time in life when teenagers and parents often are drifting apart. Jesse looks to his father for advice and reassurance over bad breakups with girlfriends. He joins a hip-hop duo, Corrupted Nostalgia, amusingly shutting his curious pop out of his early club gigs.

Father and son share a harrowing adventure with street toughs during a trip to Cuba with Gilmour’s ex-wife, Jesse’s mother. And Jesse and Gilmour’s current wife strike up their own chat club over cigarettes on the porch.

Finding work in a restaurant kitchen, Jesse begins a slow graduation from the Film Club, and his father wistfully watches his son ease into the adult world.

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