I love reading about this nonsense kind of stuff:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... GHSJG1.DTL
In the late '60s, a boy spoke his mind for the camera -- and made headlines. Sean is back.
John McMurtrie, Chronicle Staff Writer
January 07, 2006
The middle-aged man walking into a Fillmore Street coffee shop instantly blends in as a regular guy, down to his no-nonsense T-shirt, fleece jacket and a baseball cap that displays the emblem of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. His brown hair is graying, his voice is a deep baritone and his rugged build suggests a wrestler who's been away from the mat for some years. But there's no mistaking the brown, almond-shaped eyes and round face: This is the person who, nearly four decades ago, became a little star of sorts when he was profiled in a 15-minute film that bears his name: "Sean."
About the precocious 4-year-old son of Haight-Ashbury hippies, the 1969 film, made by downstairs neighbor and film student Ralph Arlyck, drew widespread acclaim for its rare and frank portrayal of a child of the '60s. Barefoot and mop-topped, Sean, in the film, is seen happily wandering the streets -- alone. Playing with his toes while sitting on a couch, he speaks of his distaste for shoes -- "They're creepy" -- talks about "speed freaks" living in the apartment and, most famously, confides that he smokes and eats pot. This last revelation attracted a lot of attention -- including from the White House, which held a screening of the film -- and helped make "Sean" a target of those who saw in it some of the country's moral failings.
All this was a long time ago, but it's a time that comes alive again in "Following Sean," a new film in which Arlyck tracks down Sean, explores his upbringing and chronicles his life today.
Arlyck's intimate and affecting documentary will probably draw comparisons to Michael Apted's celebrated "7 Up" series, which has charted the lives of a handful of Britons from age 7 until middle age. But Arlyck's approach is more personal; much of "Following Sean" is about the 65-year-old filmmaker's own life and his times.
As Sean Farrell, who is now 41, modestly explains over a cup of coffee before the film's opening: "It's not really a movie about me per se. I'm just one of the people in it that he uses to make his point, which is about his generation and my generation."
Arlyck says he had no idea that his film would be so inward-looking.
"But it seems only fair that I would turn some of the questions that I'm asking other people toward myself," he says by phone. "I had never been comfortable with the so-called objectivity of classical journalism, where I'm just this invisible presence who supposedly has no agenda."
For years, people who know Arlyck had urged him to make a follow-up film to "Sean." The filmmaker had long since moved back to his native New York, to Poughkeepsie, and it was in the mid-'90s -- around the time of the 25th celebration of the nearby Woodstock festival and a renewed interest in the '60s -- that he finally decided to have a go at the project.
"We didn't want it to be this nostalgic trip about how great the '60s were, etc.," Arlyck says. "We wanted it to reach people on a deeper level."
In his film's narration, Arlyck doesn't hide his mixed feelings about the turbulent era. In the '60s, he says, he was drawn to California in a sort of "emotional gold rush."
"On the one hand, it was a wonderful time and it was a very important moment in my life," he explains. "But I also felt somewhat oppressed by a lot of the ideology of the time."
Farrell had no problems being followed around with a camera a second time -- even if, growing up, he was razzed a bit by kids over "Sean." "Hey, movie star!" was one greeting he remembers.
" 'OK, I'll do it,' " he casually told Arlyck before filming started. All the same, he adds with a chuckle, "I had my doubts as to how it was going to be interesting."
Farrell is an easygoing and thoughtful man, and one senses that he's experienced enough drama in his lifetime -- the separation of his parents, being around people who dropped out of society (and often got mixed up in drugs), his own marital troubles -- that he's happy to have a steady job, own property and lead a simple, relaxed life that allows him to spend time with his 9-year-old son, Alex, and his girlfriend, Honey.
When discussing his job as an electrician in the city, Farrell has only positive things to say.
"It's almost as good as it gets if you're a wage earner," he says, pointing out that he makes $46.55 an hour. He speaks with pride about the projects he's worked on, including installing 136 street lights in Golden Gate Park and doing electrical work on the Golden Gate Bridge -- an 18-month job on which he was a foreman and got to scale the span. Also, he's happy to carry on a family tradition of working for a union: Archie and Hon Brown, his maternal grandparents, were key figures in San Francisco's Communist Party movement.
On the subject of drugs, which helped put him in the headlines decades ago, Farrell speaks without reservation: They hold no interest for him. He remembers once eating pot in his teens. "It was like, 'Oh, I could do without that,' "he recalls. "You just get way too stoned."
As for what he supposedly ingested as a 4-year-old, Farrell says, "I may have been embellishing a bit when I was sitting on that couch. I don't think I got my hands on much pot when I was a little kid."
Plus, he adds, it's not as if the adults in his family's crash pad were keen to part with any of their small stash.
Arlyck isn't surprised that young Sean might have been bending the truth.
"I guess I suspected at the time that there was a bit of bravado in this," he says of Sean's answers. "And the real point was not whether he smoked it or he didn't, but that he could feel free to talk about it."
Decades later, Farrell still feels free to talk about things. In an interview, he laughingly apologizes for going on at length about what he sees when gazing out at the street: too many people in flashy, pricey cars, rushing to get from A to B. It's clear that he has spent a lot of time weighing his parents' legacy and how society has changed since he was a boy living barefoot in the Haight.
"I'm not for dropping out," he says with conviction. "I think it's really important to work and be productive and contribute, but it's just not worth aspiring to be like people on TV or something. You know -- the vehicle, the clothes and all that stuff.
"If people can get anything from the movie," he adds, "it's that there were some ideals that came from the people that dropped out. They didn't completely waste their time and their lives. They made America look at itself in the mirror."
"Following Sean" opens Fri. at the Lumiere Theatre in San Francisco, the Act 1 & 2 in Berkeley, and the Smith Rafael Film Center in
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle
