Our pasts can be dangerous mine fields. When we do summon the courage to chase old ghosts, past identities and take the step towards renewing tattered relationships, we never know what we will discover. And that is what happened to Kimberly Reed, the eye-catching director of Prodigal Sons. She journeyed home to Big Sky Country on a road that had more twists and turns than she expected. Yet the Montana dust she kicked up cleared the air for a reckoning that will hit close to home for many of us. Prodigal Sons is a film about identity, sibling rivalry, mental health, longing for family connection and just a little bit of Hollywood history.
Making the decision to embark on the production of this film was not an easy one for Kim Reed. It all started when she chose to attend her 20th high school reunion. It meant that she had to leave her urban life in New York City and go back to Helena, Montana, a town with a population of only 30,000. She had not been home in years and it was nerve-racking. Kim had not only been the class valedictorian of Helena High, she had also been the all-star quarterback who most folks remembered as Paul McKerrow.
“My hometown,” Kim remembers, “had heard about my transition a while ago. Just before my dad’s funeral, my mom had a tea party, and broke the news to her closest friends, then asked them to spread the word. Mom kept saying that my dad had died, but I was being reborn. So my classmates had heard about me, but this was going to be the first time most of them would actually see me.”
But talking to her football teammates and engaging in conversations about the difference between gender identity and sexual identity ended up being relatively easy. What was much more difficult and what is at the heart of this film is Kim’s desire to reconcile with her adopted brother, Marc.
Growing up, Marc always felt that he was living in Paul’s shadow. Soon after the McKerrows’ adopted Marc, they gave birth to Paul and a few years later their youngest son, Todd. Marc was never a particularly good student or an athlete and resented his brother’s success. He felt like he had been dealt a raw deal. Things got worse after Marc was in a car accident and suffered a massive head injury. After the accident, Mark suffered debilitating mood swings and bursts of violent anger. Although Marc took meds to manage symptoms, no one dared come out and call it mental illness.
If you have a loved one with a mental illness, you understand a bit about the stigma that comes to an individual with a diagnosis. That is also true within families. It is often easier to just hope for the best.
Coming back to Montana after her long absence, Kim realized, “I had changed so much… and I wanted Marc to acknowledge that and let go of the past… which included lots of things about our shared history but lots about my personal history…it was frustrating that he would not let that go and that he just couldn’t move on.”
To him, Kim was still Paul McKerrow, the brother he was both jealous of but loved.
Then Marc discovers that his grandparents are Hollywood royalty. Now it was Kim’s time to be jealous and to be in awe of her brother. It is also when she got real serious about making a film. In the process, Marc confronts Kim and her choices.
What happens next in this film is what you have to see. The bumpy ride had just begun.
In a recent interview, Kim explained what that is like for a director when you don’t know what is going to happen next. “As a rule, when you are making a documentary, surprises are really good things. If you think you have everything figured out before you start filming, you sap the drama right out of the film… that is just not how our lives really work. The problem is when the surprises strike so close to home, when you are in a family… it gets much, more difficult…. When we started making the film, I could not say the word mentally ill and neither could anyone in my family.”
Kim filmed her family in crisis for over two years.
I don’t want to give away too much more except to say that just go see it. It will be at the Castro, Wednesday, June 24, 7:30 pm. It is not what you think it is going to be. It is surprising, sensitive and brutally honest. And Marc McKerrow’s improvisational piano track is another unexpected treat in the film.
