Many fathers and sons would no sooner agree to spend six months together on a trip around the world than they would strap a pair of wings on their backs to fly to the moon for a 4th of July barbecue.
Richard Roe and his 33-year-old son, Chris, thought they could set aside their differences long enough to attempt just such an adventure, and, in the process, make a documentary film. They would circumnavigate the globe at a leisurely pace and interview fathers and sons from disparate cultures about their attitudes toward each other.
Their film, “Pop & Me,” which opens Friday, provides evidence that, yes, it’s possible for a father and son to coexist at close quarters for extended periods of time. But, after a month or so on the road, it’s wise to hide all the knives and guns.
“It wasn’t so much a matter of survival . . . we went through some bad times, and we came out of it respecting each other,” says Richard Roe. “Chris and I fought a lot because I was the producer, and I had to make some tough decisions. But now I see that his work is really good and I’m proud of him.
“I’d like to go back — as much as we can — to having a normal father-son relationship.”
But we’re talking about the movie business, where little is normal.
“At one point, we weren’t speaking . . . unless we were yelling at each other,” adds Chris, a graphic artist who lives in nearby Venice. “A lot of the control issues involved how our relationship was going to be portrayed in the film. During post-production, we had to see a shrink, otherwise the movie might never have been completed.”
Although he’s about to turn the corner on 60, the meticulously whiskered Richard wants audiences to see him as Indiana Roe, an eternally youthful adventurer and something of a rascal. By his own admission, though, the former stockbroker and camp director can be a bit of a control freak.
“Like Pogo, I’m my own worst enemy,” says Richard. “The editing process was especially rough for us, but I probably made it worse than it should have been. Now, to see the fruits of one’s labors pay off, and discover that people are interested in what we did, is amazing to me.”
The inspiration for the journey documented in “Pop & Me” came, according to Chris, from his dad’s right-on-schedule “midlife crisis.” In 1995, Richard split from his wife of 29 years, lost both of his parents and left a job at an upscale boys camp. He feared that the final chapters in his life story might be devoid of relevance and joy and left Philadelphia for Los Angeles, to be near his three sons.
Funky Venice proved to be the perfect place to rekindle the embers of Roe’s faded youth, but he eventually tired of playing beach-blanket bingo. It was then that Dad convinced Junior to join him in an all-expenses-paid trip around the world.
They started by retracing their East Coast roots, then headed to Europe. Before they even made it past the Eiffel Tower, however, it was apparent their producer-director partnership had become a test of wills.
In Chris’ eyes, “Pop & Me” was turning into “Father Knows Best.”
Richard says, “Although I’d trust Chris to throw me a life preserver if I was drowning, I couldn’t trust him — a first-time filmmaker — to make a movie that I and the other two investors would be happy with.
“We needed to strike a balance, so that we could produce something we’d both be happy with.”
Although bickering is a constant distraction throughout “Pop & Me,” the 92-minute-long documentary (which last year took top prize at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival) is remarkable for its insightful interviews with 29 sets of fathers and sons on five continents.
“Getting fathers and sons to be interviewed together was the real challenge,” Chris says. “They’d talk directly to us or the camera . . . not to each other. Still, I was surprised by how much these fathers and sons would say when they were in each other’s presence.”
As Richard says, “Of all the different kinds of relationships, I believe those between a father and son are the least understood and least discussed. Men are all alike, no matter what religion or culture we’re from.
“So many times, women have said to me, `When I was a teenager, my mother and I hated each other. But, now, I’m 30 years old and, not only are we best friends, but we tell each other everything . . . everything.’ I have yet to hear a 30-year-old man say, `I tell my father everything.'”
But do sons want to have more communication with their fathers?
“Yes, 1,000 percent, yes,” Richard says. “It’s a universal truth.”
Besides convincing Julian Lennon to open up on camera about his uneasy relationship with his father, John, the film’s biggest coup comes at the end, when Chris persuades his dad to join him in a tandem bungee jump off a bridge in New Zealand. The two men were barely speaking to each other at the time, so the decision to go ahead with the stunt was a leap of faith, in both a literal and figurative sense.
Despite all the friction, the Roes now are enjoying their time together on the publicity hustings. They hit a public-relations grand slam this week. They are scheduled to appear on “Oprah” Wednesday and also in People magazine.
Looking ahead, they hope to encourage a television network to develop some kind of sitcom or reality-based series inspired by the father-and-son fireworks in “Pop & Me.” Unfortunately, the title “Survivor” is already taken.
