Synopsis

How important is it to know

your biological father? And what happens when you discover that he isn’t who you thought he was for the first 39 years of your life? Those are the questions at the heart of Thackary’s Time, a 54-minute documentary by Kathy Klausner and Beni Strebel.

Thackary is a footloose, free-spirited Northern Californian, who finds love time and time again. His life takes a dramatic turn when his mother tells him that the man who raised him is not his biological father. Thackary Grossman, a 39-year-old occasional carpenter and surfer, sets out to discover a new father and define his own identity.

Klausner and Strebel, a San Francisco husband-and-wife film making team, offer an intimate look at key events in Thackary’s odyssey of discovery as he grapples with his new reality. A longtime, close friendship with Thackary gave the filmmakers unusual access to shoot the first meeting with his new-found father, Walt Tulecke. The film finds its groove in depictions of often awkward encounters during which raw emotions are vividly captured on screen. The characters seem unfazed by the camera, even when discussing the most painful subjects.

I

t took Thackary six years to get Walt to agree to meet him. The retired Ohio biology professor, now in his eighties, was reluctant because he had been keeping Thackary’s existence a secret from his own family.

The news that Walt is Thackary’s biological father is not welcomed by all. Peter Grossman, a psychotherapist and the father who raised Thackary as his son, finds it hard to accept the fact that his ex-wife Baba had a secret affair with his old friend Walt, resulting in Thackary’s birth some 40 years earlier. Peter wonders why Baba dropped such a bombshell after so much time had passed.

Thackary’s mother Baba is the one

who opened the Pandora’s box that launched Thackary on his mission to meet Walt. While Thackary inquires about the past, Baba discloses her unrequited love for Walt. As Thackary gets to know Walt, and listens to his self-justifying New Age mother, the audience is left wondering how Thackary will deal with the new family dynamics and his role as the love child of the long-ago affair. And will Thackary’s life change by knowing the truth? Thackary’s search for meaning in his own life remains enigmatic, a theme underscored by a surprise ending that is one of the film’s most aesthetically powerful and poignant moments.

Project history

Four years ago, Kathy Klausner, a San Francisco stay-at-home-mom, was at the Sundance Film Festival when she got into a conversation about documentaries with a group of friends. “What kind of documentary would I make?” they each asked themselves. Klausner had no idea until two weeks later, when her old friend Thackary Grossman told her that he was going to meet his biological father for the first time.

Klausner and Strebel had met Thackary at an Aikido class in 1983, and they became good friends. Thackary regularly confided details of his six-year quest to meet Walt. “When he said, ‘I am meeting Walt in a week,’ it hit me—this is a big deal,” says Klausner. “How many people meet their father at age 45 for the first time?” When Klausner and Strebel asked Thackary if they could film his meeting with Walt, he agreed right away. “He saw the process of making the film as therapeutic,” says Klausner. “By documenting Thackary’s story, we were around to witness and thus validate his experiences.”

With Strebel as cinematographer, Strebel and Klausner co-directed their first film. They had no inkling where the story would lead, and neither of them expected filming to last three years. It took two years alone to get Peter Grossman, the father who had raised Thackary, in front of the camera.

Finally, after shooting 60 hours of mini-DV cassettes, the filmmakers began editing what would become a bittersweet tale. “We realized at one point that this may not be a happy story,” says Strebel.

“It’s about family and who you consider family. Everybody has family and everyone has to deal with their family,” says Strebel. “Here is a middle-aged guy who is thrown into the midst of it. This is a huge adjustment for anyone to make.” “There was a lot of hope and expectations,” says Klausner. “But who raised you is so much more important than who conceived you. Thackary realized that it takes more than biology to create family. It’s not a quick fix. You can’t erase the 45 years before Thackary met his real father.”

It’s the loss of those 45 years that

the film evokes most effectively. In Thackary’s Time the passage of time becomes a key character, for this is a film about missed timings and attempts to make up for lost time.

For Klausner and Strebel, documenting Thackary’s intimate family story was fraught with the risk of losing him as a friend. “It’s really tricky to make a film about one of your best friends and not let the friendship interfere. At the same time, filming the story was possible only because of the friendship,” Strebel says.

The filmmakers ultimately enlisted Thackary to compose and record most of the music for the film. It was a harrowing process, as Thackary kept delaying the recording session until the very last possible moment. Thackary’s music adds another dimension to the film’s portrayal of a complex character.

With the certainty of paternal identity provided by DNA testing and changing definitions of family, more and more people are discovering biological fathers they would never have known about in the past. Thackary’s Time probes a social reality that was suppressed in the past, but is becoming more common. As acceptance of different family types grows, children of freshly discovered biological fathers will be more daring about exploring the new relationships thrust upon them and will construct new family configurations. Thackary’s Time tells the story of one such exploration.