Following Sean

    

    The other evening while scrolling for movies to watch I came across Following Sean, a documentary about filmmaker Ralph Arlyck, reconnecting with Sean Farrell, his subject from a short documentary he had made thirty years before in 1969, when Sean was 4 years old. The premise of that documentary, called Sean, was following and interviewing Sean in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1969. In that documentary we see the camera following a barefoot Sean walking around the Haight with intercuts of an interview with Sean where he admits, among other things, to smoking and eating grass. Sean and his family had lived a few floors above Mr. Arlyck and he thought Sean would be a great subject for his film thesis at San Francisco State University. In Following Sean, released in 2005, we meet up with Sean in his early 30’s and get some background on his family's history and where they are today as well as Ralph’s family history and present day life. I did not expect that Following Sean would have had a very profound effect on me.

A Mere Coincidence?

    Possibly. Others might say probably. I guess there isn’t any kind of synchronicity at play here but it still fascinates me because I think to myself, what are the odds that this seemingly meaningless, silly thing occurred?
    Like everyone I’ve been watching a lot of TV. I have a lot of the streaming services and can pretty much watch most anything. One evening I came across the show Monk starring Tony Shaloub, which ran for 8 seasons. I remember when it came out back in 2002 but had never watched it. I like Mr. Shaloub so I figured I should give it a go. I’ve watched a lot of different series the past year. I call them filler, not in a negative way but just something easy to watch to fill in the time here and there or in between movies since they’re usually an hour or under. Some of these shows I had seen before and others were new to me. A few shows I’ve watched are: Twin Peaks, Community, Ozark, How To Get Away with Murder and The Twilight Zone(the original version. I do want to see Jordan Peele’s version but I don’t have CBS all access; you can’t have them all) And again like everyone, I tend to binge on these multiple episodic shows. You can watch just one(most likely not) or as many as you want and because of Covid you don’t have to feel bad that you are avoiding life by binging on several hours of TV because this is life right now. So watch ten episodes in a row guilt free. Unlike Netflix, which will throw up an entire season of their shows in one shot, channels like HBO, Showtime or AMC still follow the old way and release an episode a week. I tend to wait till shows on these channels have finished their seasons before beginning to watch them. I don’t want to wait a week between episodes. I can’t. I won’t. Let’s get back to Monk.