Interview: Travis Knight on “Kubo and the Two Strings”
Posted on August 16, 2016 at 3:10 pm
On my visit to LAIKA, I spoke with producer/director Travis Knight about this week’s magical new release, “Kubo and the Two Strings,” one of my favorite films of the year.
Knight, who is also the CEO of LAIKA, said that the project started a decade ago, and “all of our lives poured this thing into the world….We have a multi-national crew pulled from around the world. We are magpies, scavengers, pulling from our lives, all swirled into a gumbo.”
This is LAIKA’s fourth film. All have created in their Portland, Oregon studio through stop-motion animation, but each has been a huge leap forward in ambitious use of materials and technology and each has been completely new in the world it has created. “There’s an inherent restlessness here.” And he believes that “there is an inherent humanity that comes in the process of creating art. You can’t separate it from the art itself. The act of creating things by hand imbues them with a humanity you can’t get any other way.” Stop-action animation “injects a different kind of life.
“Philosophically, it’s been important to tell new and original stories, reaching a kid in a darkened cinema, touching a part of yourself you didn’t really think of before. It is one of the prime functions of the mind. Good stories can change us and open up the way we connect to each other.” The basis for “Kubo” is an imaginary ancient Japan. Kubo is a boy with magical ability through origami who cares for his fragile mother, who relinquished her own magical power to protect him from his powerful grandfather and aunts. “The look is always rooted in the story. Each film has been different thematically and required a different look. This one was inspired by Japanese artists like Hiroshige and Hokusai.” The world of the film is inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, with strong colors, asymmetry, and striking, uncluttered composition. “We immersed ourselves” in the Japanese aesthetic, origami, poetry, late EDO period dolls, “the spareness and symmetry is woven through the design language.” The origami designs echo through the film in the simplified shapes, textures, and folds.
Copyright 2016 Focus
“I’m in no way a purist,” when it comes to what is a practical effect and what is CGI, Knight said. “But you want to capture as much in camera as you can to make sure it is unified.” He is grateful for the chance to combine art, science, and technology, “to make peace with it, embrace it, and use it. We have a big bag of tricks and will use whatever it takes to tell the story….It’s the astronaut and the caveman working together.”
Knight spoke about the films that moved him, starting with “E.T.” It was the first time a film made him cry. “The deep-seated loneliness and then the connection to the creature. That took me to Kurasawa.” He fell in love with “big fantasy epics.” He believes that the more specific the details, the more universal the reach of the story. But for him, this was very personal. “Kubo is me — a storyteller and an animator.”
John Goldschmidt is the director and co-producer of the film “Dough,” a sweet comedy about an Orthodox Jewish baker (Jonathan Pryce) whose new assistant is a Muslim teenager from Darfur who has a side business dealing weed. The marijuana gets mixed up in the bread, and suddenly the bakery has a lot of new customers just as a predatory developer is trying to take it over and the baker’s son is trying to get him to retire.
In an interview, he told me that he made this film because he was looking for a project that had “something to say about the state of the world that’s particularly relevant but it will also entertain, in other words a film that will treat serious issues with a comedic like touch.” In a film like this one, he said, casting the lead “sets the standard for everything” and attracts the other performers. His casting director, Celestia Fox, called to tell him she had seen Pryce at a party and he had a beard, so he already looked the part. “Jonathan is one of the most celebrated theater actors in London. Once he’s involved, other people seem to say, ‘This is must be a good project.’ So Pauline Collins, who acted with Jonathan Pryce years ago at the National Theater loved the script, knew about me and got involved.
It was more of a challenge to find the young man to play the African immigrant. “I auditioned a lot of people and choose six of them along with Jonathan Pryce to see the chemistry between them.” Jerome Holder won the role. “I chose Darfur as the country for this Muslim boy to come from because I had seen George Clooney’s film about the persecution of the African Muslims in their villages by Arab horsemen. I thought the people looked so beautiful. I wanted to avoid the complexities of the Middle East. I wanted it to be unencumbered by that whole situation. We needed to get all that detail about Darfur and we needed to get Jerome to have an African accent. He’s from a Christian family, a church based family. He had to acquire an African accent for his dialogue. He did very well I thought because I didn’t want it to be too strong for people to be alienated by it and yet he couldn’t really talk like a London guy. I didn’t want him to have a dialogue coach because if you get too self-conscious about these things it can knock around with your head. I just wanted him to retain his naturalness because he’d never been in a movie before.”
Goldschmidt, whose favorite Jewish bakery treat is challah, said Pryce spent a week in a kosher bakery to play a man who has been baking for decades. They shot in Budapest, where they completely replicated the Jewish bakery in North London. “My producers say that a lot of the best films about America are being made by European directors who see America through fresh eyes,” he told me. His own background contributes to his tendency to appreciate cultural differences. “My family are classified as victims of Nazi persecution. I was born in London, I grew up in Vienna. Came to England to go to art school when I was 17. And so in a sense although everyone thinks of me as totally British, I do have a slightly different angle on things. I just liked this particular idea because it’s like the odd couple. It’s about two characters who are as different as possible could be. One is old the other is young. One is black, the other is white. One is Jewish the other is a Muslim. I wanted to make an entertaining, uplifting movie in the end. This is the story of a very unlikely friendship and I wanted to make a film in these dark times where people would leave the cinema with a smile on their face and yet at the same time I wanted to address the issues that I thought one has to deal with in this period that we are living in.”
Interview: Director Liza Johnson of “Elvis & Nixon”
Posted on April 25, 2016 at 3:25 pm
Copyright 2016 Amazon StudiosElvis & Nixon is inspired by the iconic, if improbable, meeting of two of the most towering, iconic — and widely impersonated — figures of the 20th century. Director Liza Johnson makes the film wise, witty, and enormously entertaining. In an interview, she talked about our enduring fascination with Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon and making sure that the movie’s performances went beyond the caricatures and imitations we are used to seeing. One cheeky touch, a character playing an Elvis impersonator speaks to the real Elvis (played by Michael Shannon), thinking he is an impersonator, too. And the movie impersonator is played by one of the film’s screenwriters, Joey Sagal.
The image of Presley and Nixon standing awkwardly together in the Oval Office is the most requested photograph in the history of the US National Archives. “That dissonance is probably why people are interested in the photograph,” Johnson said. “They’re both very well known to us and they mean something to us. I think Elvis means something more countercultural and Nixon mean something establishment. That’s why it’s weird to see them in the picture together. In a way I think that’s the spin of the movie too.” She said that despite her great respect for Shannon, he would not have come to her mind to play Presley. “I don’t know who I would have thought of but it would not have been him because he doesn’t immediately have any likeness to Elvis or have personality traits that make me think of Elvis or have a repertoire of characters in the past the remind me of Elvis. When I read it, I got it. It has so much intimate depth for the Elvis character and that’s what Mike can do. He has a sort of very sophisticated relationship to drama, comedy. You know Ionesco is his favourite playwright and I knew that honestly once I read it I couldn’t think of anyone who could do a better job of navigating among those properties which were written in the story. We were both were interested in the ways that the script is a bit counter to the most kind of dominant understandings of the characters. People think of Elvis as a glittering brilliant beautiful surface but no one ever thinks about what Elvis might wonder about or what was going on in Elvis’ inner life. With Nixon the opposite is almost true. The most common thing ever said about him is that he is complicated. When people talk about him they talk about his psychological issues and it’s never about his beautiful surfaces or anything. This story suggested two things that we don’t think of. One is that Elvis had an inner life and two is that Nixon, this complicated man who is constantly doing morally compromising things like blowing up Cambodia or actually infiltrating the countercultural movements that Elvis is talking about going undercover in. He had not yet done Wategate at this point but he was doing all these other things so if I were him, I’d be sweating. Yet in this story we can also have a sliver where the main thing he’s doing is not understanding whether he should meet with a rock star. I actually found that charming. Partly because it’s so different from where that entertainment and political culture is at now.”
Instead of Elvis Presley songs, the soundtrack features other music from the era, including Elvis playing and singing along to “Suzy Q.” “You know, Elvis did do stuff like that. In this period he was covering popular music including the Beatles, at least three songs. I didn’t know that; it’s something I found by looking. He did sing some CCR songs and Neil Diamond in this period and I guess he was really kind of a promiscuous lover of all kinds of music including opera. In most of the source music that I put in the movie I really wanted to focus on the regional, southern, like 1970’s soul into funk period. I think that it reflects something about the place and time.”
Copyright 1970 National ArchivesThe two men have more in common than they — or we in the audience — expect. As we see, both are surrounded by young men who support and at times manage them. In the White House, we see Dwight Chapin, Bud Krogh, and H.R. Haldeman, whose names would all later be prominent in the Watergate hearings. Elvis has his “Memphis Mafia,” including Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer). The real-life Schilling assisted in the making of the film. In one amusing sequence, the handlers for Presley and Nixon brief each other’s the two men before the meeting on what to expect and how to behave. “I think the script is carefully structured to heighten any parallels that could be there between those groups. In order to function as the President or as a superstar, you have an entourage. The work that those two entourages were called upon to do is very different in nature. But at the same time I can at least empathically imagine that it appears to me that when you are that famous someone always wants something from you. There is almost no way to know for sure that you’re having an honest encounter. There is almost no way to know for sure they’re having an honest encounter because people always want something from you. Even if it just to be close to you because you’re somehow like a channel to some electric celebrity something. Not only do those people do real work in terms of managing the lives and work of the celebrity but having some people that you can trust is a really important thing when everyone wants something from you.”
She found Shilling’s insights especially helpful. “The thing that I learnt the most from on this project was actually Jerry Schilling’s book, Me and Guy Named Elvis, which is a really beautiful and intimate account of their friendship. It’s a very self-reflective. He is either a genius or he’s been to a lot of therapy. He has a real capacity to reflect on himself which is very unusual. That book is like a real anatomy of what it’s like to be the friend of a superstar and I really recommend it. It was like a very guiding document for me and also I got to work with him. I got to be friends with him, and I think his story is not the typical one of someone who hangs out with a superstar. Jerry stayed friends with Elvis for his entire life precisely because he took some measure of distance at some crucial moments. The other guys didn’t necessarily do that and that didn’t end well. I feel like there is a profound lesson about friendship in there about what is beneficial about closeness and what is beneficial about distance.”
Director Terrence Malick makes films that are visually stunning and — depending on who you ask — either narratively challenging or frustratingly obscure. It was a pleasure to speak to three producers of his latest film, “Knight of Cups,” starring Christian Bale as Rick, a Hollywood screenwriter, and inspired in part by John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Nicolas Gonda, Sarah Green, and Ken Kao described how they work with Malick. Gonda began, “We are a group that really works from soup to nuts, so from the earlier stages of being able to collaborate with Terry to understand the nuances of the story, to be able to put that into a production plan, obviously working to reassemble a lot of the recurring crewmembers and build out that crew as well as the cast obviously throughout production and postproduction and then through now at distribution strategy and marketing, we’re front and center as producers throughout that entire course.” Green added that they all work on everything together rather than compartmentalizing. “We actually overlap pretty consistently because we all have a practice side, we all have the business side and we all have a very strong creative side so it actually works really well because we kind of tag team. We’re all there in the important moments when things ought to be moving quickly like in production and then we just stay in constant touch with each other and we sort of trade-off whatever needs doing or managing in the moment. Some people really split it up in a much more distinct way but I don’t think that’s how any of us have worked together. We really kind of meshed. I think what makes it work is that we’re always in close touch and we always keep each other informed with whatever we might know that the other one doesn’t, it really helps. There’s a lot of texts and emails.” “We all have a real sympatico,” Kao said, “and at the same time we also have our own language with Terry and we have our own ways of contributing to the project. So I think it’s a good plan, we work well together.Copyright Broad Green Pictures 2016
Malick’s films always have a loving portrayal of the natural world, and while that is the case in this one it also has more of an urban setting and more densely populated moments than we have seen from him before. There is a Hollywood party scene with some real celebrities like Antonio Banderas, Nick Kroll, and Fabio playing versions of themselves. I asked about the challenges of creating this complex section of the film. Gonda said, “We were able to secure a phenomenal location as you could see in the film and then we were there for several days and had a plan where you can see a menagerie of phenomenal actors from different backgrounds. It was able to essentially act as this fish pool where inside this contained setting we were able to have all of these different types of experiences so Christian and the other actors were able to react to some things that they didn’t even know were coming up. And so we had everything from the more familiar faces to different types of dogs and all different types of experiences that created this chemical reaction. So it was definitely some of the most fun that we all had throughout the production.”
Green said, “I wouldn’t say that anyone was playing themselves; they were definitely there because of what they brought to the table but Terry would talk to each of them and tell them what their character is and how he wanted them to interact with the Christian character, Rick. So each of them had a part to play and they had fun with it. We never know exactly what Terry told Christian but he was surprised a few times.”
All three producers spoke of the way Malick trusts the audience and encourages each viewer to explore the interpretation or interpretations that resonate with his or her individual perceptions and experience. Gonda said, “Part of the beauty of Terry’s films is that there is really room for the audience to apply their own thoughts and experiences. So really the construct is there and these relationships are there but like ‘Tree of Life’ and several of his other films a lot of people were able to project their own experiences and their own relationships on that. I think that’s really what we’re hoping people would do. Here we were fortunate to work with such tremendous actors so Brian Dennehy and Wes Bentley brought so much of these performances and they are very important to Rick’s journey and obviously a big part of why he went on the journey that he did is to re-discover these relationships and assign greater meanings. But in terms of getting into the granularities of that meaning I think that is what we really hope audiences will join us in doing. Terry has an enormous amount of trust in the audience and I think that that is something that audiences really appreciate. We’ve been so delighted by the response that we always get to Terry’s films where audiences appreciate being involved in a way where the film is almost interactive. A lot of people compared Terry’s films to almost like a VR experience because you are immersed in this atmosphere much more so than other films. So I think trust in the audience and really acknowledging the audience as as much of a character is very much is something that really distinguishes him.”
I asked about the women in Rick’s life, who each represent a different outlook and kind of relationship. Green put it this way: “Terry doesn’t tell us how to interpret the film any more than he tells anyone else so and for me those women are very much guides. They all have something very specific to show him or teach him, whether it’s by example or what they say. I look at my life and sometimes it is hard for me to recognize what I might be learning from someone but after-the-fact I can kind of get that and I think when I look at this film I see these people as teachers.”
Kao summed up their view. “In an age where so many of the films have become so spoon-fed Terry really allows for each filmgoer to have their own experience. I don’t know if I’m reaching really when I say it can be a meditative experience. Just as people learn how to meditate through instruction, we all have our own unique experiences on our own after that. And I think that’s really the beauty of what Terry’s filmmaking provides for you.”
Interview: Reverend T.D. Jakes on His New Book, Destiny
Posted on October 19, 2015 at 3:35 pm
It is always refreshing and inspiring to talk to Reverend T.D. Jakes, and it was a great pleasure to have a chance to hear more about his new book, Destiny: Step into Your Purpose, a follow-up to his best-seller, Instinct.
Copyright Nell Minow 2015
You write that the conditions of our lives can distract us from meaning, allowing urgent to interrupt the important. How can people achieve some perspective?
We have confused busyness with effectiveness. We are busier than we’ve ever been before but perhaps less effective than we’ve ever been. And what I tried to lay out in the book is to cut away the clutter of all the things that you think you’re supposed to do that are not central to what your destiny or what your primary purpose is. And that’s why I devoted so much time to talking about priorities. Because I’m not saying that the busy things should not be done but they should not take priority over the purposeful things that we were created to do.
I sometimes think that that comes from a failure of courage. We are not comfortable thinking about our priorities and so we distract ourselves with a lot of busyness. Where do those messages come from?
A lot of it comes from our environment, our surrounding. We are often mentored by people who are mediocre, to be candid. When you get an opportunity to read or think or be exposed to somebody who is really progressive and got things done, their philosophical ideology is contagious. To find out from them — what did you prioritize, what did you make important, what did you regret, not just what you did right, what did you do wrong because we all do things that we look back on and say, “What was I thinking?” But to always remain a student, the liquidity of thought and nimbleness of mind to approach life from a perspective of a vacuum of “feed me, fill me,” not to always come into the class as a professor but to enter into the class as a student and to learn from your environment and the people that you are exposed to creates an environment to discovery.
A lot of us have become what our parents have modeled but we are not living in our parents’ world and they modeled to us something that may not work today. There were some things that my mother was diligently teaching me that are antiquated now that we don’t to be anymore. And so I think that we have to update and constantly remain relevant and I don’t think you get old until you stop learning.
I think we sometimes believe that the people who are achievers are in another category and that they are not still learning when in fact they are the ones who are still learning the most.
Absolutely! And the weirdest thing is that we do put them in another category and it is really not true. What is really beautiful is our ordinariness. Of course when you think about Jesus it doesn’t get any better than that and yet he looked so ordinary that the Roman soldiers had to hire somebody to point him out. And it was his ordinariness that made him special. It wasn’t like he was running around with some sign on him that says, “Hi, I’m Jesus.” He interacted with people who were flawed, who had different philosophical ideologies, who epitomizes what Beliefnet is doing. He engaged people where they were in a way that is non-traditional.
I find that we have slipped into so many silos, particularly in this country, where we only interact with people who vote like us, think like us and dress like us. And it has dumbed down our thinking. Nature teaches us that cross-pollination brings forth fruit but we have stopped cross pollinating, intellectually, spiritually when we only talk to people and we only watch on TV those programs that are a reflection of us.
How do we find people that are worth learning from?
You look for fulfillment in their eyes — and fear.
Fear?
Let me tell it this way, I recently was doing a test program for a talk show, I did a couple months of that and really, really enjoyed doing it, I was excited about it. I was lying in my bed in New York. I called my wife in the middle of the night and she said, “What are you doing up?” and I said, “I’m lying in the bed laughing” and she said, “What are you laughing about?” and I said, “Because I’m scared again.”
It is the beautiful gift of being thrown off-center. I am generally the interviewee not the interviewer so it was a role switch. And it threw me off, I wasn’t so sure of myself and I thought, “Oh gosh, suppose I mess it up, suppose I forget something I should’ve remembered.” And I thought what a gift it is to be a little intimidated, to be a little bit vulnerable, to be a little bit afraid. It makes us a little more prayerful, more careful and while God may have not given us the spirit of fear he was wise enough to give us the inclination to be afraid. It protects us in the jungle of life. And so I think when our lives become so predictable that we are not thrown off center we stop living. So that’s what I meant about fear. When you see somebody who is attacking something with intimidation like they are climbing up Mount Everest so to speak, get behind them, get behind them, get with them, join them on the journey. Because to get to see somebody struggle… My son said, “Daddy you taught me more by doing the talkshow than you did anything you’ve ever done.”
Do you feel that a fear mode is when you are most open to learning?
Oh yes, absolutely! And I was the most effective because I had told him things that he had never seen modeled. So he thought, “Dad is just confident, dad has just got a good ability.” But he knew daddy was nervous and he knew that he was intimidated and he got to see me fight my giant. That’s why I say if you see somebody with fulfillment in their eyes and fear get in behind them and follow them and you will learn things that are absolutely amazing.
Copyright FaithWords 2015
In the book you say sometimes we do not surround ourselves with the right people. How do we find the right people?
We can talk about that all day. One thing that I notice all doctors run with doctors, lawyers run with lawyers, preachers run with preachers and isn’t that boring? Because when everybody that you run with does what you do they compete with you, they do not complete you. One of the wisest things you can do is put around you people who are strong where you are weak, who were very different from you. I learned that the trick to having great party is diversity around the table. You know, smart people from different worlds who engage each other makes the whole night amazing.
And we don’t always do this in our lives. Sometimes we put around us people who need us but they don’t complete us. We put around us people who lead us but don’t feed us. So we’re always feeding and never been fed, we are always giving and never receiving and our ability to receive gets rusty because we are never thrown off kilter and brought into an environment where we’re not the smartest person in the world and that’s a good thing. I think one of the greatest blessings of my life is that I had been able to be in so many different worlds and rooms. I describe myself as one of the few people who could have breakfast with Pat Robertson and lunch with Jesse Jackson. You know those are two different worlds. To be able to interact with extremes and polarities has made me broader. It has helped me to have a point of view that is not easily categorized and I think those opportunities, both of them at different times have said some things I don’t agree with but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have lunch. And maybe I can include influence a conversation or maybe I can learn from them… There’s just so many things… I think we are becoming so tribal in a way that makes me wonder if we’re not digressing as a society by tribalism.
How does this book help people locate their destiny?
I’m coming to a place in my life where I am doing less and less things that don’t make me thirsty to get out of the bed in the morning. You know what I’m saying? I’m not doing things just because you expect me to. If I don’t feel the passion and I don’t see the purpose I’m not doing it. With the few years I got left I’m going to be picky. I’m going to do things that make me feel alive and make me feel thirsty and creative. And so I think that’s one of the things you can do, find the thing that makes your eyes light up, that makes you read, that makes you thirst. Look for your passion and you’ll find your purpose.
Don’t try to find that from copying celebrities. All of the famous and rich is the what’s, the purposes comes from why. Money without purpose is nothing. Fame is a platform through which you can be heard but if you have nothing to say, what good is it other than getting through the restaurant a little quicker. I think that we need to get back to the whys and not the whats. If you chase the why the what will chase you, if you find your purpose the provision will find you, if you go on to the provision and you have no purpose the provision serves no purpose at all. What good is a car if you’re not going anywhere?
And that’s one of the reasons that I kind of want to be in the position to get in the room with them because I think sometimes when the church thinks about evangelism we always go to underserved communities, as if our doctors or lawyers or movie stars, our actors, our CEOs, our producers don’t need Jesus too. So to share your faith with the wider array of people could fill that void. I think that we are suffering from not only their inability to be meaningful in those high-profile worlds but they are a result of our negligence to touch them. It is really our negligence that created that because I know a lot of them and they stopped by the church before they became who they were. It’s not like they haven’t experienced us but because we were too narrow to throw our arms around them and so judgmental we missed an opportunity to create a transformative experience for somebody who had a platform who could have made a difference in the world.
What do you mean by a “plus ultra life?”
You have to realize my father got sick when I was 10 and he died when I was 16. I was born in between two dead babies. My mother lost one before me; she lost the one after me. When other fathers were teaching their kids to ride bicycles, which I never learned how to do, incidentally, my father was sick and on a kidney machine. There is nothing like being raised by somebody dying that makes you appreciate life. There is no other gift to give you that give you that ‘this can be taken away” and it makes you live differently than other people who take for granted that tomorrow will be there waiting, I don’t do that, I don’t do that.
Why are the steps you set out so important?
That’s what sets this book apart from other books. It goes beyond talking about purpose and destiny and goes out to the practical pragmatic steps, and those steps are different depending upon what your destiny is. So it’s hard to say in an interview or even in a book what those steps are because it may be different for a plumber than it is for an actor, than it is for preacher but everybody starts as somebody who is an apprentice.
And I talk about the beauty of rehearsal rather than recital, that sometimes we are so engrossed in the recital that we missed the rehearsal. We have raised a generation of people who know nothing about rehearsal only recital. They want quick answers, they want the destination but they don’t have the transportation. So this book is about steps, practical, pragmatic, process steps that lead you around to an expected end, and to celebrate the process and not just the promise, to enjoy the journey. Like in the creation, “And the evening and the morning was the first day and God said that it was good.” How can you say it was good when you weren’t finished? Giving yourself the permission to not be finished and celebrate accomplishment is very important in creating an atmosphere where you can remain creative. Sometimes we don’t celebrate till everything’s finished, that’s too late. I’m not sure there is a finish line.
I like the your very clear message to people who say they will wait until they are ready by telling them that it’s never a convenient time.
So here’s the thing — I don’t know about anybody else in my generation but I am shocked that my hair is white. I just can’t believe it. Where did the time go? And if you put off for tomorrow what you have the strength to do today, who says the strength will be there even if you are there tomorrow? You have to do with while you can, you have to do it while you can. A guy asked me why are you doing movies and running companies and you are a Pastor and I said, “I did it because I can.” I might not be able to tomorrow but I had the strength and I had the opportunities and I had the gift to be able to do it. Doing thing when you can is important. My mom died of Alzheimer’s which tells me you could be here and not be able to. So while you have the liquidity of thought to do something or energy or influence or connections you have to do that with all diligence or you miss your turn.
So what is the best way for somebody no matter what their skill to make a real contribution that can feel meaningful to them?
I think one of the problems that we have is that we’re so aware of other people’s gifts and we never know our own. And to see yourself as a gift requires that you have some level of self-esteem and worth of what you bring to the table. And I think sometimes we are so busy looking at what they bring to us that we don’t appreciate you bring to them. And then ultimately over time after the luster leaves what they bring to us we resent the fact that they don’t appreciate what bring to them when we should start the dialogue from the perspective of strength to strength.
How do we as parents help our children understand these lessons?
As a parent the thing I learned too late is that we talk more than we listen. I think that sometimes there comes a point in parenting where you are not the star of the world and very few parents get make that transition. My mother said to me, “I taught you how to have a deeper appreciation for your thoughts by listening to you when you talk.” She said parents who don’t listen to their children teach their children that what they think is not important. Those very core basic things have a lot to do with how we end up as a people and as a society and what level. I think we all have dysfunction but what level of dysfunction we have can be determined and prevented by how we were parented. My all-time heroes are my mother and father. They were flawed, they were very human, but they were very committed and very focused and I learned as much from their flaws as I did from their strengths. Flaws don’t exempt you from succeeding. You can drive a broken car and still get to school, even though you had to kick the door then roll out the window you can get there. And we have broken people husbands and wives and moms and dads and kids but that doesn’t mean we can’t arrive, if you learn how to work through the brokenness.
, a follow-up to his best-seller, 
