Mother's Day Update

My wonderful daughter, Talya, rose to the occasion and made breakfast for her moms yesterday! I have to amend my earlier post to include this news, in the interest of fairness and accuracy. She even cleaned up the kitchen afterwards. Wow. Laura and I had almost forgotten what it feels like to just relax on a Sunday morning -- no cooking, no dishes, just reading in the backyard, relaxing in the sunshine and birdsong. Talya, I'm so proud and humbled to be your mother -- you never cease to impress and amaze me. It was the best French toast ever!

To continue the celebration, we dragged our helpful daughter to the Arclight for a Lesbian Mothers' Day double feature: "The Soloist" followed by "Star Trek." A little politics, a little sci-fi, some hard reality, some fantastic special effects. Talya enjoyed both films, though she didn't grow up with the Star Trek characters and had to focus instead on the "cuteness" of the actors. She was moved by Robert Downey Jr.'s natural performance and the sadness of the close-to-home reality of Nathianel Ayre's life. Talya has helped to distribute food to some of LA's homeless population, and has a pretty good idea, from those experiences, what it's really like for people who live on the street in this city. "The Soloist" did a fairly decent job of shining a light on our enormous and dire homelessness problem. As Tom Waits sings, "there's a city going on underground, underground."

In between films, I spotted Linda Hunt sitting on a bench in the lobby. I've admired her brave and gender-bending work in films like "The Year Of Living Dangerously" and "The Bostonians" for decades. I couldn't resist saying hello. Ms. Hunt was incredibly gracious, genuinely friendly, and happy to talk with us. It was a very cool LA moment. Where else can you go to the movie theatre and meet Linda Hunt? She thought "The Soloist" was, in her words, "a bit schmaltzy," but she is British, after all.

As a nation, we've tended to forget the political origins of many national holidays, and Mother's Day is no exception. Julia Ward Howe, a peace, anti-slavery and women's rights activist, started Mother's Day in 1870. She wanted the day to be a peaceful and yearly reminder about the cost of war, and a protest by American mothers against sending their sons (and daughters) off to kill or be killed in the interests of patriotism. Mother's Day wasn't supposed to be a day of cards and brunches, movies and French toast, it was life or death. Let's bring back Ms. Howe's original intention and maybe we can save some lives, in the future, here and abroad.

Our weekend started with meeting another amazing woman in the film business. Melissa Silverstein, who writes the acclaimed "Women and Hollywood" blog, met with us in Los Feliz. She was visiting from Brooklyn, on a junket for Focus Features. Melissa works tirelessly to promote films that are written, directed and/or produced by women. Her blog is a source of valuable, hard to find and relevant information about women in film. No one else is doing what Melissa does to promote and support the films that are being made by women in the (yes, it's true) overwhelmingly male-centered film industry. She finds and alerts us to projects that we might otherwise miss. Her insightful critiques of popular culture, reviews and interviews with writers, producers and actors, are a pleasure to read. It was wonderful to have a chance to meet with her, and we look forward to her future projects. I highly recommend adding Melissa Silverstein's blog to your weekly (or daily) online reading list: www.womenandhollywood.com

Hope all of the mothers and daughters and sons had as fun and relaxing a Mother's Day as we did yesterday. Thanks, Talya! Your moms love you. Oh, and Miss California? Bite me!!