The Film Club: No School. No Work ... Just Three Films a Week - Softcover

"David Gilmour is broke, more or less unemployed and has two children by two different women. When it looks as though his teenage son is about to go off the rails, he reaches out to him through the only subject he knows anything about: the movies. The result is an object lesson in how fathers should talk to their sons." (Toby Young)

"I loved David Gilmour's sleek, potent little memoir, The Film Club. It's so, so wise in the ways of fathers and sons, of movies and movie-goers, of love and loss." (Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls)

"The Film Club is an excellent choice for a book club, and it's as good as a David Gilmour novel. That's saying a lot" (Toronto Star)

"What makes the story so readable is its mix of sentiment and cynicism, its cockeyed wisdom ... Gilmour is a brave writer and a brave father" (National Post)

"The book is meaningful, is insightful, is valuable. It is, what's more, a compelling, often tender account of a parent's deep concern for his child" (Globe and Mail)

It was an unconventional deal: Jesse could leave school, sleep all day, not work, not pay rent - but he had to watch three films a week ... of his father's choosing.

Week by week, side by side, father and son watch the world's best (and occasionally worst) films - from True Romance to Chungking Express, A Hard Day's Night to Rosemary's Baby, Showgirls to La Dolce Vita. The films get them talking - about girls, music, heartbreak, work, drugs, money, love, friendship - and they open doors to a young man's interior life at a time when parents are normally shut out. Gradually, the son develops from a chaotic teenager into a self-assured young adult, but as the film club moves towards its bittersweat and inevitable conclusion, Jesse makes a decision which surprises even his father...

The Film Club is a book that goes straight to the heart. Honest, unsparing and poignant, it is the true story of one man's attempt to chart a course for his beloved son's rocky passage into adulthood.