Momma’s Man
Wednesday, August 15, 2012 – 7:30pm
USA 2008. Director: Azazel Jacobs
Cast: Matt Boren, Ken Jacobs, Flo Jacobs, Dana Varon, Richard Edson, Piero Arcilesi
The idea for Momma’s Man came to director Azazel Jacobs one morning on a visit to his parents. Waking up to find coffee and cereal waiting for him, Jacobs wondered then why he had ever moved out. His film revolves around the childhood regression of Mikey (Matt Boren), a thirty-something computer programmer with a wife and baby. Jacobs, merging his own life into the fiction, casts his real parents — Ken Jacobs, the noted avant-garde filmmaker, and Flo Jacobs, a painter — in the roles of Mikey’s parents, and shoots the film in the crammed-to-the-rafters Manhattan loft where Ken and Flo have lived for decades. Momma’s Man opens with Mikey heading to the airport to fly home after a visit with his folks. But he soon returns, citing a flight delay. The next day brings another excuse, and then another. His doting mother is more than happy to enable his procrastination; his father is increasingly suspicious. Mikey, retreating to his old bedroom, reads comic books, plays the guitar, and wanders about in his long underwear like an overgrown toddler.
“Momma’s Man sneaks up on you — small in scale, constructed from deeply personal material — you’d never guess how deeply it cuts into a universal experience: the terror of becoming an adult” (David Ansen, Newsweek).
“A beautiful, wise and poker-faced comedy of discombobulation” (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly).
Colour, Blu-ray Disc. 94 mins.
Janet Oakes is a Psychoanalyst in private practice in Vancouver. She is on the executive of the Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, and teaches in the Psychoanalytic seminars presented by the Western Branch. She also serves on the National Scientific Program Committee of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. Janet is an artist and has an ongoing interest in applied psychoanalysis relating to social conditions, literature, arts and culture.
Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.
Co-sponsored by the Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society.