'The story of my life': Local families await today's local release of 'The Kids Are All Right'
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When they head to the theaters to see the new film "The Kids Are All Right" - which opens locally tonight - some of those standing in line to buy tickets will be looking for more than light entertainment. They'll be watching to see if the movie - the first mainstream Hollywood effort to portray a lesbian couple and their two teenage children - realistically captures aspects of their own lives.
Here's a sneak peak from Olivia Schiaffo of Florence, a 16-year-old junior at Northampton High School: It does.
At moments, she says, it felt like she was watching "the story of my life." When she came home, Schiaffo told her mother, Karen Schiaffo, "Oh Mom, it's going to make you laugh and it's going to make you cry."
Close to home
It's hardly surprising that many in the Northampton area, which has for years received national attention as home to many lesbians and their families, will be watching "The Kids Are All Right" with intense interest. Starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, the film has been billed as a domestic comedy that offers a "pitch-perfect" depiction of family life, in the words of Entertainment Weekly magazine.
The plot of "The Kids Are All Right" revolves around what happens when the couple's two children decide to track down the anonymous donor whose sperm their mothers had used to create their family. After they meet the donor, a hippie restaurateur played by Mark Ruffalo, the teenagers arrange for him to meet their mothers. He begins spending time with the family, setting in motion a range of reactions and repercussions.
Without giving away too much of the story, Olivia Schiaffo said that one key part of what ensues between the donor and one of the mothers was very unlike anything she could imagine in her own household.
But the movie-teenagers' interest in meeting their sperm donor is something she said she could relate to.
--See a review and trailer for 'The Kids Are All Right'
"I'm just curious," she said. When she's 18, Schiaffo said she plans to contact the California sperm bank her mothers used. If the donor is interested in making contact, she would follow through, she said. She's not interested in having him become part of the family, as in the movie, but she might want to stay in touch. "It would depend on how well we hit it off. I would hope he's a nice, sensitive, caring kind of guy." If he's not open to any contact at all, the matter would end there.
For Karen Schiaffo, the fact that a mainstream movie on this subject got made at all seems highly significant.
"Oh absolutely," she said. Schiaffo said she thinks it's good that the movie "normalizes" the existence of lesbian families and shows kids of lesbian parents that there are others like them outside "the bubble of Northampton."
Reading reviews
Sadie Gold-Shapiro, a 16-year-old junior at Northampton High School, says she hopes to see the teenagers in the movie - played by Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson - portrayed as "realistic and normal, not special" just because they happen to be the children of lesbians. And certainly from her vantage point, why should they be portrayed any differently? In her experience, it never seemed all that unusual to be the child of two mothers, she said.
"This is Northampton," she said, where among her peers, the subjects of gender and gay-straight issues tend to elicit little more than "well, whatever" responses.
"I have been following the reviews," Gold-Shapiro said when asked about "The Kids Are All Right." Her impression is that the movie succeeds in telling "a story about a family," she said, not a family solely defined as headed by two lesbians. And to her, she said, that's a good sign.
While she's planning to see the movie, Gold-Shapiro's excitement about "The Kids Are All Right" seemed to be well within bounds - she said she wanted to see "Inception," the Leonardo DiCaprio blockbuster first.
Like Olivia Schiaffo, Gold-Shapiro said she can relate to the teenagers' curiosity about their donor. She and her parents, she said, have talked at times about some of her physical characteristics or parts of her personality that she might perhaps share with him. "It would be nice maybe to exchange a letter," she said.
Her curiosity, though, doesn't in any way stem from a sense that something is missing in her family. "I love them dearly," she said of her mothers. "I have both my parents - that role is filled."
But it would be interesting to see, for instance, what his nose looks like. And, as an only child, she says she'd like to know if she has any half-siblings. She knows of friends who have found information about their donors by registering at websites that match willing donors and offspring - websites that didn't exist back when most lesbian parents who used sperm banks assumed that the donors would be forever anonymous.
That was the choice Gold and Shapiro said they made, back when there were few legal protections for lesbian families and parents wanted to minimize the chances of a donor unexpectedly claiming custody rights.
If their daughter opts to do any online research to find her donor, they say they will respect her decisions and choices.
Gold and Shapiro, who have been together for 34 years, say they will be interested to see how the couple in "The Kids Are All Right" is portrayed and how the women handle the upheaval in their lives. Media stereotypes, especially in the past, often portrayed lesbian relationships as fleeting and fraught with problems, Gold said: "I want to see a stable couple, making a life together. I'm looking forward to it."
Just the fact that "The Kids Are All Right" isn't being marketed as a tiny, art house movie is progress, Gold said: "It's broadening the umbrella of what defines a family."
Excitement and worry
"I'm reserving judgment," said another mother, Jaime Caron of Northampton, when asked about "The Kids Are All Right." Caron has three children conceived with the help of a sperm donor. Their other mom is Celia Vera, also of Northampton.
Caron said she is both "excited to see what they've done with it and a little worried too."
For one thing, she said, no one movie can possibly represent all families. Some children of lesbian mothers want to know more about their donors, she pointed out, while some do not. And every family handles the situation in its own way, she said.
Caron said her concern is that some of the plot twists she's heard about sound "a little Hollywoodish," but that on balance she's glad to see an effort being made to depict parents and kids making their way through this process.
Within her own family, Caron said "we've always talked openly about how they were conceived and about the donor." And she wonders herself sometimes, "what did he contribute to making them the beautiful people they are?"
Simone Caron-Vera, 17, Caron's oldest daughter who is a Northampton High School student, volunteers at Cooley Dickinson Hospital and has also been involved with the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. Those experiences have prompted her to think more about knowing details of her medical history, she said, and that in turn has made her more aware of the donor's role in her genetic heritage. She's not looking for a father, she said, but she has wondered about what his life is like and whether she has half-siblings.
"I just like to know stuff," she said.
Her younger sister, Davis Caron-Vera, 11, isn't looking for a father either - she's got plenty of uncles, she said. But she wonders if she looks a little like him, she said, or if he played a lot of soccer, like she does.
Davis said that in the world today there are "a lot more people with gay parents," and that it would be nice if the new movie makes people more aware of them and of how important it is for gay and lesbian people to have rights.
Beyond that, she said she couldn't really comment about the film because it has an R rating.
"I don't think I'm allowed to see it," she said.
Suzanne Wilson can be reached at swilson@gazettenet.com.
