At the Movies with Governor Tom: Adam

At the start of the week, I had no plans to go out tonight. By Friday I'm usually a crispy critter. Partly that's my fault. I'm devoted to my writing to a fault, to the tune of staying up past midnight just about every night. Some nights I literally don't get more than four or so hours of sleep. Well, that might work one time. But to keep that up? I guess for now I can kinda sorta sustain this lifestyle. I'm sure it'll catch up to me one day, when I get to a certain age. Or not. My dad's about to turn seventy and can still play hard and work hard with the rest of them. There's nothing like the ol' gene pool.

I hopped onto the ArcLight Cinemas site on Tuesday. I check it every now and again, as I do with my other favorite theaters in L.A. I'd already known Adam was coming out this week, but I wasn't sure I'd catch it until it was on DVD. Romantic comedies usually don't come at the top of my list. Unless it's a Judd Apatow flick. Although I did see 500 Days of Summer last Sunday. And tonight I saw Adam at the ArcLight Hollywood. Look at me. I'm not partial to romantic comedies, huh? I've just seen two in less than a week.

So if this isn't my genre of choice, and I'm prone to Friday night lights out, then what possessed me to go see Adam? Rose Byrne, that's who. When I hopped onto the ArcLight site Tuesday, I saw that Australian actress Rose Byrne, who plays one of the main characters in Adam, was going to be at the ArcLight for a Q&A after the 7:40 p.m. screening tonight, along with the film's writer-director, Max Mayer.

You don't understand. Rose Byrne's been one of my favorite up-and-coming actresses for a good five years now. Is she still considered up-and-coming? Or has she arrived? Perhaps the latter. She's been working fairly steadily since 2006 or so. She was slowly but surely breaking into the American movie industry. And then she scored a real coup when she landed the lead on the F/X drama Damages opposite Glenn Close. If you don't watch Damages, do yourself a favor. Please do. Even if you're indifferent to Rose, the show's writing is among the best on TV. F/X shows in general seem to attract the best and the brightest in TV writing. Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, you name it. Great stuff!

So back to the inimitable Rose, I'm trying to think of when I started following her career. I'm pretty sure it was Wicker Park. Although it's funny, by the time I got around to seeing Wicker Park on DVD, I'd already seen her in other stuff. Wicker Park came out in August of 2004. I remember seeing the trailers earlier that summer and just being struck by her. She plays a psycho stalker, so that may have been part of it. But I don't know, I remember seeing her name, and it stuck in my head. I think the first movie I actually saw her in was Troy, which came out just before Wicker Park. She plays that priestess of Apollo who becomes Brad Pitt's love interest. And it's funny. The other main female character in Wicker Park was the German actress Diana Kruger, who played Helen of Troy. Then I saw Rose in I Capture the Castle on DVD. It's based on the first novel of English author Dodie Smith, published in 1948. Eight years later Dodie Smith made her fame and fortune with The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Anyway, the main reason I saw I Capture the Castle was actress Romola Garai, the up-and-coming actress who plays the main character, Cassandra Mortmain. Rose Byrne plays her older sister, whose name also happens to be Rose. I remember when I saw it, I recognized Rose Byrne as that nut from the Wicker Park trailer. I still hadn't seen Wicker Park at that point. Romola Garai caught my attention in 2004 when she played Amelia Sedley in Vanity Fair. But anyway, I eventually did get Wicker Park on DVD. I was so impressed with Rose Byrne that I had to see what else she'd done. By now I'd seen her in that, Troy, and I Capture the Castle. She had a small part in City of Ghosts, made just before I Capture the Castle. That was the movie Matt Dillon directed. It was a bit of a letdown. Not only was it not all that good, but Rose Byrne wasn't in it that much. Another movie of hers I got courtesy of Netflix was 2003's All the Way (originally called The Night We Called It a Day in Australia). It's loosely based on the true story of Frank Sinatra's stillborn concert tour in Australia in the seventies. Dennis Hopper plays Ol' Blue Eyes, which makes it almost worth seeing right there. Rose Byrne plays the love interest of the main character, a down-on-his-luck concert promoter named Rod who seizes the opportunity to kick-start his career when Frank comes to town. Only he doesn't count on Frank being a complete misanthrope. As soon as he gets off the plane in Sydney, Frank says something crude and outrageous that causes a severe public backlash. His response is to hole himself up in his Sydney hotel and sulk while Rod tries frantically to figure out what to do. This movie also has Portia de Rossi just before Arrested Development and her becoming Ellen DeGeneres' partner. Did you even know Portia was Australian? You can't have if you only know her as Lindsay Bluth Fünke. All the Way was pretty decent, although I'm not sure how much I'd've liked it if not for Rose Byrne. I'm not just saying that either. She's sort of the force behind Rod and helps him finally take a stand to Frank.

By 2006 I was caught up on her career. Since then, she's landed supporting roles in stuff like Marie Antoinette, 28 Weeks Later, and Sunshine, but nothing that comes close to Wicker Park. Sunshine came out in June of 2007. It was right after that when the first season of Damages premiered on F/X. At first I wasn't going to watch it. I knew Glenn Close was in it. You couldn't escape all the billboard and magazine advertisements. But that's just it. Those ads only trumped Glenn Close. I suppose that's understandable. Rose Byrne was still a pygmy in the acting world next to Glenn Close. Then, just before the first episode, I was at work reviewing a site that had a banner ad for Damages. I clicked through just to see what the fuss was about. Right away, right on the home page, I saw that Rose Byrne was playing the other female lead. The show's protagonist, in fact. I knew I had to watch it. Thankfully, the writing turned out to be top drawer. I'd be hooked on this show even if Rose wasn't in it. Since Damages, her movie career's been somewhat quiet, at least in the U.S., although on IMDb I see she's been making other stuff in other countries, like Just Buried, a dark comedy from Canada with Graham Greene.

Now you can see why I simply couldn't pass up the chance to see her in person tonight, my typical Friday night exhaustion be damned. I'm glad I did too. Adam turned out to be a pretty decent flick, not at all the typical romantic comedy I was expecting. It didn't end the way I thought it would. And the title character was extremely well played by English actor Hugh Dancy. I'm pretty sure this is the first American role I've ever seen him in.

The story kicks off with Adam's father having just died, leaving him independent for the first time ever, a huge deal since Adam suffers from Asperger's. And then Beth (Rose Byrne) moves into an apartment in the same building. Adam's immediately smitten but has no idea how to bust a move. In no time Hugh Dancy vanishes into the character. Well done. Rose Byrne was adorable as usual. The story's got this pretty significant subplot with her character's father, Peter Gallagher, in hot water for financial fraud or something. That case sort of serves as a frame for Beth to start relating to and confiding in Adam more. You get the picture. Or do you? Again, it won't turn out quite the way you think, although it is a happy ending for all. Just don't lose sight of the two leads' career dreams. Adam's all about outer space, studying the stars. The second time they meet, he's on his laptop perusing the most recent images from the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. Beth, meanwhile, teaches at an elementary school, but what she really wants to do is write kids' books.

Okay that's enough about the film. I was somewhat disappointed, although not all that surprised, that writer-director Max Mayer did most of the talking. I mean come on, he wrote the original screenplay and then directed it himself, so of course he'd have a lot to say. Max hasn't done very much as either a writer or director. He directed an episode of West Wing, an episode of Alias, some other TV stuff. He did one indie movie about a decade ago. Not much at all really. And he looked to be in his fifties or so. Maybe he's got a good career in theater. I don't know. That was never said, nor was his professional past in general discussed much.

As for how he came up with the idea for Adam, it was thanks to NPR. That's cool, I listen to NPR just about every day during my drive to and from work. He said that although he's originally from New York, he's officially become an Angelino because he listens to NPR while driving around this big-ass city. Funny, I never knew that was something associated with living here, but if I'm not living proof of that theory, I don't know who is. One day during one of these drives, NPR did a story about this guy with Asperger's. Max listened, fascinated. By the time he got home, he knew what he wanted his next movie to be about. He said that he's a man who's not easily touched and for whom emotions don't come easy, but the Asperger's story on NPR really got to him.

Max did quite a bit of research on the Internet. As it turned out, though, he'd already done a lot of "research" as a teenager. Again, judging by his age, that would have to be decades ago. He said he volunteered at a camp for disabled kids. The term Asperger's hadn't been coined yet, but he said in hindsight, based on the reams of material he's read about it now, that's most likely what those kids had. In creating the character Adam, he drew just as much from those memories as he did from the research. Speaking of the latter, a lot of the sites he visited had video testimony from Asperger's patients. These videos helped Max quite a bit in developing Adam's voice and mannerisms and so forth. Asperger's patients tend to be quite good with computers. You'll notice this applies to Adam in the film. But Max did say that you have to take a lot of what the Asperger's patients say with a pinch of salt. They do live in their own world, after all. Not everything they tell you in their video testimonies is going to be reflective of reality. Because of that very issue, though, Max said the videos made him think of creating a sort of dual first-person point of view. You'll notice that in Adam, you can sort of see things the way Adam does. You come to understand his own unique logic. But then we also get to see what Beth is going through.

One thing Max said that I can't help but take with a pinch of salt was that, while writing Adam, he never thought of it as a romantic comedy. Come on, really? As a filmmaker, the man must go to movies a lot. You're sort of obligated to if you work in that business. It's like why a lot of writers are also voracious readers. But no, he insists he thought of this as a drama. He said this in response to someone in the audience asking about the unconventional ending. Why should he have a conventional ending, he said, if it never occurred to him that he was writing for a genre with certain conventions? Well okay. As a writer myself, I can kinda sorta relate to how you can get so engrossed in writing a narrative to the point that obvious, bigger-picture things never occur to you. Maybe. But they're supposed to occur to you during all the rewrites. He did say that his producers and financiers told him to give the film a more romantic comedy kind of ending. Max caved and did it...but absolutely hated it. The happier ending felt forced so he took it back out.

One thing Max talked about that did impress me was how Adam was financed independently. That is, entirely outside the studio system. As someone who has designs on making an indie film myself, that's kind of encouraging. Even more encouraging is that Max himself didn't have to deal with the money people. His producer took care of all that. Wow, that's great. I hope when I write and direct my opus, that I can get a producer to raise the money. I've heard quite a few stories of directors who have to act as their own producers, even if they officially have producers. The movie business, huh?

He didn't write the script with any actors in mind, which a lot of screenwriters do. He certainly wasn't thinking of Hugh Dancy. The only thing Max knew him from was Ella Enchanted, where he plays Prince Charming. Max said his daughter dragged him to that. But then a couple years ago, when they were finally casting Adam, that flick Evening came out. His casting director was taken with Hugh's performance in that and how he held his own against Meryl Streep and Vanessa Redgrave. So they invited him to a hotel in New York and had a meeting and offered him the part. As for how they got Rose Byrne, she'd just finished the first season of Damages and was on holiday in India when her agent sent her the script. She liked it so much she cut her trip short.

The shoot lasted twenty-five days. Again, like the financing bit above, that is very inspiring. Twenty-five days?! And they only had one day of rehearsal. They couldn't afford the luxury of a month or more of poring over the script. They just had to dive in. When it premiered at Sundance this past January, Fox Searchlight scooped it up, but with the proviso that Max expand the ending a bit. Not change the ending like his financiers tried to make him do, but just build on the way it ends now. Fox agreed to pay for it. Max was happy to oblige.

Rose, who turned thirty exactly one week ago, said working on this film was "delightful," a welcome break from all the procedural stuff she's done, like Damages, Sunshine, and 28 Weeks Later. Her first day on the set became the second scene with her and Adam, when she gets home with groceries and Adam's on the front steps looking at images of Saturn on his laptop. One thing that struck her right away was that Hugh Dancy stayed in character between takes. She got used to it eventually, but that first day it was kind of awkward. She said she was wondering if the whole thing was a cruel joke. Seriously, though, she said she didn't get to meet Hugh, so to speak, until they started promoting the film a couple weeks ago. I don't know, I have mixed feelings about the whole method business. I always think of what Olivier told Dustin Hoffman while they were making Marathon Man in response to Dustin's thing about living the character. Olivier apparently said, "Dustin, my dear boy, why don't you try acting?" Speaking of promoting the film, Hugh was with Rose and Max last night at the Landmark over in West L.A. Why couldn't he make it tonight? I'm sort of getting the impression that he's not the easiest guy to work with, in spite of how diplomatic Rose tried to be.

A woman a few rows behind me asked about the music in the film, saying how much she liked it and so on. Max said yeah, well, he had a great music supervisor for this film, a woman named Robin Urdang. As it turned out, Robin was sitting right next to the woman who asked the question. This woman was a friend of hers or something. I wish I'd gotten a better look at Robin. I've just looked up her credits on IMDb. The woman's done a ton! She's been a music supervisor or consultant on all manner of movies and TV shows going back to the early nineties. Now there's someone whose career is obviously recession-proof. Max did give an answer about the song selection, especially about the songs he picked for the sadder scenes. He said it was harder than you'd think to find the right songs, but maybe that was partly his problem because he's....what's the word? He had a hard time describing himself. Rose suggested "neurotic." That made him blush a little. I'll take that to mean he is neurotic. Quite frankly you sort of get that feeling after listening to him for a while.

Someone asked about any feedback they'd gotten from the Asperger's community. Both Max and Rose couldn't say enough about how positive it's been. They've been getting great feedback from all over the place, including other countries, kudos for how accurate and sensitive Max drew Adam as a character.

As for their next projects, Rose hasn't missed a beat. She just wrapped a comedy called Get Him to the Greek, coming out next summer. It was directed by Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Nicholas Stoller, co-written by both him and Jason Segel, who also wrote Sarah Marshall. Sucks that it won't be out for a full year. As for Max, he's working on a script about this guy in 1880s Chicago. He'd also like to direct it, but he can't get his agents to take him seriously whenever he pitches it, so he's on the prowl for other people's scripts he might like to direct.

My Brother Bryant

"Thomas?"

"Yes?"

"Bryant is dead."

That exchange will live with me til the day I die.

My father called me at work on Monday, July 13, 2009, to tell me that my brother was dead.

Bryant passed away earlier that afternoon. He was 38.

No, it wasn't expected.

Yes, it was a complete and utter shock.

All the more so because my father had just been down to Florida to see him. He, Bryant, and my niece Kalyn spent all of Saturday (July 11) together. They went to Disney's Animal Kingdom and then had dinner with my brother David and his wife Amy. Indeed, my father thought Bryant was looking healthier and more fit than he had in past years, when he'd looked rather gaunt.

And then on Monday the 13th, my father flew back to Jersey. When he walked into the house, my stepmom Marlyn was on the phone with an ER doctor from Cape Coral. As a side note, Bryant's ex, Kalyn's mom, lives in Cape Coral. Bryant had driven down there on Sunday the 12th to drop Kalyn off there.

Marlyn gave the phone to my father.

The ER doctor told my father that Bryant was gone.

Before dawn's crack the next morning, my father hopped back on the plane to go back to Florida.

The funeral was Thursday, July 16. I was there, as were many other relatives from my father's side.

I did not give a eulogy. I wanted to, but my brain hadn't processed my brother's passing sufficiently enough to allow me the emotional leeway.

My father spent all day Wednesday the 15th cooped up in his motel room at the Red Roof Inn in North Fort Myers writing and rewriting a eulogy with my aunt, his kid sister, providing moral support.

I got there that night.

Dad told me he was in no shape to read the eulogy at the funeral. Could I do it? I said sure before I even read it.

As it turns out, I was able to read it all the way through in front of the seventy or so attendees without breaking down.

Since then, I've thought about what I'd've written had I more time. This is what I've come up with.

Let me preface my thoughts about Bryant by saying that, in general, I'm not a big fan of eulogies. As an avid reader and aspiring novelist, I'm much more partial to full, three-dimensional portraits of people, whether they be fictional characters in a story or the real flesh-and-blood type. Therein lies the great glaring weakness with eulogies. By definition, they're two-dimensional, and therefore incomplete. A eulogy could never hope to do justice to a creature as complex as a human being.

Accordingly, this isn't a eulogy so much as a remembrance. A character study, if you will.

One of the common denominators underlying people's recollections about Bryant was that he was one tough bastard. Hell, my mom dubbed him Double before he was ten, because he always got into "double trouble," so what does that tell you? This moniker stuck with him literally to his dying day. You can certainly add me to that chorus. During the mid eighties at 48 Broad in Mount Holly, New Jersey, I was in elementary school and Bryant was just starting high school. I won't make any bones about it. Bryant beat me up. A lot. Not with fists to the face or anything that would leave permanent damage. It was more like wrestling. My brothers and I were huge fans of the WWF (now called the WWE) at the time, so he'd be Andre the Giant to my....let's see....Missing Link? Anyway, and it would usually be in the first floor hallway, at night while my dad and stepmom were right there in the living room watching Nature and being scholarly. Indeed, I got so desperate for it to stop that I gave my allowance to my brother Matt, 48 Broad's other resident tough nut, so he'd protect me. I fought fire with fire.

I was short for my age, but I made up for it with width. I was one chunky little kid. People called me Captain Chunk after that character in Goonies. Plus, I had a bed-wetting problem, which didn't help my self-image much. Bryant, in stark contrast, was handsome and strapping, tall for his age. While that would've been enough to make him a lady's man, he was also one of those proverbial bad boys, which only strengthened the babe magnetism. Think James Dean, only with a blond mullet and freckles and a jonesing for music by Megadeth and Motley Crue. I remember the Motley Crue bumper sticker on his bedroom wall. It was black with a silver pentagram.

Now let's go back in time to put Bryant in better context.

He was born in Washington, D.C. on May 31, 1971. By the time he turned two, his parents were divorced, his mom had gone to Florida (a million miles away from D.C. when you're that young), his father had married another woman and had adopted that woman's three kids from her first marriage, and then his father produced yet another child (me) with that woman. This was by no means consistent with the worlds other people lived in. Bryant's nuclear home broke before he could really enjoy it. The odds were sort of stacked against him before he had a say in anything. By the time Bryant could walk and talk, his world had become confusing, and therefore frustrating, and it no doubt engendered some hard feelings. Perhaps those hard feelings translated themselves into his mischief. I'm not trying to defend his behavior (yeah right!), I'm just trying to show you what his world was like by the time he was aware of it. As the product of his father's second marriage, perhaps I represented to him the reason his own family didn't work out, and maybe that's why he vented a lot his aggression in my direction.

Let me give you perhaps my favorite example of his aggression. One weekend afternoon, I came up to the third floor to find him trying to fly. Yes, you read that right. He would take these running starts from the hallway into his bedroom and jump with his hands out and land on the ground, like someone sliding headfirst into second. I was like, "Uh, what's going on, Bry?" And he was like, "If you cut your palm, you'll have the power to fly." Now mind you I was seven or so, okay? And I was a big fan of the Superman movies. So yes, for about two minutes, I believed him. And I came pretty close to using the steak knife he had to slash a wound in my palm, no doubt his ulterior motive. But don't worry, common sense intervened. I ended up continuing on my way to my room so I could eat peanut butter cups or whatever (did I mention I was fat?). But I remember having a tiny doubt in the back of my mind: "If I'd gone through with it, could I have achieved flight?"

If you can believe it, though, the first thing I think of when you say Bryant's name is not his being mean, but his laugh. Bryant had hands down one of the best laughs ever. I'll hear it in my head till the day I join him. Sense of humor is a trait I value above all others. As Bryant knew practically from birth, this world can get awfully confusing. Without a sense of humor, what's the point? He had one of the best.

My last night with him in 48 Broad was a Monday night in the fall of 1992. I had just started my junior year of high school. Bryant was two years out of high school and had a warrant out for his arrest by the New Jersey State Troopers because he crashed his car into a parked Domino's Pizza delivery truck. A Monday Night Football game was on. The Atlanta Falcons were hosting their opponent in their brand new Georgia Dome. Bryant said there was no way the Falcons would let anyone beat them in their new house. He left for Florida just as the game got started. The Falcons ended up getting crushed by their opponent, but at least my last night with him in Jersey didn't involve me getting crushed by him. Far from it, we hugged and parted in good terms. How about that? Becoming adults!

Thereafter I only saw him sporadically. He came up for a visit in the spring of 1994, by which time we were living in nearby Hainesport in a brand new house and I was about to graduate from high school. I think the main point of his visit was to collect some stuff he'd left behind. One thing he couldn't find was his ten-speed. When he couldn't find it, he approached me in the kitchen in a very confrontational manner because he thought I had something to do with its disappearance. I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. Bryant could still be the same old Bryant.

Not so fast! The next time I saw him, at David and Amy's wedding in October 1996, he had a daughter! Holy shit! Did I mention people could be complicated? Of all the 48 Broad kids, Bryant was the LAST person you'd expect would become a soft-hearted, doting father. And he was doting. I could tell right away that for him, the sun rose and set with Kalyn. She was his everything.

But wait, Double got even more interesting over the years. The next time I saw him was at Grandfather Lady's funeral in January 2001. He and I shared a room at the Kenwood Country Club. Much to my surprise (and delight), Bryant had become an astronomy buff. You believe that? Astronomy! This guy! I've always been sort of a sci-fi/outer space geek. Viewing NASA's Astronomy Pic of the Day has been one of my daily rituals for years. But he knew more than me. He'd tell me about which stars belonged to which constellation. Which constellations you could only see in the Southern Hemisphere, you name it. Since then, as I've continued reading the explanations with each Astronomy Pic of the Day, I've discovered I already knew some of what they've said because of Bryant. Plus, he knew a thing or two about horticulture. As he and I were walking down the Kenwood corridors from our room to the lobby, he spotted this one plant in the corner and immediately told me its species name and all that. I also remember him talking in his sleep a lot. In fact, one night he didn't talk so much as yell so loud that he woke me up. I jerked my head up with a start only to see that he was still sleeping. His words were too incoherent to make sense of. I still sometimes wonder what he could've been dreaming about.

I only saw Bryant two more times after this.

For Thanksgiving 2003, we all converged on our nation's capital and stayed at the University Club. Byrant was thirty-two, the age I am now. He brought Kalyn, who was eight. This was the first time I'd seen her since David and Amy's wedding, when she was still just a toddler. We got along great. The night before Thanksgiving, we gathered up on the second floor of the University Club sitting around one of those big round tables. I sat next to Bryant and we just picked up where we'd left off at Grandfather Lady's funeral almost three years earlier. We got along great. Had some beers. Shot the shit. His trademark laugh was still intact. I established a decent rapport with Kalyn. On Friday night, the night before we all scattered back to our day to days, we gathered at Gordon Biersch in downtown D.C. Kalyn and I were at the same part of the long rectangular table. Among other things, we talked about what she had for dinner back home. She said, well, normally on Friday nights they'd have macaroni and cheese. "Kraft?" I asked, 'cause that's what I grew up on. Then Bryant chimed in. "No," he said. "Stouffer's. Because you can just peel off the plastic cover and microwave it." I could dig that. My dad included Stouffer's scallopped apples with the occasional meal when I was growing up in Jersey.

The very last time I saw Bryant was Saturday, December 24, 2005. He, my father, my brother Doug, and I went to see the Redskins host the Giants at FedEx Field. The Redskins actually won, which makes the day memorable right there since the Redskins don't generally win games. Per the family tradition, we got to FedEx hours early and did some tailgating and whatnot. Tailgating's always been my favorite part of the football tradition. Anyway, I asked Bryant about his mother, who was dying of cancer at that point. He expressed frustration at the hospital for their treatment plan. I don't remember the specifics, but he wasn't happy. I also remember thinking to myself that Bryant didn't look all that hot. Indeed, he was kind of gaunt. But that laugh was still there. After a few bottles of truth serum--I mean, beer--I told Bryant it was great to see him. I literally said it just like that, while we ambled to the stadium and up those endless and crowded escalators. "It's really great to see you, Bry." And he turned and laughed his trademark laugh. I'm still not sure what he meant by laughing. Was he not glad to see me? Or was that his way of reciprocating the sentiment? Bryant was the last person you'd find being maudlin, drunk or sober. In fact, wherever he is, he's probably laughing this very instant at how I'm sort of getting maudlin right now.

Yes, Bryant was tough. He could be difficult. But as I hope I've illustrated, he was also far, far more than that. Like any human being, he was complicated. And lest you forget, he was also two things that are more important above all others:

Bryant was Kalyn's father.

And he was my father's son.

Bryant and the daughter he left behind, my niece Kalyn, 14. This was taken in July 2008.

Gettysburg

In the German language, you'll find two words for "civil war." The first is Bürgerkrieg, which literally means "citizens war." That's the word they use for most civil wars.

For the American Civil War, on the other hand, they created a special word, a word they only use for our Civil War: Bruderkrieg, which literally means "brother war."

Therein lies why our Civil War, which lasted from April 1861 to April 1865, is a particularly poignant chapter in history. You had, literally, brothers and neighbors and friends split right down the middle by the South's attempt to secede from the Union. Perhaps no state symbolizes this more than Maryland. Whereas other states were categorically for one side or the other (whether their soldiers liked it or not), Maryland had a smattering of regiments who fought for the Johnny Rebs, and another smattering that fought for the Damn Yanks.

The side you fought on sort of depended on your home state as much as it did your belief in whether or not the South should become its own country, the Confederate States of America. One example that's relevant to Gettysburg is the friendship between Winfield "Win" Hancock and Lewis "Lew" Armistead. Before the war, Win and Lew were both stationed in Los Angeles. They became good pals. But then the Civil War started. Lew's home state was North Carolina. Win's, Pennsylvania. Oops. That meant they had to fight against each other. You talk about awkward farewells. Just before parting ways, Lew told Win that if he ever raised his hand against him in battle, "may God strike me dead."

The Battle of Gettysburg took place about halfway into the war, on July 1-3, 1863. To this day it stands as the most devastating battle in American history in terms of lives lost. 'Course there are two very good reasons for that. First, it featured Americans shooting other Americans. And two, it featured Americans shooting other Americans......for three solid days.

My father's been a Civil War buff pretty much since forever. When I visited him last Thanksgiving, I took some impromptu shots of his 2007 black Ford Mustang (which includes a racing kit, satellite radio, and a slew of other bells and whistles). I took the photos with my cell (Samsung Blackjack II). My father, whose technology learning curve may be a bit steeper than yours or mine, was blown away by the quality of the photos, and that I could easily snap them with my cell. A month later, I got him these two Gettysburg photography books, featuring photographs from the battle sites all around the town, one set taken just after the battle, and the other taken a couple decades later. After seeing what my cell phone could do, he proposed we conduct our own tour of Gettysburg and take photos at some of the sites included in the books.

I flew to my father's place in Jersey on June 30. The next day we got in the 'Stang and drove the four hours or so to Gettysburg, which is located right by the Maryland border in south central Pennsylvania. We took the scenic route through Amish country. Of course, scenic is the euphemism for slow, hence the four hours required to cover a hundred fifty miles. No matter, on the way back we took the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which required going out of our way a bit but still ended up getting us home in something closer to three hours.

The battle took place during the first three days of July, and those were the three days we were there, using those two books as our guide to visit as many sites as we could. You talk about authenticity: One thing we didn't know going in was that the days of the week we were there (Wednesday-Friday) were the same days of the week as in 1863. I'm not nearly as big a Civil War buff as my father, but I have to admit that was pretty cool.

Gettysburg is quite the paradox. On the one hand, it's a tiny town. Its name is synonymous with history, but you've still got about 7,500 people there going about their modern lives. It may not even be big enough to qualify as a town. But when you're there as a Civil War tourist, you're not thinking of it as a town. You're thinking of it as a field of battle, and by that measure, it is gargantuan. Seriously, it is almost beyond human comprehension that two separate armies, each exponentially larger than the town's population, converged onto this place with rifles and cannons.

Anyway, as you'll see below, my Blackjack II held its own. I snapped over eighty photos. We covered a lot of ground, me and Dad, both literally and in terms of replicating some of the photos from those two books. Yet we barely scratched the surface.

Gettysburg is the jaw drop capital of the world.

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Dad at the Cashtown Inn. Founded in 1797 and located west of town, it's now a restaurant and B&B. General Lee and the Johnnies stayed here on June 30, the night before the action started.

Taking a breather at the Appalachian Brewing Company, located right next to General Lee's headquarters.

Looking west on Chambersburg Road.

This is where the first melee of Gettysburg took place, between Union General Buford's cavalry scouts and Confederate General Hill's boys.

Dad with the Civil War photo book (which inspired this trip in the first place) in front of a statue of Union General Doubleday (the inventor of baseball) near where General Reynolds was killed.

Monument to the 95th New York regiment looking east into railroad cut.

Dad at the monument to the Iron Brigade.

North Carolina monument. One out of every four Confederates who fell at Gettysburg were from North Carolina.

Looking east from Seminary Ridge with the Pennsylvania memorial just visible on the right as that little white speck.

Me in front of the memorial to North Carolina. It was designed by the same architect who planned Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum, a first generation Danish-American who was a Confederate sympathizer.

Dad and me in front of the North Carolina memorial.

Memorial to Virginia. The North Carolina memorial is behind me. This area is where Pickett's Charge started on the third and last day of battle.

Dad aiming a cannon with the Virginia memorial in the background.

That's me chillin' by one of the cannons near the Virginia memorial.

Dad's Mustang parked near the North Carolina and Virginia memorials.

Dad in front of General Longstreet statue.

Black Horse Tavern. It is no longer a tavern, much to my parched chagrin.

Up the road from the Black Horse Tavern. It's behind the trees on the right.

Reenactment sign just up the road from the Black Horse Tavern.

Dad in front of the monument to Union General Reynolds. Reynolds was the highest-ranking officer killed at Gettysburg.

Dad's Mustang parked near the General Reynolds monument.

Statue of a general on a horse near the Gettysburg cemetery. Not sure who. It may be Doubleday.

Another officer on a horse near the Gettysburg cemetery. Is it Doubleday?

Facing east from those horseback-riding officers above. The cemetery is behind me.

Evergreen Cemetery Gate.

Emmitsburg Road looking east as General Pickett might've seen it.

The Lincoln Diner! Where else would you have breakfast in Gettysburg? This is where Dad and me breakfasted on Thursday (day two).

Looking west from Cemetery Ridge at the Cordori house.

Facing Little Round Top to the east from the (in)famous peach orchard.

Facing south from Wheatfield Road.

The 'Stang parked near the peach orchard on Wheatfield Road.

You can't go to Gettysburg and not hang out at friggin' United States Avenue!

A house west of the road near the peach orchard. Can you imagine living here when one of the most significant battles in our country's history is happening right outside your windows?

Same house as above from the side.

An impressive memorial to a Rhode Island regiment.

Dad at a New York artillery monument on Cemetery Ridge.

Facing Little Round Top from the west. During the battle, Little Round Top became the Union's extreme left flank.

Monument to the Bucktails (officially the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves).

Dad and his 'Stang near the wheatfield.

Me in front of the very impressive monument to the original three regiments of the Irish Brigade (the 63rd, 69th, and 88th New York regiments). That's an Irish Wolfhound at the base of it.

This monument's for the 116th Pennsylvania regiment, added to the Irish Brigade just before Gettysburg, as the original three had gotten pretty beat up during the first two years of the war. Shit, who wasn't beat up at this point?

Boy Scouts from Jersey taking a pee break near Slaughter Pen. What a name, huh? Slaughter Pen.

Slaughter Pen with Devil's Den in the background. Devil's Den was already called Devil's Den by the time Gettysburg happened. The locals had been superstitious about it for decades. Slaughter Pen, on the other hand, earned its moniker during the battle when it became the site of a particularly brutal melee.

Devil's Den. You can just barely see me there in that nook. I was wearing a dark shirt which makes me all but invisible.

If you look closely, you can see me sort of posing on Devil's Den with my arm out. Dad and I were trying to reproduce this old photo from the 1860s where this one soldier was posing the same way I'm doing here.

Dad at the scene of perhaps the most famous photo from the battle. In the original photo, the body of a Confederate sniper was sprawled here. The photographer actually found the body out in the field behind me, and then positioned it here. The body had no ID, so the photographer was lamenting that some poor mother would never know what happened to her baby boy.

There's me at the same sniper spot.

A pair of reenactors hanging out on top of Devil's Den. Dad and I called them ghosts. On Friday, the day we left, the official three-day reenactment of the battle began. I'm not sure why they didn't do the reenactments on the same three days as the battle. I suppose the weekend was more convenient.

Dad at the monument to the 20th Maine regiment on Little Round Top. This regiment was the extreme left flank of the Union Army. Had they fallen to the boys from Alabama, Gettysburg, and by extension the entire war, may have turned out quite differently.

Facing Devil's Den from the top of Little Round Top.

Looking northwest from Little Round Top. These photos don't do it justice. The views really were great.

Facing west from the north end of Little Round Top.

Statue of Union General Warren on the north end of Little Round Top. When I took this photo, a couple in their thirties or forties from Florida was talking behind me. I'm assuming they're from Florida because they both wore Florida State University T-shirts. Anyway, the guy was really bitter about the battle at Little Round Top, which took place on the second day of Gettysburg. According to him, had the Rebs gotten to Little Round Top just ten minutes sooner, they would've won. Seriously, he was bitter. He was cussing and all that. Hilarious. Talk about needing to let go.

This is as far north on Little Round Top as you can get. Behind me there's a steep drop. This monument here honors the Union's second division.

Indiana monument near Spangler's Spring.

Dad standing at a monument to one of the Massachusetts regiments near Spangler's Spring, pointing toward the Indiana monument above. As with me and the Devil's Den photo, we were trying to reproduce an old photo, in this case from the 1880s when this monument was dedicated. This monument was the first ever at Gettysburg dedicated to a particular regiment. Today Gettysburg has tons of regimental monuments all over the place. I wonder what it's like to live in a town like that.

And here's Spangler's Spring itself. At the time of the battle, soldiers from both sides used it to get water. Which might explain why it's all dried up today. A lot of soldiers at Gettysburg, and they were all obviously parched.

There's that Mustang again! It gets around, doesn't it? That's the Indiana memorial behind it.

This is where President (formerly General) Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower retired in the 1960s. His family descended from German immigrants who settled near Gettysburg. He'd been in love with Gettysburg his whole life. Dad and I took a break from all the battlefield stuff so we could take the Eisenhower tour. You can catch the bus to this place from the Gettysburg visitor center. Among the rooms in there is the TV room where Ike liked to watch Gunsmoke and other serials. It's the same room where he drank beer and shot the shit with the likes of Nikita Khrushchev and Chiang Kai-shek. I'm not kidding.

The monument to Maryland which, unlike any other state, had some regiments fighting for the North while others fought for the South. That's messed up, man.

That's me chillin' out at a house that originally belonged to some poor widow. During the battle, Union General Meade, who was basically in charge of the entire Union side, used this house as his HQ. It didn't do him much good. On day three, during Pickett's Charge, the Rebs were firing cannonballs that landed here. Meade was lucky to get out of there alive.

Dad at Meade's HQ.

Me hanging out at the North Carolina monument at the site of Pickett's Charge.

Dad at the site where Confederate General Lew Armistead was shot and wounded (he died of his wounds two days later). Lew was well respected by his Northern counterparts. Union General Winfield Hancock was a close pal of his from their California days. Lew was by all accounts a decent guy. If you don't count the fact that he fought for the bad guys.

Dad in front of the (in)famous copse of trees, facing east across the field (behind me) where Pickett's Charge started. Pickett's goal was to reach this very copse. His men never made it. In fact, it was a complete bloody disaster, and I'm amazed Lee was stupid enough to think it would work. But I have hindsight, he didn't, so.

There's the Cordori house way out yonder.

Dad taking a stroll along the Pickett's Charge site. Charge!

While my dad hung out around the copse of trees and the other Pickett's Charge monuments, I high-tailed it over to this very impressive memorial to Pennsylvania. You can see this from quite a ways, and this was my only chance to check it out up close and personal.

Looking northwest from the top of the Pennsylvania memorial.

Now looking south.

This sign's at the top of the stairs inside the Pennsylvania memorial.

On my way back down the stairs I took this shot facing west over the top of Lincoln's head.

Facing west from the bottom of the stairs.

One more for the money. That's Lincoln on the left. You can see the windows where I snapped that one shot above.

This monument's right by the copse of trees. I think this one just honored the North in general, or those from the North who fought against Pickett's Charge.

Dad reading that giant tablet on the other side of the copse from where the Charge was repulsed.

And now we head into the Soldiers National Cemetery. It's depressing as hell, but you gotta do it, right?

Each grave had its own little flag. In the distance dead ahead you can see the Soldiers' National Monument.

More flags. A flagscape. Is that a word?

A mass grave for unidentified Ohioans.

In case you wanted to see more flags...

Did I mention it was depressing?

Ugh.

The Soldiers' National Monument at the center of the cemetery. This is where Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address.