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			AND BABY MAKES TWO

Tell us what you think about AND BABY MAKES TWO.

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09/01/2009

The documentary was one of the most compelling -- and heart-wrenching -- I've ever seen, at times almost too painful to watch. The brutal treatment of the children by the schools teachers amounted to nothing less than state-sanctioned, institutionalized child abuse, all the more shocking because of the apparent complicity of the parents in their children's physical and mental torture. If ever there was a need for an international PETA-like group that might intervene, expose, and put an end to such barbaric exploitation of helpless animals -- human or otherwise, wherever they occur, this is surely it!

01/26/2009

So far everyone one want to know the truth when it was just the beginning!This is a god story in history.

01/01/2009
Reed
LA,CA

two years ago -- almost to the day -- i was first introduced to john fante. it was during a short stay with my friend in edinburgh, scotland. the friend had a small flat with two roommates and (lucky for me) an extra bed to pretend was my own. when he needed to go to london and see his parents, he left me his key and his roommates trusted me to come and go as i please with the acceptance of a small 20 pound stipend for water and such.

my time was free to be seized or wasted or halted altogether. my ambitions were low being on holiday, however, so i spent the majority of my time rolling cigarettes (my friend's female flat-mate had to teach me due to the ungodly cost of packaged smokes in scotland), pacing the city, and reading.

my friend's other roommate was named darius and was out-of-work having just returned from london himself for several months. being that we were both free of any significant duties, we drank whiskey and wandered around or discussed music or books. one day, he noticed a book
of bukowski poetry i had been reading. he asked me how i liked him, i said he's always great, and he finally aked one of the best questions anyone has ever asked me, "have you read any john fante?"

i was 21 years-old. i had just moved to los angeles six-months earlier from my home town of rocklin (as fante called it) or boulder, colorado. darius pointed out all the obvious similarities in our lives (the differences were equally obvious) and disappeared to his room. he returned with "the brotherhood of the grape," "the wine of youth," and "1933 was a bad year." i devoured them.

since then, i have read virtually everything he has written and have become especially devoted to him. to be frank, he's an idol. in a time when everyone could use a little more of arturo bandini's naivete, bravery, hope, love, and honesty he becomes more and more poignant everyday.

my purpose for writing this verbose description as to how i discovered fante was this: i would really love to get my hands on a copy of this
dvd, but there appear to be none remaining. does anyone know where i could cop one of these suckers? please help a broke dreamer in l.a. get a little solace.

07/22/2008
Misako Miyagawa

For the uninitiated, Fante's work will have you bouncing off the walls... leave you breathless for the comic, cruel, incomparable beauty and insanity of life... and set you reeling and ecstatic for feelings you'd thought you'd lost, never had, or (if a brave soul be yours) have never left you. For "quiver” assured, keep Fante's prose by your side and know that they never will.

As a documentary, Jan Louter's film is a lovely surprise. It conveys Fante's artistry in shades aptly haunting and surreal, suggestive of life forces -- both within the man and in the curves and crevices of an elusive Los Angeles of yesterday and still today. Thank you, Jan Louter, for aiming your lens where light falls brighter for the dark, and for giving space – as do Fante's words -- to the angels of madness against the fiends of muted life. (And a special thank you to Professor Stephen Cooper, Fante scholar and biographer, for introducing Fante's work to me, among countless other grateful students and readers now and to come.)

It remains an incomprehensibility that the best of Fante's work -- after some three-quarters of a century -- has yet to be widely embraced for the literary landmarks that they are. He is among our country's greatest, most innovative and courageous of writers, one who dared speak from places within that few to none did in his time, have done today, or will ever do tomorrow. And this in a style (with respectful nod to Knut Hamsun and his novel "Hunger"), and with such singular command of voice, that even his most fevered admirers are left speechless, dumbfounded to describe the rapturous fullness of feat and wonder that suffuses his emotions and words in print. Such is the evocative power of Fante's gifts that they come to speak for aspects of our most intimate selves, the fury of dreams and shadow demons that few touch closely enough to let out.

Ahead of his time, Fante's work also gives frenetic, angry, painfully hilarious, and wrenchingly honest voice to the immigrant experience in the U.S., to the
pull of dual-cultural identity, and what it means to struggle to become whole by no one's definition but one's own. Yet this not as polemic, but rather as stalking, restless poetry, one that is wounded and wrestled and lived with in the psyche and flesh of the sublime everyday. This, alone, would be enough to keep Fante's words alive in the hearts and memories of generations firmly rooted in America and, too, of those who have yet to here arrive.

But such powerful threads are no more or less the primary focus in Fante's work than anything else to be found and treasured in the overall canvas that is his -- each strand of which is but part of a larger human whole. As with any writer of genuine distinction and merit, it is, first and foremost, Fante's mastery of prose – at once deliciously rich and deceptively simple -- that marks his work for the ages, the full panoply of his vision and feeling for life, the risks taken to shape raw, unbridled emotion into matchless prose and, above all, of getting it right, and getting it right on the page. May anyone who dares to feel and live truly find, and find home in, John Fante's words. And, in so doing, dare to feel and live truly, and with beauty, all the more.

07/11/2008

I feel as speechless as the children during practice ...I am shocked by the tenacity of the teachers and the demands they put on the children...then I am inspired by the children\'s sheer determination to meet the expectations of their teachers. The teachers are shown to have concern for the children, but not seemingly beyond the scope of their profesional purpose, which I suppose keeps them focused. I will never look at the chinese circus the same way again. I admire them all, and at the same time, I am disturbed by the agonies endured...all for the show.

07/11/2008

After a short time, I couldn\'t watch anymore -- it was brutal. The children were being tortured and clearly did not want to be there.

06/11/2008

Read Talkback for this film at PBS.org >>

05/03/2008

This is one of the most inspiring stories.

11/18/2006
natalie
flintshire

i was 20 when i found out i wa having a baby, i had been with martin for 2 years and thought he was the one, then the arguments started worse that they were before, we got our houde and my perants spent about £2k to do it up. he spent most of the time with his mates and i spent most of mine and the babys time doing the house with my mam and dad, martin hasd always had a good relationship with my rents so there was no excuse really, the when Izzi was 9 months old he left for his own life, so please if you no what is right dont be silly use a condom and the pill

10/23/2006
crystal

To all of you young ladies who think that you are ready to be a mom and ready to do it alone. I am 22 and 15 weeks I was told 6 months ago that I more than likly would neave have a child it broke my heart because like you I to wanted a child more than anything. At sometime. Then my friend and I started sleeping together and well here I am. Alone and scared to death. He has 2 childern already and really doesnt want any more.So there for befor you go and have these children that you cant afford by your self ask yourself would this really be fair to the child. I am going to have my baby because I make a good income and I have alot of help from family but if you dont have any of this I would say please sit down and think of the life you would be giving this child.if you cant give it the best is it worth the pain and heart brake of doing it. And if you can have children later . when your alittle older maybe that is what should be done. Just think of what you are bringing into this world, and remember that it depends on you and know one else!!!

10/13/2006

To Kristina, you are only 19 and you already have had an abortion under your belt? ...and now you are pregnant again? This is not a game!! I hear ya, you said you always wanted a baby ever since you were a kid! Now, that really freaks me out! Having baby is not like having a car that you always wanted when you grow up. Sounds to me you don't know what it is to be a parent. On top of that, you and him don't have money? Your boyfriend has a right to be concern since you have a history of abortion and you actually don't know what to do. You have to sit down with him and talk and work it out. If I were you, I will seek other source of help like parents or other relatives first.

10/09/2006
Kristina
Hollywood, Fl

I've been with my boyfriend for almost 2 years now.. I'm only 19 years old.. and my boyfriend is 23.. I want a baby soo bad for the longest time ever since I was a kid.. Well I've had abortions in the past.. and now I'm pregnant again and I'm 10 weeks today, I'm excited I want to keep it.. My boyfriend already has a 2 year old son.. and finacially were not so good, and I don't know if a baby is the best thing right now.. I need advice on what you should think I should do!! I love my boyfriend to death but he always assumes when I get pregnant I'm just going to run and have an abortion and I'm tired of it.. Well thanks for reading this pls help me make a decision..

09/14/2006
B

I have been with my boyfriend for 7 years and I keep asking him when are we going to have kids and when are we going to get married but Its like he is selfish, he has to make all the dicisions on his on and I have no say so. He says that he wants children and he wants to get married but he's not ready yet. I talked to a professional counselor who told me that I have to lay down the lines and leave him if I have to and then he will come back to me if I do this. She said because I have allowed this to happen for so long without laying down lines. I should have told him years ago that rather he marry me or im leaving and the same for kids. Then if he really loves me he will come back to me and make up his mind to marry me. Im not trying to force him to be ready but he rather is or will never be.

08/10/2006
sally
new york, ny

As a good girl who did the right things, followed the rules, achieved great things and became a lawyer, all I can say is I am now 41 and wish I could start over, knowing then what I know now about life and men. All I want is this: to find ONE single, heterosexual, kind man (not a husband, not a boyfriend), who, like me, wants a child. That's it. Practical, no nonsense, direct. Please help. Much obliged.

07/29/2006

I am a man and most of the posters here are women so there are certainly biased towards the male population. Many 4* yrs old women here are complainting about what happened to men. Does it occur to them that perhaps it is women who had changed? Don't people often hear women proclaiming their independence, their new positions in the corporate world?? It is rediculas to question men when over years, womean have the most change as a group! As part of the change, women are holding out for marriage and kids for as long as they can, and only when women decide to go ahead with their plans. For some reason, women think men would just wait around for women to make their decision.

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