Father's Day

Tahlequah, Oklahoma, 1986. After a very long day shooting standups and b-roll for an educational video, our crew staggered into a motel room for dinner. Ron Stone---Dad---was very hot, very tired, and, like the rest of the crew, ready to bite someone's head off. We were giving Dad such a wide berth that when he insisted that dinner consist of, in his words, "baloney and rat cheese", we readily agreed to such an unappetizing suggestion. So there we were, making sandwiches in the motel room, when I began to have trouble with the condiments. Anyone who even vaguely knows me understands that I often have trouble opening packets of ketchup or jars of mustard. The culprit this evening was a squeeze bottle, and as I labored to extract the mustard, Dad muttered, "Oh, for heaven's sake," and walked toward me.

At that instant the mustard bottle, well, exploded.

My last violent effort to shake it loose had resulted in a volcano of yellow that covered my father's shirt. And as I looked at him, his face beet red, I feared another volcano to follow. What resulted was far different.

Dad looked down at his shirt, looked up at the mangled bottle in my hand, and began to roar....with laughter. The rest of us joined in, and it seemed as if that little motel room in Tahlequah, Oklahoma was shaking. The whole ridiculous thing turned out to be a perfect ending for a rough day. And it's a wonderful example of one of Dad's greatest gifts. All through his life, he had the ability to take a tense situation and turn it around with humor. There are a great many elements that make up a successful production. A sense of humor is definitely one of them.

I hope on this Father's Day that you can take stock of the gifts that your father has given you----not the golf clubs or the toolbenchs---but all those life-affirming gifts of wisdom that only your dad can come up with. Billy and I are lucky. Each day we walk into the Stonefilms office and are, in a very real sense, surrounded by the gifts Dad gave us.

Happy Father's Day!