You showed me what an echo looks like dancin’ in the shade
And how the snails get dressed up when they go out on parade
You’ve painted me a rainbow on the inside of my eye
So I can see it anytime in the blueberry sky
—“Blueberry Sky” (Thornton/Andrew)
THIS JUNE, HARRY WILL BE EIGHTEEN AND WILLIE WILL BE NINETEEN, which boggles my mind. Willie: piercings, tattoos, long hair, hanging out with his friends playing video games and still going to the mall, like a California rock-and-roll kid. He plays bass in a band that plays I don’t know what type of music, and every time I tell somebody what Willie plays in front of him, he says, “No, Dad, don’t be an idiot, it’s not called that, it’s called (whatever else).”
Then my other son, who never talked to me much about what he did in school—he’s very quiet—just graduated from the Explorer Program for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Association and wants to join the Marines and then become a deputy sheriff. I think the only reason he wants to do it is so he can arrest his brother someday. I’m pretty convinced of that.
I never saw that coming with Harry. This shy, quiet kid who just had a little skateboard shop in his house, working on his skateboards and shooting basketball, and all of a sudden here he is, all buff with a drill instructor.
And then there’s little Bella, who belongs to me and Connie. In this house it’s me, Connie, Bella, and Willie. It’s funny having a seven-year-old daughter and an eighteen-year-old son living in the same house.
Bella wants to be a paleontologist, and whatever you call a butterfly-ologist. She raises caterpillars to butterflies, and they become chrysalises and fly around the yard, then come back and make more butterflies. We’re always buying milkweed plants for them. She knows so much about animals. She’s friends with Dr. Scott Sampson, the paleontologist who does Dinosaur Train. That’s my seven-year-old’s friend.
When we were making Jayne Mansfield’s Car, Duvall wanted to know what we were doing one day. He wanted me to go eat meat with him or whatever because he’s obsessed with meat. I said we were going to a botanical garden, where they have an endangered-frog thing where they’ll take us behind the scenes. So Duvall and Luciana, his wife, actually ended up going with us to this thing, along with my old buddy Barry Markowitz, my cinematographer. Bella takes them into this frog thing, and I guess they thought they were going to go into this little frog display and Bella was going to say, “Looky, Mommy, look at the frog!” She gave Duvall and Barry a lesson on amphibians that you can’t imagine. She won’t watch cartoons, except for Dinosaur Train, because it has real stuff in it too and it’s educational. She’ll only watch educational programming. She watches this series that Oprah Winfrey does, Life, and she watches Planet Earth. I’ve learned more about science through my seven-year-old in the last few years than I ever learned in my entire miserable career in school. This beautiful little seven-year-old is the center of my day, every day, because Willie is off with his pals doing stuff. The boys and Connie take center stage at night when Bella is asleep.
I’m proud of these kids. They’re amazing in their own very, very different ways. They really change your life, and you never stop worrying again, believe me, because you never know what road it might go down. I am trying my best as their dad, but I believe these kids are going to be okay because I’m also their friend. But not on Facebook.
I hope you’ll forgive me if I talk too much
But it’s been bottled up inside
You see a little part of me is out of touch
Since a pretty big part of me died
To tell you the truth, I’m kinda glad you’re here
Soaked to the bone or not
At the moment it seems to be pretty clear
We’re the only friends we got
—FROM “DEAD END DRIVE”