Sonny Boy

Last night I was fortunate enough to catch a screening of the bio-pic, SONNY BOY, at the Newport Beach Film Festival. There was a warmth and beauty to this film that shown through in even in the most dangerous and sad moments, a joy that can be experienced only through absolutely honest discourse. Frye's work here can certainly be called courageous, as she deals with the very real troubles of a father who is suffering from Alzheimer's, in particular the fact that she has never really fully reconciled with him and his fading memory makes her efforts at this all the more difficult.

What makes this more than some sad and displaced Greek Tragedy, however, is the very real trip that the director and her father take through America, and American History. There is awesome footage in this film of many a young actor in the Golden Days of Hollywood, as well as of America's difficult transition through the Civil Rights movement. The camera's unflinching eye reflects alternately on the America of today, hopes lost and gained, and the America of Virgil Frye's colorful past, when those hopes were born.

In a very real sense, this movie is a tale of three trips. One, a journey of the mind and the heart, as one fades and the other beats as strong as ever -preserving some semblance of the man of old. A second journey is made in a very real and tactile manner across the varied geography of our great nation -from the Grand Canyon to the alleys of New Orleans to the brick churches of change in Alabama, and on... Finally, there is the perceptive journey through American history, as Frye traces her father's exploits throughout his life, and many of the lives he's touched.

Bravo, Soleil, and thank you.