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-This is my goofy brother. -Duh!
That’s me, 12-year-old Mike Lobel.
-Hi, I’m Michael, and I’ll be your host for the evening.
And this is my family.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.LT
Say hi, Mom.
-This is Mommy Susie speaking.
On the surface, we just appeared to be a normal family.
And we were. And we are.
I took you to school, did the groceries.
We had birthday parties for you.
My little brother, sister, and I
grew up in Parkdale, in the heart of Toronto.
My little sister Melanie was fearless.
Be careful!
I wanted to do the things that you were doing,
and I wanted to do them better.
Oh, well, it comes out now for the first time!
My brother Elliot was shy.
-Say hi. -Hi.
-Wave. -Wave.
He was always really taking everything in.
I think I was a pretty goofy kid.
A good kid.
Definitely not rebellious.
I was the rebellious one.
Say Merry Christmas.
No...
-Merry Christmas.
I had big feelings and a lot of energy.
You were eight when you somersaulted off the bookcase.
You ended up in the hospital.
I was a handful, but my mom wouldn’t admit it.
Those were beautiful times. It was bliss.
Yeah, it sounds very normal and nice.
It was all about taking care of the kids, for me.
And Dad was responsible for...
um, you know...
There would be times that he was gone and absent.
I couldn’t understand where he was.
I didn’t really have a very good idea
what my dad did.
And when people asked, what did you say?
-Well, that he was a taxi driver.
Insurance was one of them.
He was in the antique business
and went on the road.
The stock market.
-Gambling.
Actually, I don’t even know if any of that’s true.
Is it true Dad worked for a travel magazine?
-No.
Dad had a drawer of, like, phones.
We’d be having family dinner,
a random cell phone would go off,
some new ringtone.
Any point, like, I looked over, like,
you were kind of just, like, head down, whatever, don’t...
Like, don’t acknowledge anything.
And Dad wouldn’t flinch.
Like, he wouldn’t move.
We were not allowed to be going upstairs.
There was a Post-It on the staircase,
and I would get the response, "Don’t come up!
"Don’t come up."
We all lived under the same roof,
but we couldn’t tell you a lot about him.
He just seemed different than other dads,
in ways we didn’t understand,
and still don’t.
See, that’s the thing...
None of us really know
who Dad is.
It’s taken me a long time to decide
I want to have children.
-Are you ready? -Yeah.
I’m afraid of messing them up.
No, it’s okay, it’s okay.
Okay, that one’s fast.
What kind of father will I be?
-I love doing this.
When I was 14, I learned that cameras
don’t just record reality.
Get outta here, Elliot.
They can change it.
With this accidental cut right here...
Elliot...
I was hooked.
I did what any angsty kid might do...
I started making my own movies.
In the movie, I’m gonna be wearing
those shoes, so it’s carefully planned out.
You gotta bring a knife and ketchup.
My brother and sister were my first film crew.
- Ready? - Yeah.
Action.
Ooh, the cat!
I kept trying to will my toys to life
by filming them.
Little worlds I could disappear into.
Then eventually, I disappeared into characters.
When I was 16, I landed an agent,
and I got to play Jay Hogart for seven seasons
on "Degrassi: The Next Generation."
A Canadian success.
It was amazing.
I was doing what I loved to do:
telling stories.
But there was always one story I always felt I couldn’t tell.
My own.
To tell it, I need my family’s help.
I’m not sure I’ll get it.
Hey.
-How’s it going, man?
- Good, what’s up? - Not much.
Just, uh, digitizing some of our old stuff.
Nice.
Yeah. Uh...
I guess my question is, would you be willing
to sit down on camera, if I come to Montreal,
to talk about it?
I don’t want anything to do with it.
Are you serious?
Yeah, I’m gonna be running for office.
Seriously, though.
Yeah, I mean, sure, why not?
You can interview me.
Would you and your husband be cool to talk?
Yeah, he can’t be associated with it at all.
And that goes for the whole family?
Yes, no, you cannot use my children’s faces on it.
Okay.
Yeah, that’s a hard no.
- Got it. - So just you, then?
- Just me. - Okay.
I think I need to do this.
Something that Dad and I shared for many years, and only us.
That just leaves my dad.
Rolling on A, rolling on B.
My siblings and I have never really talked
about our dad’s secret.
What do you think we’re here to talk about today?
We’re here to talk about my dad.
How does that make you feel?
-It makes me feel nervous talking about this.
I don’t expect them to open up right away.
I didn’t tell my wife Mika about the secret
until just before we were married.
I was 38 years old.
I don’t know when that started.
That feeling of like, uh, you know, trying to be careful.
We all have our reasons.
When I was ten, I asked my dad what he did for a living
for a "take your kid to work" day school project.
He yelled at me.
I never dared ask again.
Now you can go run.
But I could tell something was up.
I knew you were going through the same thing
that I was going through.
At that moment, we kind of made it a quest
that we were going to figure out what our dad did.
I started to recognize mail
that would have a different name.
I thought that he was different people.
The upstairs, it was not quite finished.
Mom and Dad’s ensuite bathroom that never got done.
-Remember the Jacuzzi?
There was a roughed-in bathtub.
It had, like, this wood on top of it, covering it.
I don’t think I looked under that.
I knew it was something that we shouldn’t know about.
I never really wanted to snoop so hard,
but I felt like, "I have to just look."
And I go to lift it up.
I don’t know what I saw.
As a kid, you kind of absorb this energy
of your surroundings.
We weren’t just absorbing energy.
There was a long list of instructions we had to follow,
no questions asked.
I’m serious. Don’t forget.
The safety things are most important, okay?
Leave the outdoor lights on. Put the alarm on.
Keep the blinds down.
We had an alarm system,
and that alarm system had to be kept on all the time.
Not just at night; all day.
It felt like he was
going a little bit overboard with details.
Could I have asked what he does?
There was a lot of times that we tried,
and we got shut down.
Dad could at times be verbally volatile.
There’s always that thought of, like, you know,
what if he directs his anger at me?
When he was like that,
he could yell and slam doors,
or leave the house in a rage.
I feel like we were just so programmed.
"Don’t acknowledge what is happening."
Yeah, our friends all knew what their parents did for work.
But we had no clue.
-And it made me feel very uncomfortable.
I made something up,
which was the first time
that I lied to protect myself and my family.
We were taught to keep our heads down
and our mouths shut.
But I just couldn’t do it.
There I was, on a hit TV show,
drawing attention to myself,
standing in the biggest possible spotlight,
but I was afraid of who might be watching.
-I had recurring nightmares.
Mine were about being taken for ransom.
I don’t know who would be taking me.
For me, the nightmares started
when I was ten.
I had the same one for 25 years.
I’m a kid, and the front door of my house is being kicked in.
All kids have nightmares.
They see things that aren’t really there.
But this wasn’t our imagination.
It was real.
I found this tape in my parents’ basement.
Just read the title for me.
-Oh my God.
Okay.
What does it say?
This is Melanie Cassandra Lobel.
"Give to police if either are abducted."
This is Michael Ryan Lobel.
No birthmarks or scars.
Seeing my sister like this hits me hard.
My parents thought lying was the best way to protect us.
My mom doesn’t feel that way anymore.
But we’re doing alright.
We’ve lived in the shadows for so long.
I can’t do it anymore.
I can’t go to my deathbed with this shadow hanging over me.
I secretly record my parents’ conversation.
I’ve had anxiety my whole life trying to keep it...
I understand that, I understand that.
...under wraps. And it’s killed me.
So I want to be free of it.
My dad finally agrees to an interview...
but on one condition.
The footage stays in his safe until after he’s dead.
Lights.
So, if you were to honestly say
what the title of your job was...
-Mm-hm.
What would you say? "I was a..."?
-I, um...
What’s the term for that?
-Drug dealer.
-My dad was a drug dealer.
-If this doesn’t put me in jail, I don’t know what will.
My dad told me the truth a few years ago,
but he swore me to secrecy.
He only told my siblings recently.
I forget everything about the wording,
but I remember he told me.
-I thought, "Okay, this is just, like, a whole local thing."
I have no concept beyond that.
How did you start in the business?
-Well, it’s a little fuzzy about the...
how it... how it came about.
-Yeah.
Um, we’re gonna have to put ourselves back
into those places that we were in.
-Yeah.
You know, I’m giving you permission
to put yourself in some of those moments.
But first, you want me to go through Dante’s Inferno?
Well, your uncle Allan was in the pot and hash business.
So, he rubbed off on you?
-Oh, I’d say he had.
I was in my early 20s and looking for work,
and he came to me and said,
"Would you like to make some extra coin?"
He had me doing deliveries.
-You start doing deliveries. Then what?
-Just bigger deliveries.
- How much bigger? - Well, you know, I mean...
how much bigger? Um...
I don’t-- I don’t know how to answer that.
I mean, it was just like supply and demand.
-Well, listen, Dad, you’re not standing on a street corner
-selling dime bags. -No.
No, no, no, moving
different-size weights of things,
and moving them to different customers.
I know this won’t be easy.
My dad has spent his whole life evading questions.
Okay, so let’s just get back to how this stuff
is coming into the country.
It’s coming in myriad different ways.
- Yeah. - What are those ways?
Well, the planes, trains, and automobiles.
There’s things that kinda--
-But you’re not gonna tell me?
-I mean, you know, just, like...
watch the movies, you know?
They, uh...
It’s bugging me a little bit,
how you’re coming at this.
- What do you mean? - Well, tell me what you...
-You’re moving product from A to B?
You’re filibustering. You’re...
-There’s not much more to it, I’m sorry.
-Well, there is more to it.
My dad managed the distribution
of thousands of pounds of marijuana and hashish.
Well, no, but, you know,
I need you to talk about this stuff.
When Uncle Allan left the business,
my dad expanded.
He was importing product from Mexico, Nepal, Afghanistan.
But as his operation expanded,
so did the danger.
In the ’90s, marijuana and hashish were prosecuted
like cocaine and heroin are now.
Sentences could range from several years
to life in prison.
Watching his back 24/7 affected him.
He was paranoid.
This particular night,
your father was really freaking out.
He felt like there was a threat.
We dragged the mattress down the stairs
into our living room
because he just wanted to make sure that he could hear
anybody breaking in.
-I could feel the amount of tension at home.
Like, what are we trying to keep out?
By the time I was old enough to understand
some of what was going on,
I was hearing whispers at family events.
-This conversation is censored.
The secrecy started early
in my parents’ relationship.
And one day, my dad just disappeared.
It was probably a few months into dating,
and then I don’t hear from him.
He fell off the face of the Earth.
-Tell me about that.
That is the question you need to ask your father.
Can you tell me about the time that you disappeared?
- No. - Absolutely not.
I decide not to push my dad on this.
Instead, he offers to show me what a typical work day
looked like.
You leave the house, you get up.
Yeah.
-What’s your morning routine?
-If I was doing a delivery, I’d go to the garage,
and I’d pick up what I needed.
- Garage? - That’s right.
My dad had two garages
and another car we didn’t know about.
Right there.
So, that’s a pretty big size.
- Yeah. - I come in early morning,
I park, and I do my thing inside.
-Then what?
-Trains, planes, and automobiles.
- Can you give me the-- - sort of the quick play-by-play,
the run-through?
It turns out, he can.
-Um...
There’s always somebody bringing in product
from Pakistan, from Thailand, from Mexico.
Somebody had a load come in.
We figured,
"How are we gonna get that back to Canada in two days?"
And so we ended up leasing a corporate jet.
Dad starts telling me what he did, in detail.
He wants me to know how good he was at his job.
-They called me Swift Arrow.
"This guy’s, like, you know, just as fast as an arrow."
I was playing a role, and I got good at it.
In fact, people said to me, "You look like a narc."
I said, "That’s great." I said, "It’s working."
A week or two weeks later,
I’d get a call from somebody to meet me,
and I’d have a bundle of money.
Then I’d go home and relax, you know?
Dad’s back, and all of a sudden,
we’re packing our bags to the islands.
A lot of the people I worked with were married
or had families and kids.
And we’d come back and we’d pick up where we left off.
And of course, there were stressful times,
like the time that I ran into a store
to get something Mom asked me to get,
and I look...
The car is on the back of a tow truck
with about $350,000 of cash in it.
That caused some stress.
But I got it back.
Five, four, three,
two, one!
I just want to know
what risk it was to us, you know?
-Yeah, well, I’m trying to tell you the risks.
So, everything that I’m telling you about how I operated
my business, I kept everybody in the family safe.
So I must have done a good job.
He might be bending certain things
to make it seem less intense.
Or maybe he’s even tricked himself into thinking
things are less serious than they are.
-Aside from my paranoia,
you didn’t know or see things that happened.
I was just a little jumpy.
-No, but you answered the door with weapons sometimes;
you’d reach for some blunt object.
-Well, how often did that happen?
-It felt like a feature of my childhood.
No.
-I saw it happen.
What I’m saying is that some of the chaos that went on
in my business, I never brought that home.
-You don’t think you brought it home, but you did.
-No, you don’t know chaos until you’ve been in my business
with the shit that went down.
You have no idea.
That disappearance my mom talked about,
my dad tells me he was kidnapped.
-I was, you know...
abducted by bikers.
-He never told me that till we had been married.
Around about the time
he started dating my mom ,
he travelled to upstate New York
to pay an associate’s debt.
The bikers wanted more than he had on him,
so they took him hostage.
For three days, I was chained up in a closet.
I was expecting that to be the end of my life.
They took me to a payphone,
and I’m making phone calls to people I know.
The last person said, "Yeah, sorry, buddy,
"but I can’t help you."
And as soon as I heard that, and I realized this was the end,
that there was no way I was gonna get out of this,
they probably were gonna kill me,
I just dropped the phone and ran.
I didn’t care what they were gonna shoot me or whatever;
I was just running.
-And then I heard the car.
"I gotta get the hell off this road."
I saw a hill. There’s a house up there.
I started banging on the door,
screaming for somebody to let me in.
And the bikers, they pulled up the driveway.
And I’m yelling, "They’re gonna kill us!
"Call the police! They’re gonna kill us!"
Somebody gets out of the car and grabs me by the waist,
and they’re pulling me, and I’m hanging on to the frame.
Then the owner of the house comes out with a poker
from his fireplace,
and he’s hitting the biker, trying to get him off me.
He’s, like, trying to save me.
Come on! Run!
Let’s go!
If you hadn’t have gotten out of that situation,
then we wouldn’t be here.
-That’s correct.
My dad’s kidnapping governed my parents’ behaviour
for the next 40 years.
We were so diligent in watching over you kids.
And, see, we thought that we were sheltering
the three of you.
But you felt it.
As a parent, to think that that’s what was happening,
I thought, "Honestly, like, how dare you?"
If he was gonna get taken, how would the family survive?
How would Mom survive?
454 technically is a correct pound.
They always bust you on a Thursday night
or a Friday night.
Suddenly I’m getting half a lifetime’s worth
of overdue parental advice.
If you’re being tailed by somebody,
then you’re being tailed by a group of people.
Right.
Except it’s a crash course in smuggling.
I think I’ve convinced my dad that making this movie
will fix our family’s problems.
I may have convinced myself.
But Elliot thinks our problems go way beyond Dad’s secret.
-The secret is not so much what I was concerned with.
For me, it was more related
to just my relationship with Dad.
-Right.
Because I don’t trust him emotionally.
Mel thinks Elliot’s right.
It’s not about the secret.
It’s about something else.
It’s so hard to crack this, like, armored layer that he has.
And he does it for everybody externally out of the house,
but unfortunately, he does it with his own kids.
Yeah, it’s like he’s made a really good
version of himself.
And so it’s like, well, what is like the real person there?
It’s not that Dad had secrets.
It’s about what keeping those secrets did to him.
I think it’s normal to be angry,
but the way it was externalized,
it was just, like, explosive.
A lot of it was incredible shouting.
I had, like, a little blanket that I coveted.
Dad was mad...
Took my blanket and ripped it to pieces in front of me.
I can try, but I would be dishonest with myself
if I thought I could, like, fully trust this person.
The temper that Dad carried,
it was so big in the house.
You didn’t want to do anything that was going to push that
to the next level.
So, Mom and Dad were out; I would go around and tidy.
This was my way of feeling like I could control something.
-Control the chaos.
-That’s right.
-You got the brunt of it because you kind of push,
you know, the boundaries.
-Do you think we got along?
We didn’t get along during your teen years,
but that was because you were--
you were acting out as a teenager.
You think it was ’cause I was acting out?
-Well, it wasn’t my fault that you went all goth.
-Dad, you were trying to kick me out
since I was 13 years old.
He’d kick me out,
and my mom would let me back in.
Then, at 22, I just didn’t go back.
I moved in with my indie rock band
and we hit the road.
It wasn’t stable...
-Breakfast!
But I was free.
I do remember you coming back and saying,
"Thank you for that because it really helped me."
-I know you don’t want to go there.
-What do you mean? Is that not true?
-We’re at each other a lot.
I know, but is this about our relationship?
Did you ever ask Melanie and Elliot
how they felt growing up in those circumstances?
-Melanie’s a really tough egg to crack.
I can’t talk to her about anything.
Or she doesn’t even hear me, you know?
-But don’t you think that might have to do
that she’s got some feelings about it?
-Well, there’s no-- I don’t know what else I could do.
If Dad really wants to truly repair his relationship,
have the last chapter of his life
to be the most authentic chapter...
then he needs to stop pretending.
I suffer from cervical dystonia.
The involuntary muscle contractions
of my neck and tremoring.
I have to have injections every two months
so I can be free of the pain.
Turn a little bit to the right.
- Ah... - Your head.
-I’m trying.
I’m worried about you.
-Mm.
-A few years ago, you were in a really dark place.
-Yep.
My life is just running from different fears.
It was hard, just holding the secret.
It was too difficult.
I felt like "I don’t want to be here."
If it were all over,
I’d be out of all the challenges.
I wouldn’t have to face them anymore.
When my siblings and I realized
what was happening,
we got our mom help.
She saw a doctor who recommended
cognitive behavioural therapy.
And slowly, she got back on her feet.
So, can I have the other half?
My dad is a smart guy.
He knew we were all having problems.
He even knew where his problems came from.
They didn’t all come from dealing drugs.
My father was a straight arrow.
Everybody liked him.
I couldn’t stand him.
I hated him.
You know, he used to hit me.
He humiliated me.
If there was something you said he didn’t like,
that right hand went out and slap across the face.
I was on pins and needles always with him,
what to say and not to say.
I realized I could not handle school.
I couldn’t even, like, read assignments.
I was picked on, I was beaten up.
They called me "Dirty Jew,"
and... yeah.
Oh, yeah, they had all sorts of things to say.
So I ran away to join the ballet.
If you can believe it,
my dad’s first passion was dance.
Like, when they say somebody runs away
to join the circus, that’s what I did.
Yeah, never looked back.
I found a family that embraced me,
that didn’t judge me at all.
Over time, I started transforming myself.
It’s the first time I was actually doing something
where I was achieving a goal.
The one big one that stood out was doing The Ed Sullivan Show.
I was 15.
It was really exciting.
And then...
I ended up injuring myself.
I could barely walk.
I didn’t want to accept it, right?
I really needed to get it operated on,
but I couldn’t do it. I guess I was afraid.
I wasn’t dealing with the problem;
I was running away from it.
I knew that I can’t do it, that I can’t dance.
And I left.
Yeah, it was...
a kick to my ego.
My soul, really, because I loved dance;
it was my whole life.
My career ended after only seven years.
And then...
Allan popped into my life.
He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Why didn’t you stop?
Take the safer route?
-It’s all I knew how to do.
And at the same time, I also believed in it.
So I was kind of like a minor crusader at the time.
I thought it should be legal, and it shouldn’t
be anybody else’s business.
-I don’t agree with it.
Now it’s spoken of as being legal,
but that’s now, that’s today. That’s present day.
There’s such a sense of pride that he carries
about what he did, a dismissal of
how this has affected the entire family.
He was always caught in this quagmire
of having to support a family.
He never had confidence in himself to do something else.
"Seven Point Cannabis."
It’s kind of a classy-looking joint.
-Yeah, very.
My dad quit the business
years before legalization.
Eventually, your dad wanted out.
The bad elements started moving in.
The bikers, the Mafia.
Man, I don’t want to be in this business anymore.
When my dad opens up about his past,
I can empathize with him.
I can identify.
And I’m not alone.
I’m very hard on myself when that temper comes out.
And unfortunately, it happens with, you know,
partners that I’ve been with.
Yeah, that’s a side of me that I don’t--
I really don’t like.
-Mm-hm.
I don’t have it at all.
And I also feel horrible about it,
and I’m trying really hard.
-Same.
Both my sister and I have carried our tempers
into our adult lives.
We want to be better.
There’s a strange comfort in saying it all out loud,
and I wonder why we haven’t all sat down to talk.
What I was saying before about Melanie and Elliot,
we haven’t sat down...
-That’s right.
-...and talked about this as a family.
- I know. - I know that.
-At all. -No.
The two of them are so hard to get through to.
I just think if you open the door to them
and just say, "I want to talk, I want to hear from you,
"I want to know what you think, and I want to just listen,"
I think that would be really powerful.
-Yeah, I think it would be good.
But... we weren’t good.
After a crew member misplaces my dad’s car keys,
my dad loses his temper...
and quits the film.
Oh, it’s him.
Hello?
-What didn’t I understand about what--
-They’re on their way right now, Dad.
I’m not sure I want this anymore.
You’re never going to feel the closeness
that you think you have with your children.
And if you want to take that to your grave, be my guest, buddy.
Now I feel foolish
because Dad will never change.
But Michael, there’s nothing you can do about it.
I actually think if Mom wasn’t around,
he probably would never call us.
He wouldn’t.
This is always the risk with my father.
If you push him too hard, he walks away.
It’s like disappearing is how he survives.
He’s done it with Damian, my older half-brother
from my father’s first marriage.
Merry Christmas, guys!
They have a very complicated relationship.
My father supported Damian financially,
though they’ve sometimes been estranged.
When I was a kid, I asked him what you did.
And what did he say?
"I don’t know what Dad does."
Right, so, and he still doesn’t.
Why haven’t you told him yet, though?
-I don’t consider him part of this family.
-But he is your son, and surely--
-Yeah, but he wasn’t part of my life.
He was a distant relative, really.
It’s not the same dynamics, and I certainly
wouldn’t have told him before I told you guys.
Would you consider telling him now?
I have no reason to tell him outright.
I can relate to Damian.
My dad blows up,
and then it’s like it never happened.
It’s his pattern.
Were you expecting something to come out of this?
What were you thinking?
I was hoping to, like, come out of it feeling closer.
-A-ha.
-I thought it was happening, and then we had that blow-up.
Yeah, that blow-up just had...
All that had to do with just me panicking on losing control.
And I’m sorry I took it out on you,
but it was really me I was angry at.
It reminded me of, like, old Dad.
-The old days? -It scared me.
-That won’t happen again. Trust me.
Listen, I want to have a relationship with you.
-Yeah, I know. I do, too.
-Because you and Zaide didn’t really get along very well.
-That’s what also hurts, is when I behave the way I do with you.
He did shit like that, so...
-Is there a way that you could see him as just a person
that’s flawed, like me, like you, in that way?
-Yes, yeah.
-That maybe he also didn’t like himself
when he behaved like that?
- Yes, yeah, yeah. - He talked one day--
I think he was saying to me, he said,
"I’d like to know what it is you do."
Your dad?
-Yeah, like, "Is there something I could do?"
He drove product across the border for me.
The best profile is like a senior citizen.
He’d never done anything dishonest in his whole life.
But his reasoning was he wanted to spend some time with me.
Your dad literally became a drug mule.
He went to those lengths to connect with you.
-Yeah.
And you’re doing this to connect with me?
All right, I get that.
Yeah.
My dad decides to give me back the footage...
- Okay. - There you go.
...while he’s still alive.
-Don’t lose ’em.
My siblings agree to talk to my dad,
but only if he’s the one who asks them to.
Am I going first?
He does.
- Hi. - Come on in.
Mom, do you want to sit over there?
Dad, you can sit here.
I guess I’ll start with...
how are you guys feeling?
-Nervous.
You know, I really don’t know
how it affected the three of you.
I want to hear that.
-I do have a question.
Were you in it before you met Mom?
-Oh, yeah.
- Yes. - Yeah.
It was around a month and a half
after we had been dating...
I sat her down and I told her what I did,
thinking, "Well, that will be the end of that."
Maybe that was your big mistake.
You never thought, "At some point,
"my kids are probably gonna wanna know,
"’Hey, what did you do for work all these years?’"
-Well, why didn’t you ever ask me?
-We did. -We did.
-Did you? -Yeah.
-No, I don’t even remember you guys
ever coming and confronting me and saying--
-Well, you don’t remember a lot of things, Dad,
but that happened. Like, that’s the honest truth.
It happened.
The fact that we even had to ask that question
is not common, right?
-It wasn’t a lie to me. It was just protection.
You know, making a bubble around the family,
where there was no risk of that outside world
getting in there and affecting you guys.
-I was so hung up over what you did
that I didn’t want to talk to you about anything.
- Yeah, I got that vibe. - We got that.
I was angry that that was a path that you chose,
knowing it could have the potential
of putting your whole family in jeopardy.
-Believe it or not, I believed in it.
I believed the fact that it was illegal was wrong.
Lo and behold, the country legalized it.
They caught up to my thinking.
-I can intellectually understand that,
but I feel like you’re downplaying the risks.
-I went to great lengths to secure our life.
Otherwise, you would have felt the bumps of things
happening a lot, like that were--
- We did feel the bumps. - No, but nothing specific.
Nobody kicked open the door, you know?
-But we had nightmares
that people were gonna kick open the door.
I understand, but nothing over that whole period of time
actually materialized.
I spent a lot of time, like, overhearing you guys getting in,
like, these incredible rows.
Yeah, I don’t know that I felt safe, like, emotionally.
Because you do understand that the environment
that you create at home impacts your children
and the people that live with you.
Very often, like, we were walking around on eggshells.
-We were your release.
So when you got home, like, you took it out on us.
You know, I was on fight-or-flight kinda mode.
-The consequences, though, were that, you know,
if you got busted, we might have no dad.
Well, listen, people get busted all the time,
and they still end up getting out of jail, and--
Do you think that would have not impacted us?
-Yes.
-Like, we would have been like, "Oh, our dad went to jail.
"Oh, yeah, okay." Mom doesn’t work...
I would have gotten out.
You had no control over that.
Elliott?
When you guys would have arguments,
like, I wish there was something I could have done.
-There was nothing you needed to do.
That wasn’t your responsibility.
-I’m sorry.
Are you okay, Elliot?
-I’m okay.
-I’m sorry for-- if it-- you know...
It’s all I have right now, is a sorry. And, uh...
I did it with Mike, like, a few weeks ago.
Yeah.
-And I feel terrible about it.
Yeah.
You know, when I look at Dad
when he’s like that,
and I feel like I’m looking in the mirror.
-You got that from me, unfortunately.
And you saw your dad do that.
I saw my dad do that.
Until it stops, it keeps going.
-Yeah.
- Right? - Until we stop it here.
-I trust that you love me.
I’m still gonna take time
to work towards trusting you more.
-Yeah.
-But I accept your apology.
-Thank you.
-You don’t have to put on any front anymore, right?
And I think that’s gonna take some time and work for you
to understand what that is.
-Yeah, it will.
-Because I’m not really sure that you even know
who the real Eric is anymore,
because of how many different faces you had to wear.
-Faces I wore. Yeah, yeah.
-That was the past. -Yeah.
-I’m assuming you don’t do this anymore.
- No. - Okay.
Just... just clarify that.
I know people don’t change overnight.
It takes time...
and courage.
My little daughter.
-Yeah, I know, Dad.
I hope you don’t have any other daughters.
That would be a real shock.
-Would it?
Yeah.
-I do.
-What? -Mm-hm.
You don’t want me to lie anymore, do you?
-Wow.
My dad’s not kidding.
He’s never met his other daughter,
but she’d be in her 50s by now.
I guess if you ask for the truth,
you have to be open to receiving it.
-Oh my God. Oh!
At least now we have a chance to understand it.
I guess I feel like less burdened about the situation.
There’s not, like, something in the back of my mind
that I’m, like, holding onto.
Telling each other the truth
has changed something for us.
It gave you and your siblings some kind of peace.
But what do you get personally for you,
that’s not about what your kids get?
It’s a weight off of my shoulders.
Yeah.
For what they did, to be able to raise three kids
that have all grown up into adults
and are having families of their own,
that’s, you know, pretty remarkable.
So, out of all of this, like, craziness...
We’re not that screwed up.
Now, I’m not sure I’m gonna show up
at premiere night.
- Why not? - Are you afraid?
- Yeah, no, no, I’m not-- - I’m not afraid anymore, no.
Michael!
What kind of father will I be?
I just hope I get to find out.
Start with your name.