And why Michael O’Keefe will never say ‘no’ to Beaufort
Pat Conroy & Michael O’Keefe at the Beaufort International Film Festival in 2010
If you’ve lived in Beaufort for a while, you’ve probably met a few celebrities. For a small town in the Deep South, we’ve had more than our fair share passing through.
Because once upon a time, people made movies here. Big movies. Lots of them. That hasn’t been the case for many years now, but thanks to the widely acclaimed Beaufort International Film Festival, we still find ourselves occasionally hosting the likes of Blythe Danner, Andie MacDowell, Vanna White, and Gary Sinise… just to name a few.
But there’s one celebrity who keeps coming back, again and again, and that’s Michael O’Keefe. I have a feeling he would hate the term “celebrity” – and he doesn’t really act like one – so let’s just call him a working actor who happens to be pretty well-known.
I think I first met Michael O’Keefe at BIFF 2010. It’s hard to remember now, because our paths have crossed many times here in Beaufort. I know he came to the Pat Conroy at 70 Celebration, when Pat was still with us, and he also attended last year’s 10th Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival. There may have been visits in between, but I’m not really sure, because we’re Facebook friends, too, so I see him there from time to time.
I don’t know Michael well, but he’s always struck me as a stand-up guy. (Do people still say that? “Stand-up guy”?)
Michael O’Keefe lives up north, and is quite busy making movies and TV shows – I recently binged him on Apple TV’s Your Friends and Neighbors – so I asked him, via email, why he keeps saying “yes” to invitations from little ol’ Beaufort, SC.
“I owe Pat Conroy the kind of debt that can never be fully repaid,” he told me. “So, the day I say no to the Pat Conroy Literary Festival, or the Beaufort International Film Festival, will probably be the day they lay me in my grave.”
He’s talking, of course, about The Great Santini, the movie he calls “the launching pad” for his 50-year career. Adapted from Pat Conroy’s novel – which was loosely based on Conroy’s own life (okay, not all that loosely) – the film revolves around Michael’s character, Ben Meechum, and his troubled relationship with his fighter pilot father, Bull, played by Robert Duvall. The story is set in Beaufort and the movie was filmed here in the late ‘70s.
Michael says he and Pat Conroy enjoyed a fast friendship from the get-go.
“From the first minute I met Pat, he and I established a kind of intimate shorthand with each other. After shaking my hand, he looked at me and said ‘where did they find you?’ And he wasn’t asking whether I was from New York or Los Angeles. He was asking both me and himself how did we connect so quickly?”
That connection was forged, in part, by their similar experiences of childhood. Both were the sons of abusive alcoholic Irish-American fathers, so Michael was a natural for the role of Ben Meechum, the “Pat Conroy figure” in the movie.
And Conroy wasn’t the only one to process his childhood trauma through writing. Much later, in 2009, O’Keefe, who has an MFA in creative writing, penned a book of poetry called Swimming from Under My Father. He read a few of those poems at last year’s Pat Conroy Literary Festival, and left the audience damn well gutted. Or maybe that was just me.
I asked Michael if writing those poems was therapeutic for him… or maybe a way of seeking/finding forgiveness for his dad.
Not exactly, he said. “I was articulating a kind of wound that my childhood engendered, and is something that I still live with today. So, it’s more a way of being in dialogue with that part of myself, and sharing it in the hopes that other people can identify.”
This year’s Conroy Festival is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Great Santini, and a big theme throughout the weekend will be fathers, sons, and their difficult relationships. Matthew Quick (The Silver Linings Playbook) will be promoting his new book Dad, Love, Me: A Memoir, which the NY Times calls, “a rare and enlightening account of childhood trauma and late-stage parental forgiveness.” Both O’Keefe and Quick will be interviewed on stage at USCB, and there will be screenings of The Great Santini and Silver Linings Playbook, each of which received a pile of Oscar nominations in its day.
When I reached out to Michael O’Keefe about doing an email interview for this column, he said he’d be happy to but wouldn’t be able to get to my questions until the following week, because he had a movie premier that weekend. I told him that was fine on a Thursday evening, sent the questions on a Friday morning, and he surprised me by emailing his answers back Friday afternoon, before the premier.
Told you he’s a stand-up guy.
While preparing those interview questions, I read up on his new movie – A Break in the Rain – and it seemed to fit right in with the Conroy Fest mini-theme of fathers and sons. I included the following question for Michael:
“In A Break in the Rain you play a grieving husband and father. And in the popular Apple TV series Your Friends and Neighbors, you play the father of Jon Hamm’s character Matthew ‘Coop’ Cooper. Without giving any spoilers, I’ll just say that I think of your character, Ron Cooper, as the ‘moral center’ of a show that desperately needs one. Do you think of your character that way? As the show’s ‘good father’?”
Michael replied, “You’re spot on with the thought that my character is the ‘moral center’ of the show. The producer said as much to me, and I attempted to bring that to the part. Considering they hired an actor of such questionable moral character, I would say that I accomplished a lot. Chalk it up to research. Know what I mean?”
That deadpan wit is so Michael O’Keefe. And so reminiscent of Pat Conroy.
Next, I asked Michael, who came to fatherhood rather late, “How does your experience as a son inform your experience as a father? Do you ever find yourself repeating old patterns… or trying hard not to?”
Michael’s response: “I became a father at the age of 57. And just about every day, I’m struck by the difference between how I relate to my son and how my father related to me. I am grateful that my son is loving, smart, vulnerable, and confident in the love I have for him. He and his mother are the loves of my life.”
If you’d like to hear more from Michael O’Keefe – I know I would – I’ll be interviewing him on stage at USCB, up close and personal, before a screening of The Great Santini, on Friday, October 23, starting with a reception at 4:30 pm. For registration and more information about the 11th Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, visit www.patconroyliteraryfestival.org
