Father-son travels discover global truths

An old photograph in Richard Roe’s Manhattan Beach apartment shows his three sons, Gabby, 9, Chris, 10, and Rich, 11, sitting on the Great Wall of China as if posed in front of the fireplace for a family portrait.

The photo recalls the high point of a 14-month trip around the world that the Roe family took in 1978. They flew by the seat of their pants, with no reservations and little cash. The photo is a kind of trophy awarded to a dad who did something for his sons that is, to my mind, more special than teaching them how to throw a football: He gave them the world, as experienced through travel.

Eighteen years after the Roe family traveling circus went around the world, Pop, as he calls himself, and Chris did the grand circle again, visiting 29 countries on five continents in 190 days, meeting up with Gabby and Rich along the way. They had a mission this time: to make a film about fathers and sons around the world.

It included the two of them looking woefully unromantic in a Venetian gondola, tandem bungee-jumping in New Zealand and kvetching over money almost everywhere. The result was “Pop & Me,” released in 1999 by MGM.

Seeing the film -- rare evidence of what it’s like when men hit the road together -- piqued my interest in the Roes. Recently I went to Pop Roe’s beach place, where I found him and Chris tossing a volleyball in front of a wide swath of Pacific Ocean. Pop is 62, a big, bear-like man with a neatly trimmed white beard and a beach bum’s suntan. Chris, a Mar Vista filmmaker and graphic designer, is handsome, with close-cropped brown hair. Now 36, he is married and the father of two boys.

In contrast to gender cliches, both spoke so openly and emotionally about the ups and downs of their travel filmmaking experience and how they realized they had changed that I started to think men and women might be from the same planet after all.

Richard Roe: “The movie was a four-year nightmare. If we knew what we were getting into, we never would have done it.”

Chris Roe: “People ask if there will be a ‘Pop & Me, Part 2.’ But it wouldn’t work. We wouldn’t make the same mistakes. It would be too perfect.”

Indeed, there’s something charming about the film’s naivete. Even better is the honest way it depicts the developing father-son tensions as the trip wore on. Back at home, the editing process was even worse.

Chris: “We stopped talking to each other. An investor made us see a shrink, who asked me, ‘When does a son feel total trust and understanding from his father?’ The answer is never, almost all men say.”

Richard: “On the trip, I recognized two universal truths: The son, no matter where he lives or his station in life, feels like a little boy. Meanwhile, the father has no idea he’s making him feel that way.”

Chris: “I wanted to prove I was my own man. The last thing I wanted was a dad telling me what to do. But the one thing he wanted was to be the perfect dad again, looked up to by everyone, which was the one thing I couldn’t accept.”

To explore how other fathers and sons get along, the Roes interviewed a diverse cast of characters: a tough Egyptian general and his two married sons, all living in a family compound; a loving South African father and his brain-damaged son; and Julian Lennon, who freely admitted to the Roes that musician father John Lennon “gave more to the world than he did to me.”

Chris: “Lots of fathers and sons wouldn’t say ‘I love you,’ but they did with us there.”

Richard: “Chris and I were open and honest. They saw that. The Egyptian general cried. His family was shocked.”

I was surprised too, and a little doubtful about all the tears “Pop & Me” engendered in the eyes of usually stoic men.

Richard: “I would rather bite off my arm than cry. It’s a sign of weakness. I never thought all the emotional stuff would appear in the film.”

Pop cried in the movie. The trip caught him at a vulnerable time in life, after his marriage had fallen apart and he had moved to California, suddenly single in his early 50s. He and Chris were roommates for a while in Santa Monica, reversing roles while trading socks. Chris was working; Pop wanted to party.

Then they got the idea of traveling around the world. In many ways it seems these two guys never meant to go on the same trip: Pop was running away; Chris wanted to make a movie. Pop thought he was still the boss; Chris wanted to be his own man.

Travel pundits say you need to get your motivations straight before you leave home. But nobody really does. So the Roes argued, aggravated each other, sulked. I loved seeing it on film because, boy, have I been there on family trips. Though they fought mostly over trivialities -- what to shoot, how much to spend for lunch -- their conflicts touched on something deeper: Who’s in charge, father or grown son? Freud never resolved that one, nor did the trip. But now they know what the issues are and are working on it.

I left them to their volleyball and started thinking about families. Maybe the ones that travel together stay together.

In any event, someone should figure out what Pop and Chris Roe have, put it in a bottle and sell it to fathers and sons around the world.