Michael Phillips: For Mother’s Day, a critic, his mother and a screenful of memories
CHICAGO — Who else am I going to interview for Mother’s Day? My barber? Mom was up for it, so here it is. Name: Jean Gallagher Phillips, born in Racine, Wisconsin, raised in Kenosha. Age: 90. Disposition: excellent. And “marbles,” as she likes to say: “mostly lucid.” We saw a lot of films together growing up. Sometimes we saw things as a family, my brother, my father, my mother and me; ...
CHICAGO — Who else am I going to interview for Mother’s Day? My barber?
Mom was up for it, so here it is. Name: Jean Gallagher Phillips, born in Racine, Wisconsin, raised in Kenosha. Age: 90. Disposition: excellent. And “marbles,” as she likes to say: “mostly lucid.”
We saw a lot of films together growing up. Sometimes we saw things as a family, my brother, my father, my mother and me; sometimes we paired off when I wasn’t seeing stuff with friends, or occasionally alone, such as the sixth or seventh time I saw the 1974 re-release of the 1930 Marx Brothers film “Animal Crackers.” I know what you’re thinking: That was one cool kid, all right.
My mother was the one who, when I was 12, wrote a note (I put her up to it) requesting
