Twisted family tree: the documentary Capturing the Friedmans traces how sexual secrets destroy one suburban family��except for its openly gay member - Summer Movie Preview - Interview

"We were always dysfunctional," Howard Friedman quietly imparts as he describes his outwardly happy suburban family, featured in the enthralling new documentary film Capturing the Friedmans, opening in mid June. "It goes to prove you can never judge a book by its cover."

And beneath the cover of the affluent Jewish family from Great Neck, N.Y., headed by Friedman's older brother, Arnold, was a devastating secret waiting to tear the family apart. In the late 1980s it did: First Arnold Friedman was charged with possession of child pornography he'd mail-ordered from the Netherlands; then, in November 1987, he and his youngest son, Jesse, then 19, were arrested for more than 100 alleged acts of child molestation and sodomy involving local schoolboys. Like a remarkable number of events in the Friedman family saga detailed by filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, the dual arrest was captured on film, in this case by local news crews.

Jarecki's camera captures Howard Friedman at home with his life partner of nearly 30 years, Jack--the family tree's grounded gay branch. Jarecki also interviewed Arnold's wife, Elaine, who divorced her husband after he went to prison; oldest son David, one of Manhattan's top professional party clowns (who was Jarecki's original subject); and accused son Jesse, now a timid man in his 30s. (Middle son Seth is seen in archival footage but declined to be interviewed.)

Remarkably, the Friedmans gave Jarecki full access to the family's massive library of home movies, including the ones made during the trial. Intercut with news reports and present-day interviews, the footage makes the audience firsthand witnesses to how these people's quiet lives were swept away by a possibly overzealous judicial system and to how difficult it is to separate true memories from those that might have been imagined or induced.

One example of faulty memory deals with Howard Friedman. In therapy in prison, Arnold confessed to having sexually molested his brother for several years as a child--something Howard told Jarecki that he doesn't recall. "I don't love my brother any less for what he did," Howard tells The Advocate. "I will always love him. I mean, he's my brother."

Howard Friedman's on-camera interview--with his partner at his side--was an intimate moment, but seeing the finished film for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, was something else entirely. "I saw it at Sundance in a room with 100 strangers," he says. "Seeing it there with all of those people was very difficult I didn't want to leave--I wanted to crawl under my chair and cry like a baby."

Jarecki provides an intriguing twist to the film by withholding the fact that Howard is gay until near the end of the movie, when his partner, Jack, appears for the first time. "Howard's relationship with Jack is one of the only functional relationships in the movie," Jarecki says. "I think that's a hopeful thing, in fact. The gay character seems to pull through the best in the end."

Howard says the Friedman family ordeal would have been much worse for him without Jack. "The incident destroyed my family for so many years," Howard says. "And I couldn't have made it through those years without my partner. Having a partner that cares about you--that is what matters."

Koland also write for the Liberty Press in Wichita, Kan.

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