Following Sean (2005)

Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck first met Sean while living as a graduate student in Haight Ashbury at the height of the 1960s. The city was awash with the trappings of America’s cultural revolution-the San Francisco State University campus flooded with cops in riot gear, the Haight filled with drifters and idealists, and, on the third floor of Arlyck’s building, a come-one-come-all crashpad apartment. It was from this top floor commune that the precocious 4-year-old Sean would occasionally wander downstairs to visit and talk-and one day Arlyck turned on his camera. Sean’s casual commentary on everything from smoking pot to living with speed freaks was delivered in simple sincerity throughout the soon-to-be famous 15-minute film. This First Child of the notorious decade may have shaken the audience with his simple sentence- “Sure, I smoke pot”-but it was his barefoot impishness which would encapsulate the hope that lay in front of the nation: a promise of infinite possibility.

The movie Following Sean, released in 2005, features 21 songs from artists like Cass McCombs & Trevor Shimizu, Michael Yonkers Band (1968), David Schickele, Nick Phelps, & David Schrader and Jessica Billey, Nicolai Dunger, Paul Oldham & Will Oldham. What is your favorite song from Following Sean?

Songs from Following Sean

Horses

Flying Over

Sligo River Blues

I Cannot Lie

Cass McCombs & Trevor Shimizu

Sold America

Michael Yonkers Band (1968)

Roll Credits

David Schickele, Nick Phelps, & David Schrader

Blind Willy

Skin and Rocks

Last Night I Dreamt of Mississippi

Jessica Billey, Nicolai Dunger, Paul Oldham & Will Oldham

Section 43

Country Joe and the Fish (as Country Joe & the Fish)

Beulah Land

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

Eat, Sleep, Mate & Defend

Perpetual Night

Evil Son

The Prodigal Son

Edinburgh Lag

Watchin' the Show

Michael Hurley & Jill Gross

The Subway Home

Jherek Bischoff

The Well-Tempered Clavier (Book 1, Prelude 1 in C Major)

Diana Arlyck

Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie

Never Die Young

Lori McKenna, Richard Shindell, Kris Delmhorst , Brad Hatfield ,