Paint the Sun: A Boy's Journey

Chris Kursel
  • 4.5 (4)
  • Documentary
  • Series

When Chris was born, the youngest of seven sons, his father (Joel) was 64 years old. Joel was the child of immigrants and grew up poor in a cement factory town in western Pennsylvania. He was a bomber pilot in World War II. Then an ad man who went by another name. Then, when Chris was 16, Joel died of brain cancer. Paint the Sun: A Boy's Journey tells the story of Chris's quest to discover who his father really was, reconstruct his life and reflect on his long lingering grief. A blend of narrative nonfiction and memoir, each episode weaves together the past and present in a dance of voice-driven storytelling, music and sounds.

  1. Episode 11

    Episode 11 - You've Got the Music in You

    In this episode, Chris looks back on being sixteen in the late ’90s as the reality of Joel’s illness unfolds. Music, friendships, teenage routines, and small acts of rebellion play out alongside hospital visits, radiation treatments and the disorienting collapse of his father’s life. As memory, grief and nostalgia blur together, he tries to make sense of a season defined by all that went unsaid.

    Episode 11 - You've Got the Music in You

  2. Episode 12

    Episode 12: Velocity

    This episode traces the making of Bill into a wartime pilot (and a wartime husband) from bases in rural America to the skies over Europe. Following the trail of artifacts his father left behind, Chris explores how war accelerates lives, compresses intimacy and reshapes identity. He reflects on inheritance—of faces, habits, silences and memories—and on the strange distance between the man he knew his father to be, and the man he must have been in combat.

    Episode 12: Velocity

  3. Episode 13

    Episode 13: The Man in the Cabinet

    This episode is anchored in Chris's increasingly frequent feelings of his father's presence during the eerie quiet of the COVID pandemic. It also introduces a series of consequential questions about Joel's war experience that take center stage in Chris's search for the truth about his dad's life and character.

    Episode 13: The Man in the Cabinet

  4. Episode 14

    Episode 14 - Time Shapes

    This episode traces Joel's harrowing and mysteriously brief trajectory as a combat pilot over WWII Europe. After longstanding beliefs about his father's war experience fall under question, Chris tediously reconstructs his father's missions. While attempting to square Joel's recollections with historical accounts, Chris discovers the profound emotional and spiritual cost of such an experience. In turn, the truth becomes both clearer and more elusive than ever.

    Episode 14 - Time Shapes

  5. Episode 15

    Episode 15 - City of Light, City of Magic

    Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which acutely experienced the trauma and depression emblematic of the late 20th century -- racism, industrial contraction, economic and social segregation -- before turning the corner to a more rosy 21st century persona, is in many ways a prototypical Midwestern city. Toss in the drama of baseball and Hollywood, you have an idiosyncratic place that defined the lives of Joel and his families for generations to come. In this episode, Chris explores the popular and historical pasts of his hometown, searching for clues to why Milwaukee felt like such a uniquely influential place during his upbringing.

    Episode 15 - City of Light, City of Magic

  6. Episode 16

    Episode 16 - Another Tube of Military Metal

    In the period directly following WWII, Joel and his growing family take up residence in a Quonset Hut -- a refabbed piece of corrugated metal issued by the U.S. military -- in a hardscrabble suburb outside downtown Milwaukee. As Chris explores Joel's new life as a family man in the 1940's, he reflects on the sweetness and stresses of early fatherhood that seem to reach across the divide of time.

    Episode 16 - Another Tube of Military Metal

  7. Episode 17

    Episode 17 - Alex Green

    While his father's illness advances, Chris's life is gripped by a new and completely different energy -- first love. The thrills and fears of Alex Green, a spirited and intellectual dynamo Chris meets through a mutual friend, burst through the painful tedium of his dad's cancer. After a first date on Milwaukee's east side turns into something more than he anticipated, Chris faces a brief but exhilarating summer toggling between the realities of love and death.

    Episode 17 - Alex Green

  8. Episode 18

    Episode 18 - Golden Valley

    The growing Kursel family, buoyed by Joel's promising new position at an advertising agency, takes root in a rural Milwaukee suburb called Golden Valley. In this episode, Chris explores the history of Golden Valley, both modern and ancient, expounding on the enmeshed nature of time and family in a quaint post-war settlement.

    Episode 18 - Golden Valley

  9. Episode 19

    Episode 19 - PDQ

    Chris's life takes on new velocity as his relationship with Alex Green rivals the gravity of his father's illness. Parked squarely in late 90's suburban Milwaukee, this episode explores the unique color of teenage love -- part escape, part addiction. It pays particular attention to the escalating decisions Chris and Alex must make regarding sex and safety while honoring the beauty of a relationship that was, in many ways, a form of salvation.

    Episode 19 - PDQ

  10. Episode 20

    Episode 20 - Inside Her

    Reflecting on a startling conversation with his father from twenty years in the past, Chris confronts renewed mysteries about the mother of his oldest half-brother. As he copes with the traumas lingering from his own forays into adolescent love and sex, Joel's take shape as well. In Episode 20, the past once again seems to eerily mirror the present, and as it does, new opportunities for love, compassion and connection emerge.

    Episode 20 - Inside Her
  • 10 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

4.5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

When Chris was born, the youngest of seven sons, his father (Joel) was 64 years old. Joel was the child of immigrants and grew up poor in a cement factory town in western Pennsylvania. He was a bomber pilot in World War II. Then an ad man who went by another name. Then, when Chris was 16, Joel died of brain cancer. Paint the Sun: A Boy's Journey tells the story of Chris's quest to discover who his father really was, reconstruct his life and reflect on his long lingering grief. A blend of narrative nonfiction and memoir, each episode weaves together the past and present in a dance of voice-driven storytelling, music and sounds.

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