Strange Brew (1983)

directed by Rick Moranis & Dave Thomas

Julie Keefe

There are only two things that have ever scared my dad: when my sister cut her head open in a bicycle accident and they had to “jump the fence and wash her head off in the reservoir,” and when I almost popped my eye out of its socket after I ran right into the corner of the coffee table as a toddler. Otherwise, he has always been a tough guy. Fearless, blunt, cold. Smarter than everyone and quick to label things he doesn’t care for or understand as “stupid” and move on. Basically every patriarchal stereotype you can think of.

My dad has 26 first cousins, most of whom I met at a random pool party in Rockland County in 2009. I can recall a conversation in which my dad used a combination of these traits to explain the story of my middle name to two inexplicably blonde members of my Irish-Italian family:

“My father told me: ‘When you have a son, name him Ellwood’. When my first daughter, Audrey, was born, I couldn’t bear to put the name on her. But when I had Julie, I knew it was my last chance.”

In middle school, when making people guess your middle name was the most fun thing you could do, I would shudder at the thought of having to reveal mine to my friends. It often made me feel devoid of femininity. Why couldn’t my middle name just be Elizabeth or Ann or Marie?

I grew up boyish. I wore baggy plaid shorts and big band T-shirts in middle school. I advocated for girls to play non-modified sports in gym class. And I had this stupid name. I would get upset when my male friends would tell me about girls they had crushes on, or thought were “hot.” One friend told me in a text: “well, you’re hot too, but you always wear loose shirts.”

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I have always genuinely believed that my dad wanted to have a son and has lived his life secretly upset that he got two girls instead. Growing up, it felt like rather than expressing interest in any of our “typically feminine” pursuits, he carried on raising us as if he had gotten what he wanted. We used to joke that he should adopt a 12-year-old boy who he could essentially employ to help him in the garage.

Pat Keefe loved the garage. He loved fixing an antique car and driving it halfway down the road only to see smoke in the rearview mirror, turn around, put out the fire, and start the process over again. He loved listening to Pink Floyd and Soundgarden in the garage on his purple iPod, which he named “Shemp” after one of the Three Stooges. Even now, after cardiac bypass and lumbar spine surgeries, he is always doing a project.

I never loved the garage. In fact, I often dreaded going to my dad’s house on my assigned weekends because I would have to spend so much time in the garage, to help with tasks such as “bleeding the brakes,” “organizing the bolts,” and “holding the flashlight… no, not like that… closer… no move it over… hold it straight… not like that… just let me do it…”

In the summers, my dad and stepmom would play golf on most weekends. I remember the relief I’d feel when I would look out at the driveway on a Sunday morning and see the car was gone. I can do whatever I want today!

In the winters, I would hope that it would be too cold to go out to the garage. But the weather was rarely a deterrent. “You know, when I was in the Air Force and I lived in Alaska, I would go outside in shorts in 40 degree weather,” he would tell me. “That was warm.” No matter how cold it got, we could always put on our work gloves, turn on the space heater, and resume whatever project was at hand.

But in the winter there was a cap on how long we were able to work for—not because of the early sunsets, or the cold temperatures, but because it was hockey season.

My dad flew three flags outside the house: one for the New York Rangers, one for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and, for some reason, a Jolly Roger. When I was three years old, we took a trip to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, where my big sister Audrey (who you may remember from not getting what ended up becoming my middle name) held me up so that I could touch the Stanley Cup. My dad loved hockey enough to leave the other thing he loved so that he could recline in his armchair and watch it live. To this day, it is one of the only sports I both understand and enjoy.

I generally went to my dad’s house every other weekend, except on special occasions, like when Audrey would visit from Arizona. I had a daybed which took up the entire room when the second mattress was pulled out. We would sleep with our heads inches apart from one another in my bedroom. We would stay up late painting our nails and watching America’s Next Top Model and King of the Hill reruns.

During one of Audrey’s visits in the summer, she brought maybe six or seven DVDs with her that we marathoned through in what felt like two days. I was introduced to some of my favorite movies that weekend: Harold and Maude, The Royal Tenenbaums, Ghost World.

While we sat engrossed by the TV screen, our dad would occasionally walk into the living room and pause for a moment. He always wanted to appear unphased. But maybe he would chortle at a funny scene, or make a remark about how dumb the movie looked, before walking away.

It wasn’t until The Adventures of Bob and Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew, that he finally sat down. It started just like all the others: he walked in, arms crossed, chuckled a bit, and said “this is stupid.” But he stayed. And he chuckled a bit more. He sat down in the recliner—the perch from which he would watch his hockey games. And the three of us watched a movie together for the first time.

Strange Brew is a Canadian cult classic loosely based on the plot of Hamlet, in which two goofy, beer-obsessed, stereotypically Canadian brothers (played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) unravel a mystery after they journey to Elsinore Brewery in an attempt to get their dad’s beer money back. It contains classic quotable lines such as: 

“Jelly donut comin’!”

“If I didn’t have puke breath, I’d kiss you.” 

And:

“There wasn’t much to do, all of the bowling alleys had been wrecked, so I spent most of my time looking for beer.” 

I didn’t understand this at the time, but Strange Brew has everything a Keefe Family Member could want out of a movie: literary parody, tons of hockey references, a dog that flies around with a cape like Superman…

And it is so, so stupid—a word that may seem dismissive, mean, and juvenile (because, well, it is). But when you grow up hearing it so much, you learn to discern when it's meant to be taken with judgement or with lightheartedness. Strange Brew is stupid in the best way: it is uniquely funny, surprisingly wholesome, and grants you permission to turn off your brain and finally enjoy a moment of commonality with your two daughters.

Later that week, Audrey flew back to Tucson. I went back to school in the fall. And every other weekend I was back in the garage. Come winter, I was filled again with dread. I’m going to spend all day in here. I won’t get to see my friends. I still don’t know how this man wants me to hold the flashlight.

One winter, we found a stray cat. We noticed the cat had an abscess on its leg. My dad set up the Havahart trap every day until we caught the cat and brought it to the vet.

When the cat returned with its little leg all stitched up, he built it a garage: a tall wooden box with a plexiglass skylight, a sturdy flap on the door, and a heat lamp that would turn on when the cat stepped inside. When he went on trips, he would pre-record a voice message into an automatic dry food dispenser. Every six hours, food would roll out of the machine, along with a message: “Hey, stupid. It’s time to eat.”

I hope the cat understands how he meant it.

Julie Keefe is an educator, musician, and performer living with her precious cat Oakley in Brooklyn (though she cannot stop talking about how much she loves being from New Jersey). You can listen to her interview podcast "Curing My Stage Fright" and/or check out her DIY house show series, Bad Press, and its corresponding newsletter. She is crossing her fingers that her debut EP will be available to listen to in April 2026, under the moniker "Julie Wood.”