The Hollywood Version: Delivery Man

I’m convinced of two things. 1) Vince Vaughn is a terrible lead actor; and 2) Hollywood should be banned from making remakes of foreign films.

When it comes to Vaughn’s boring copy-cat remake of the French Canadian film Starbuck - an actual feel good comedy about a sperm donor with maybe a few too many offspring - I’m in a unique position to offer up my opinion.

Back in 1984, I was conceived in maybe the most unromantic circumstances imaginable: a medical school. The thought makes me physically shudder.

Pimply, white cloaked med students ogling over my mother’s nether regions is not exactly how it went down, but my brain can’t help going there –like some mad science experiment. I was conceived with an anonymous man’s sperm. Making me, like the kids in Delivery Man, donor-conceived.

Needless to say, I’ve got a story about coming into this world that most of you probably don’t share.

I’m also one of six children conceived to donor no.23 – which means I have some unknown half-siblings scattered randomly across New Zealand – all between the ages of 28 and 31. A fact that is both weirdly unsettling and cool at the same time. Although, dating, I tell you, is a nightmare.

In Delivery Man, Vince Vaughn plays a loser type who somehow forgets the fact that some twenty years earlier he’d made some extra dough masturbating into a cup several times a week – until suddenly he has a lawyer at his door telling him that 533 kids want to know who their dad is.

Wow, what a premise right. A story gimmick surely? Is it even possible to have 533 kids? Um, yup, unfortunately it is. There’ve been many cases listed on the Donor Sibling Registry – an American site that links half-siblings and donors – and the many cases have been in the hundreds. In fact one story that’s come out of the UK involved a doctor in the 1950s who had secretly been inseminating his patients with his own sperm, instead of hiring and matching donors to prospective parents. It’s thought that he has upwards of 1000 offspring.

Here you were thinking this sperm business was an answer to our prayers – where nice lesbian couples can churn out a brood and single women without the man of her dreams can still produce the baby part of that dear dream of hers. Nope. This sperm business has been around for a while. In fact men have been pumping away their seed for over a century now to help couples with male infertility.

What started as an altruistic act turned into a money-making scheme by the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1990s sperm and egg donation were big business. Today sperm donation is part of a multi-billion dollar fertility industry – and those guys are not to be messed with.

Legislation or lack of it is in fact a huge reason behind abuses and large numbers of offspring suddenly surfacing. The United States has one of the worst track records in this regard. Not too surprising then, that Vince Vaughn’s character has over 500 offspring.

Thankfully New Zealand has been a bit of a leader when it comes to donor-conceived rights and collecting and maintaining records. Donors are limited to four to five families and in 2005 the government passed a bill legally requiring all subsequent births from sperm and egg donors to be recorded into the HART registry. At age 18, individuals may gain access to their records and identifying information about their donor.

All other donor-conceived New Zealanders, like myself, born prior to the law change in 2005, have to make do with a voluntary registry. Unfortunately not nearly enough know about it. This is down to the fact that many donor-conceived born between the 1970s and early nineties were part of a generation whose parents were discouraged from telling them the truth. So in order for them to volunteer their information to the registry – they have to have been told.

Luckily, I was one of the ones who were told. Studies have shown that like adoption, telling and telling early is best for donor-conceived children.

At the end of Delivery Man, Vince Vaughn’s character does ‘good’ by his kids –all 533 of them. By good, I mean he redeems himself – Hollywood style – ‘by being there’ or at least pretending to being there, because how can you actually be there for 533 kids?

No matter how much you play up the Hollywood ending, it’s just the movies folks. Back in the real world the complexities of donor conception are more layered than Vince Vaughn could even dream of conveying.

My advice: See the original Starbuck. It's actually funny.