What are My Favorites, and Other FAQs
These are answers to the questions I get asked repeatedly, for years
The other day, a new student to a class asked me what my favorite movie was.
I wish I had just given him this piece right here.
For years now, I’ve been doing Youtube livestreams, and along with various comments scattered across there and letterboxd, I get asked many of the same questions. These are the questions more people ask aloud than any other.
So to that student, and to you, you’ll get the favorite-movie-ever answer below. As well as many others.
Who are your favorite directors?
Leaving out too many to count, the following list of directors has supplied me with the most movie-highs of anyone. By the way, this is the method I recommend to find new films: the highest rate of success for you will probably be to watch another movie from a director who has made a movie you love.
In no order, and with no regard to any socially-correct criteria:
Orson Welles
Werner Herzog
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Andrei Tarkovsky
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Mike Judge
Terence Malick
Akira Kurosawa
Francis Ford Coppola
Alexander Payne
Alfred Hitchcock
Terry Gilliam
Jim Jarmusch
The Coens
Jacques Tati
Martin McDonagh
Martin Scorsese
Hiyao Miyazaki
Asghar Farhadi
Oliver Stone
Hal Ashby
What are you a doctor of?
In graduate school, I specialized in early American literature, 1492-1900. After going through the doctoral process and teaching twelve years in a general-education program at a vocationally-oriented university, I am not exactly an Americanist now. That early American class comes around only once every two years.
But I am a good generalist, which means I have taught everything from Gilgamesh to the latest movie release, from Business Writing to the Italian Renaissance.
A doctorate teaches a person how to become a specialist. With enough time, you can become a specialist in multiple areas. I think I’ve put in enough time to be at least a quasi-specialist in Science Fiction and, *gulping hard*, Film.
I say this because perhaps half of the older professors I knew had switched specialties. One of them went from being a Robert Browning scholar (19th century English poet) to a Shakespeare scholar, a huge leap. Another went from being an expert in 20th century American poetry to becoming the world’s leading expert in Walt Whitman.
So, yes, a person specializing in early American literature can switch over to film. It actually exceedingly helpful to know a lot about multiple disparate topics when dealing with an medium (e.g., film, literature) that combines topics uniquely like nothing else does.
What are your favorite TV shows?
I have strong opinions here, but they come with the caveat that any TV specialist has to log a ridiculous amount of time. Many TV shows range from 30-100 hours, just to get through one show. If you are going through the 100 greatest shows ever, there’s a high chance your hair will fall out by the time you finish that exercise.
So I have not seen “The Sopranos.” It’s on the list.
One more caveat is that I believe a TV show sound be a great work of art from the very first frame. All frames must count, all sounds, gestures, movements — it’s the same high standard I have for films. Obviously, very few TV shows can fit that criteria.
The ones I love and strongly recommend
Halt and Catch Fire
Deadwood
Arrested Development
Freaks and Geeks
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Better Call Saul
30 Rock
Detectorists
“How To,” with John Wilson
Breaking Bad
Futurama
Succession (with the caution that I am only halfway through right now)
The 70-Percenters, or Good Shows where 70% of the episodes are high-quality (but 30% are much lamer)
Battlestar Galactica (new series)
The Office
Parks and Recreation
LOST
Friday Night Lights
The Wire
Band of Brothers
Sherlock
Terriers
Black Mirror
The Twilight Zone
The Amazing World of Gumball
I have no idea what to do with “The Simpsons.” Season 3 through about Season 8 are generally spectacular. I have no knowledge of the show after about the year 2000.
My “to watch list” includes: The Bear, The Shield, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Billions, Fleabag.
Who are your favorite actors?
Like most people, the ones who were wildly popular in my youth remain solid go-tos. They end up looking like father- or older-brother figures. For the males, those are:
Harrison Ford
Denzel Washington
Gene Hackman
Christian Bale
Sean Connery
Tom Cruise
Bruce Willis (the inspiration for my haircut)
But since I have seen thousands of movies, there are dozens and dozens of actors who are just glorious to behold. Like almost everyone else agrees with: Parker Posey, Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, Christopher Walken, Julianne Moore.
The glorious finds are in older movies: Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Brennan, Peter Lorre, Ralph Meeker, Veronika Lake. Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart are too obvious to name.
This list could go on ad infinitum. What it proves is that Hollywood attracted the greatest talent in the world at a time when the world’s population had exploded so that the talent pool was vast, and the top 0.001% were beyond incredible.
Why Hollywood is losing out on that talent now is a mystery to me — I mean why they aren’t seeking it out — but I believe strongly that is the #1 reason they might fall hard in the next several decades.
Do you say “films,” or “movies,” or something else?
I’m the opposite of elitist or prude, for the most part, so you can say whatever you’d like.
There has long been a known hierarchy for status-speaking:
“Cinema” means “I’m really into this, more than 99.9% are, and I want you to know it”
“Film” means “I’m interested in studying it, and I might like to move into the ‘cinema’ category"
“Movie” means “I’m casual, and maybe not aware of the disdain that the ‘cinema’ and ‘film’ people have for me'”
“Flick” means “the people who say ‘cinema’ think I’m a loser”
But I don’t care. “Movie” works because it’s a shortening of what movies are essentially, which is collection of images put in motion, i.e., “motion pictures.”
I almost always just switch between ‘movie’ and ‘film,’ trying to depend on neither too much.
No one should upbraid you for what you say here.
What is your favorite movie?
There are too many at this point. Films are akin to short stories. Almost none of them are big-picture, about a great many things. Most are lyrical. Therefore, they tend to be about specific moods, textures, emotions, moments.
It’s therefore hard to pick a favorite mood or moment.
But I will go with two that are quasi-universal in scope:
The Thin Red Line (1999)
Rashomon (1950)
The former has hypnotized me every time since 2000, when I first saw it on a small TV in my dorm room. I’ve seen it every way and at every station of life. It’s pretty thrilling when the Bluray disc tells you at the beginning to “turn up your volume all the way.”
The latter isn’t one that ever thrills me, yet it hits me profoundly as an intellectual/emotional/spiritual exercise in all the vast problems of the 20th century — paranoia, uncertainty, man’s inhumanity to man, fragmentation, self-centered behavior, hate, lying, greed, and disinheritance.
I will never, hopefully, get to the point where Kurosawa was at in making that movie. He saw his own country suffering after WW2, in every way, and he made that movie.
For a list of many of my favorites, you can go here.
Peace be with you.
Really like Wilder, though I haven't warmed to his classics that are most lauded/highly rated. "Ace in the Hole" is an amazing movie still. Stalag 17, Witness for the Prosecution, etc. Note that I only included directors whose entire filmography strikes me as astounding. I left off dozens who have 2-5 fantastic films; it's just that their entire output doesn't give me ecstatic visions like most of the directors on the list.
I just finished watching Detectorists recently, and can’t believe more people haven’t seen it. I’ve been recommending it to everyone.