Writers and artists think differently. And people who pursue a life of creativity differ from those who do not. As an interviewer and writer I've sought answers from various people in my interviewing life. I've interviewed over 300 people on numerous websites, many of them now defunct. I've always found artists to be a bit difficult to get great answers from, and writers often blew me away. I love art, and some great interviews with artists happened, but, they were different in many ways from me. And that isn't bad, just different. When I was talking to an artist who had talent up the wazzoo, we discussed a movie that I thought was great, and he responded "That movie fucking sucked." Over time we discovered that any movie I enjoyed, he had hated. Since then (2008) I have had numerous similar encounters with artists, but never writers. So, I realized that there is different way of looking at a movie, by a different kind of creative mind. I am well aware that different isn't a qualifier of quality or lack there of.
While watching a movie that had been regarded poorly by reviewers, but I enjoyed, I wondered what certain writer friends would have thought, and so I wrote to them and found out they had enjoyed the film, and hit on each of the strong points that I had enjoyed and appreciated. And then, as a period to the sentence, an artist friend I adore said, "That movie fucking sucked." The very same phrase as I had been faced with earlier. It struck me, not because I think the movie then sucked, people go into films wanting different things. And writers seemed to be my spirit animal... I asked many different writers what movies they liked, what they liked about them, and a variety of other questions. I am not saying by this interview that other sorts of people aren't interesting, nor do they have bad taste, I am seeking to understand what makes writers different, to me, than everyone else.
The people I asked who said yes to this are, not surprisingly, writers. Some of them are well known, others not so much. Some write novels, some write screenplays, some write poetry, and most write a bit of it all.
Nate Barlow is an actor, prose writer, screenplay writer, and director.
Michael Baron is a comic book writer, novelist, music reviewer, and blogger.
Alan Dean Foster is a novelist, movie adaptation writer, and has a degree in film making.
Steven Grant is a comic book writer, screenplay writer, reviewer and columnist.
Marc N. Kleinhenz is a journalist, editor, screenplay author, and blogger.
Joseph Monks is a comic book writer, prose writer, screenplay writer, and a director.
Melisa Quigley is a published poet, writer of prose, and blogger.
Amy H. Sturgis is a professor, editor, and author
ALEX: If you have a list of films that you’d say move you the most, that you treasure, what would they be? If there is a trend in the list what would that be?
NATE BARLOW: That’s a very complicated question, since everyone has his or her “list of favorites,” but said list doesn’t necessarily equate to one’s list of “most moving” movies. And—dare I reveal this tidbit?—tend to be far too easily moved by film. Perhaps embarrassingly so. That having been said, some films that consistently move me include:
The Natural – Baseball is religion in my family and something special I shared with my father in particular. The Natural beautifully captures the mythic nature of that sport, so steeped in its own history.
The Wizard of Oz – Few movies are more classic, nor more universal with its message of home and family.
Love, Actually (the Colin Firth sequence) – Love, Actually is the ultimate chick-flick for guys. The majority of the film is more rom-com—very clever and funny rom-com—but the Jamie-Aurelia sequence is actually quite moving.
More recently, any well-made movie centering on father/child relationships is bound to get me, ever since I became a dad myself and my own father passed away. So while I wouldn’t have assigned a trend to such a list previously, that is definitely one now.
MICHAEL BARON: I consider Godfather the greatest movie, not only for its art, but what it tells us about the human condition. I have so many movies, I couldn't list them all, but a couple are Man On Fire, Tony Scott's masterpiece, The Commitments, a joyous movie about music, The Band Wagon, the greatest of all Hollywood movies, Nightcrawler, a modern day Taxi Driver, and Southpaw, an overlooked boxing masterpiece. I could go on all day. I also love the three Ip Man movies starring Donnie Yen. My tastes are all over the place.
JENNIFER CROW: For me, movies are an escape. When I was a kid, my mom was very strict about what we watched (for a long time, we didn’t even have a TV), so the chance to see something in the theater was a real treat. Probably my tastes are lowbrow, but I don’t care. My favorites include Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Wars Episode IV, The Mummy (1999) version, and a lot of Alfred Hitchcock. Apollo 13 is, to me, a near-perfect movie in terms of pacing. No matter how many times I watch it, my pulse races at the exciting moments. Jaws is one I watch every July 4th, and it’s made me love what I call “nature attacks” movies of all kinds. I love Rear Window for the way it constricts setting so much but does a lot with a small piece of the world.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER: Gunga Din, Fantasia, Bambi, Lawrence of Arabia, The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Forbidden Planet. Yojimbo. All are films about exploration of a wider world.
STEVEN GRANT: Touch Of Evil. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The Jokers. Privilege. Performance. Bye Bye Birdie (the '60s one). The Long Goodbye. Last Year At Marienbad. Repo Man. Pickup On South Street. The American Friend. Go. Rocknrolla. Alphaville. Hell And High Water. L.A. Confidential. Red Rock West. The Devils. Dead Pigeon On Beethoven Street. Edvard Munch. O Lucky Man. In A Lonely Place. Bad Timing. Chimes At Midnight. Flesh+Blood. A Long Day's Night. Once Upon A Time In The West. Sweet Smell Of Success. Marlowe. Five Card Stud. Kelly's Heroes. The Silent Partner. The President's Analyst. Get Carter. Out Of The Past. Morgan, A Suitable Case For Treatment. Paris Texas. Palm Springs Weekend. Memento. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Dozens of others. The only things I can think of that link them is they're (mostly) good films (Palm Springs Weekend, for instance, is crap, but it's really entertaining melocomedy), they're mostly not very recent, and they appeal to my iconoclasm.
MARC N. KLEINHENZ: Oh, jeez. The first one that comes to mind is Mononoke-hime (1997), which I just may consider the best film ever made -- it's gorgeous, explores wonderfully complex characters in a wonderfully complex (in terms of both mythology and politics) world, has one of the greatest scores of all time, and has just what may be one of the tenderest scenes I've ever seen (when San chews Ashitaka's food for him so that he can be nursed back to health, and he's moved to tears by the experience).
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) is probably second on my inner list, and I believe it does so for many of the same reasons -- the beauty of its production design and cinematography and character development, the breathtaking soundtrack, the melancholy that is intertwined with all of the protagonists' arcs (and resolutions), and the utter poetry of its martial-arts sequences (okay -- that last reason is a new one). I suppose that answers the last part of your question for you already.
Actually, please allow me to pause here for a moment and dwell (probably boringly, and certainly not very effectively) on this last point. I've long harbored the suspicion that when we pass over to the other side on our death beds, it will be with a mix of ecstasy and melancholy, the recognition of both life's illusory nature and also its intricate beauty. I suppose that those stories -- whether they be film, or literature, or videogames, or theme parks -- that pluck those same strings of sublimeness and sadness, usually simultaneously, are the ones that have always resonated the most with me.
Let's throw just one more movie in there, shall we? National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) is, to be perfectly blunt, pretty crude and superficial and, at times, vapid, but it does contain this one little golden nugget of a scene, this explosion of sentiment and substance, that really manages to capture the very essence of what Christmas has come to be over the course of the past 50 years or so to us culturally: when Clark Griswold gets trapped in the attic, has to rummage through the boxes of old junk in order to find clothing to stay warm, and ends up coming across and firing up the old projector and watching 30-year-old home holiday movies. Nostalgia is such a primal, visceral force for us, and it's one that I've come to regard -- as I very quickly approach my 40th birthday -- as almost the perfect encapsulation of life itself: the sting of loss (of loved ones, of relationships, of favorite haunts, of health) and the joy and extreme sense of luck of having experienced it all in the first place.
(It also doesn't hurt that Christmas Vacation is funny and endearing as hell, and that watching it every single Christmas, as I have done for nearly the entirety of my life, attaches to it a status of tradition that, in turn, makes it simultaneously exist in both the past and the present; it's as if the audience becomes Clark in that cold attic, and the film they're watching is, actually, Vacation itself, with all those old memories of all those old family members that used to watch it with us overlapping with the present viewing with, say, our children. [Can National Lampoons be so meta?])
JOSEPH MONKS: I think it depends on the type of ‘movement’. If we’re talking straight-up emotional films, there are films like Dances With Wolves and Miracle on 34th Street that absolutely pull at the heartstrings, even in someone like me. But when it comes to moving me in a way that’s inspiring and gets my blood pumping, then most of those are horror films. Jaws is a film I treasure, because I think it’s perfect, despite what VHS and DVD and slo-mo have done to some of the technical aspects of the shark. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is another one, and I’ve never been shy about how I borrowed elements from it insofar as technique goes when I directed my own feature film. When I catch a film—even now since I can no longer see, so I have to rely on audio-description—I need a movie to not just lay on the jump scares and gore, I need a film to make me want to be *there* in the protagonist’s shoes, no matter how hideous the situation. A filmmaker does that? I’m happy. There are tons of other films I’d consider movies I treasure, but that list’d be too long to print.
MELISA QUIGLEY: My list of movies that I treasure (in no particular order) are:
Forrest Gump
Mrs Doubtfire
The Lord of the Rings – the whole series
The Green Mile
Schindler’s List
Titanic
The Wizard of Oz
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Inception
The Silence of the Lambs
Sunshine (1973)
Amadeus
A Star is Born (the one with Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson)
The trend for most movies I watch would be epic. I love being taken on a journey where other people’s lives depend on the protagonist.
AMY H. STURGIS: My love of films flows from a love of language, so many of the movies I most treasure are tightly written, dialogue dependent, and quotable. The Lion in Winter (1968) is my very favorite film and a stellar example of this. Casablanca (1942), which I also love, offers a similar case in point. I also value films in which all aspects of the storytelling – script, cinematography, and score – work carefully in unison to build a story. Another favorite film of mine, Dark City (1998), comes to mind here. In addition, I study film history and treasure early classics such as Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922), Metropolis (1927), and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931).
My viewing tends to be deep rather than broad, focusing on the genres that most challenge and speak to me. I have favorites in each – science fiction (1966’s Fahrenheit 451, 1982’s Blade Runner), Western (1980’s The Long Riders, 1996’s Lone Star), Samurai (1958’s The Hidden Fortress, 1964’s Three Outlaw Samurai), historical (1998’s Dangerous Beauty, 2000’s Devils on the Doorstep, 2008’s God on Trial), and Gothic films (1986’s Gothic, 2007’s The Orphanage) – but I will follow certain trusted directors (Jiang Wen, for example) and actors anywhere they go.
ALEX: Everyone has movies they do not enjoy, but that isn’t my inquiry here. What movies did you think you’d love but thought were so unsatisfying that you really dislike them? What about them caused you to think that?
NATE BARLOW: Fresh in my mind since it only recently came out, Mary Queen of Scots left me completely flat. I love true stories and historical drama, so I expected Mary to be right up my alley. The actual events have so much filmic potential, but outside of excellent acting, the movie was a bust. The writing and directing were particularly disappointing, more like a recitation of facts from a textbook than a story with an arc.
Another film that at the time that received all sorts of acclaim yet actually left me angry because I was in such vehement disagreement was The Cider House Rules. If I could use one word to describe it, that word would be forced.
And here’s a shocker…I don’t love Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which I’ve had to re-watch multiple times recently with the kids. I enjoyed the book and I want to like the film, but the film just doesn’t do it for me. I don’t find it terrible, mind you, but blah.
MICHAEL BARON: I tend to banish those from my mind.
JENNIFER CROW: Rom-coms as a genre often fall flat for me—the relationships too often feel forced, and sometimes the men come across as downright creepy and manipulative. I’ve never gotten over Kate and Leopold, where the heroine had to abandon her entire life and go back in time to be with the “perfect man.” Ick. No.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER: The Last Jedi. Because it’s a bad film, and because it pisses on everything generations of fans/filmgoers hold dear and was important to them. The Black Hole. Because there is no respect for surroundings/science.
STEVEN GRANT: I rarely go into films with much anticipation, and I've never had a lot of aversion to even movies I thought were or expected to be bad, because for my purposes it used to be that even horribly bad movies usually had some idea hidden in there that the filmmakers didn't even realize was there, and I always considered those fair game. But there are films that are almost universally praised that I didn't think much of when I finally saw them. I walked out on Children Of Paradise; I understand the historical importance of the film and its symbolic undertones etc. but it's just way too precious in almost every way. I remember being at a screening of The China Syndrome, a film everyone was supposed to love (and mostly did) because the nuclear industry was pretty sloppy and heinous; the film was all about that. It was also really tritely plotted and directed, and apparently aimed at 10 year olds from the sophistication of its arguments. I didn't disagree with the film's message, but that's no reason to think a basically dumb film is a masterpiece. But there isn't any one reason to like or dislike any film. You have to approach each of them individually.
MARC N. KLEINHENZ: The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003), without a doubt. That was one of my first real exposures to the fact that someone can be in love with art (or, in this case, the source material), and be extraordinarily motivated to devote an entire decade of his life to a particular project, but yet not possesses the ability or the talent to imbue it with that ephemeral quality we call, well, quality. Those films are so ham-handedly made, with the entire structure and flow of the story disrupted and rerouted and rendered almost completely moot (thanks, opening narration that kills all suspense and foreshadowing and world-building!), that it's almost literally painful for me to watch (to this day, for instance, I have yet to see the final installment).
It's such a shame, too, as J.R.R. Tolkein's world is so captivating, and some of the cast in those films is just spot-on.
Oh, well.
JOSEPH MONKS: Perfect timing for this because for the past few days I’ve been discussing the Pet Sematary remake and comparisons to the original. I grew up a huge King fan. I think Pet Sematary is one of his best novels. And, I went to see that first adaptation opening weekend, paid full price, and walked out utterly stunned at how bad it was. Yes, Fred Gwynn is great, but he can’t carry that whole film. The Ramones theme song is perfect. There’s a particularly well-done rush-camera effect that made people jump, and beyond that? It’s crap. And, the source material is *so* rich and so well-crafted, it made me wonder, how could *anyone* fail with *that* to work with? I was also hideously disappointed with Bird Box, despite it’s critical reception and how people reacted. As it plays, it’s reasonably entertaining. But the second you stop to think about any of it, the holes in the story are so big you could drive a semi through them. No spoilers, but if you’ve seen the movie, think about the, hmnnn…’water’ scene in the final act, and ask yourselves how two kids and three birds wind up making it out of that? It’s utterly ridiculous, and the film is chock full of things like that. I don’t mind suspending disbelief for a movie, horror films especially. But, don’t treat me like I’m just going to accept everything no matter what you do, because you can hide behind the genre. It’s still storytelling, and if you don’t do that well, you deserve to fail. You want *that* much disbelief, make a buddy comedy/fantasy film.
MELISA QUIGLEY: I remember being excited about seeing Moulin Rouge because I enjoyed the original movie. The new movie had good reviews, but I didn’t get to see it until it came out on a DVD. I like musicals but the plot in the latest version of Moulin Rouge is full of holes and the storyline is stilted. The old version was much better and flowed from beginning to end. I expected the new movie to be along the same lines, but I think Luhrmann went over the top with his uniqueness and originality and made some of the characters unidentifiable. The script wasn’t balanced. It appeared to go from fanciful to an exaggerated death scene and the actors looked like they didn’t know what they were doing.
AMY H. STURGIS: I have reached the age when I no longer feel obligated to finish any film (or book) that I start. Life is short! We have a theater room in our home, and I prefer watching movies there instead of a t the cinema. One of the benefits of this is that I can bail on a film easily. I usually decide within twenty minutes if I want to invest the time to follow a film where it wants to take me; I don’t mean that I can see where a film is going in twenty minutes, necessarily, but that, because of the writing, I trust its creators to take me on the journey they have plotted.
I’ve avoided disliking quite a few films later on by simply rejecting them before they took enough of my time to frustrate me. Occasionally I am wrong, however, and I stick with a film that appears very promising but then stumbles and falls in the eleventh hour, failing its premise with poor execution. (I’m thinking of 2018’s Hereditary here.)
What I find most unsatisfying are films obviously made by a committee, lacking any unifying message or vision, or those that retread worn ground without fresh energy and seek to push safe buttons rather than take a risk and aim for truth.
ALEX: When I had lost someone in my life, twice, I’d gone into a deep depression. In those dark times it was a movie that was the first thing that made me laugh, escape or the sort. (For those curious, a Lil Rascals comedy, and a Three Stooges short)… Do you have films you go to for comfort in down times? If so, what are they, and why do you think they provide such comfort for you?
NATE BARLOW: This one is easy--Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Animal House! The Grail is easily one of the most quotable movies of all time, and Animal House isn’t that far behind. Comedies are the only quotable films, of course, (“Frank, I don’t give a damn I am your father will always have Paris,” anyone?), but with the right comedy knowing the jokes actually enhances their enjoyment instead of getting old. And I think that’s why I can always turn to those two movies.
MICHAEL BARON: Not really. I try to adjust my attitude by weighing the good against the bad.
JENNIFER CROW: For me, that movie is Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Brave folks fighting against the odds, trying to preserve the good in the world. Whenever I watch it, it re-energizes me to keep going.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER: All the films mentioned in question #1. For the same reason…they take you out of this world and put you in another. But for a quick pick-me-up, I’d go to the cartoons of Robert Clampbett and Chuck Jones. And then there’s the utterly wonderful Kung-Fu Hustle, but only the subtitled version…never the one that’s dubbed.
STEVEN GRANT: I never really thought about films as a source of comfort. There are "comfort food" films - I like to watch Sweet Smell Of Success every couple years and the original Christmas In Connecticut is the only Xmas film that's worth watching so I made that my holiday film for a long time but now I've seen it enough I doubt I'll ever watch it again. But when I want to feed my bad circumstances somehow I resort to music, not movies.
MARC N. KLEINHENZ: Partially given the topsy-turvy nature that my life has assumed for the moment -- being the parent of two young children (and a puppy!), and working two jobs, and having older family members to try and help take care of from time to time -- I simply don't have the gift of time, which typically means that I also lose the gift of film. This, by extension, means that I don't have the ability to turn to a particular movie, for comfort or otherwise.
On the other hand, however, I have been eking out some time for books once again in the grind of my daily existence. Call it the Tao of art in your middle age, I suppose.
JOSEPH MONKS: Surprisingly, no. Even though I love films like Jaws and Casablanca (my personal pick for best film ever made, screw the tech geeks who always hand the honor to Citizen Kane), I don’t recall ever seeking out a favorite film for that sort of emotional relief.
MELISA QUIGLEY: I liked the original version of The Stepford Wives because it was full of suspense and had a subtle humour to it. However, Oz made the latest version into a comedy which I didn’t find funny. It was a real letdown. He should’ve kept it more in line with the original.
Fried Green Tomatoes makes me laugh and I always manage to get lost in the storyline and escape from what is happening around me. The fact that Evelyn had the courage to get on with her life gave me the courage to get on with mine.
The Nutty Professor is a romantic comedy which I have watched twice, and it still managed to make me laugh. I love Sherman’s family and the interaction at mealtimes as well as the farting. Another movie I loved was Bridesmaids. I found the gastro scene hilarious.
AMY H. STURGIS: I think I look most for familiarity in difficult times. There was, for example, an awful night when I was stuck between flights trying to cross the country, going from an out-of-state speaking engagement to an out-of-state hospital where a family member lay dying. I was caught in limbo by this emergency, with helpless hours on my hands. I ended up turning to one of the films I know best, a favorite of mine, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). I can recite that movie by heart. There’s nothing inherently uplifting in a science fiction film about alien invasion, or a horror film about either communism or McCarthyism, depending on your point of view, but it’s a brilliant film in its own way – there’s a reason it has inspired multiple remakes – and I know it like the back of my (pod person’s?) hand. It offered a different terror and sense of doom than the one I was already experiencing, and it also provided an opportunity to console myself, litany-like, with lines I knew so well.
ALEX: Director Tim Burton called War of the Gargantuas and King Kong versus Godzilla cathartic films that allowed him as a child to experience joy. Since the films for him allowed to see destruction without actual violence, he suggested that film allowed him to fantasize without the real world’s consequences. Are there films similar to these for you? How do they cause you similar experiences of joy or catharsis? Would you argue that being a writer is also an escape or catharsis?
NATE BARLOW: Overall, I find music far more cathartic than movies. Don’t get me wrong, I love movies, I love the joy that they bring me, but that joy is very different from what Burton describes. Perhaps, A Clockwork Orange would come closest to fitting this bill for me (not Alex’s violence, but fear of the abuse of power). I will say that as a genre, horror has the greatest potential for such cathartic releases, at least when an interesting concept is well executed. As a writer, I love immersing myself in another world, but I think of it as more experiential than an escape.
MICHAEL BARON: Well musicals always put me in a good mood, including The Band Wagon, Kiss Me Kate, Absolute Beginners, Hear My Song, Footlight Parade, Singin' In the Rain, Judy Garland's A Star Is Born, which is far superior to the new one, which I enjoyed. I can't watch any movie in which dogs die.
As a writer, my job is to grab the reader by the throat. When I write something I know is good, I feel happy. Lately, I've been very happy.
JENNIFER CROW: I love all the iterations of Robin Hood, for similar reasons. I like the reminder that life isn’t fair, and we can’t always rely on our institutions to protect us, but we have the power to break rules and make the world better.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER: Well, Star Wars certainly allows the viewer to see destruction without actual violence. Being a writer does indeed allow me to fantasize, but I can only escape the actual physicality of what I am writing. There is no escape from the relevant emotions.
STEVEN GRANT: I know the whole catharsis thing is a popular theory dating back to at least Nietzsche, but I've never been all that interested in providing or receiving it. Sure, when you're a kid identifying with the action hero and pretending, however consciously, it's you punching or shooting people or destroying skyscrapers with your tail or whatever, can be "cathartic," but what most people really mean when they say "cathartic" is it feed their adolescent power fantasies. It's the same reason filmmakers always make sure their aging actors still appear to be irresistible to 18 year old starlets when they make movies. But I don't find the general idea very interesting at all. Real catharsis isn't something you can program into something anyway; it's all in the chemistry of the viewer. As far as joy goes, personally I find joy in the unexpected. Films whose outcome I can't predict 30 minutes into it, but still logically unfolds from the premise and development, I find a lot of joy in that. There's also a certain amount of joy to be found in a completely logical ending that you do see coming but still plays out in an exciting and emotionally satisfying way.
MARC N. KLEINHENZ: I have fallen in love with the many films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008-present) for many, many reasons, and this, I suspect, is one of the chief ones: the ability to engage in a great deal of pure escapism, to see massive titans battle one another across the entire globe (and cosmos!) and wreak all sorts of destruction. If watching the entire combined might of all, oh, three dozen or so Avengers take down Thanos's entire war fleet isn't the very definition of catharsis, I don't know what is.
Then again, what allows the MCU to work so effectively in this department is the fact that its architects make sure you get a heaping helping of vegetables along with your candy; as formulaic as the movies can be, they're always centered on character and consequences, so that when, say, Ultron scoops up an entire country and is planning to hurl it at the surface of the planet like a cataclysmic meteor, it's a manifestation of Tony Stark's psyche and foreshadows where his particular arc will ultimately end four years down the road. There really is a certain level of genius at work here.
And, yes, while writing is absolutely escapist or cathartic, it also hurts too damn much to be anything other than necessary for the person who is genetically bound to do it.
JOSEPH MONKS: I can’t deny that there are times writing is cathartic. I don’t go out of my way to use it for that, per se, but I think if you’re any good, you begin with an idea that’s desperate to get out, and in that process, catharsis occurs. Boy, that sounds like pure psychobabble, but it’s the best I can put it. Here again, I’m lacking, because with film, I’m looking for impact more so than catharsis, and while I can totally understand Burton’s example and what films like that were able to do for him, I find it more of an occasional side benefit to the creative process, whatever it might be. I’ve written comic books, a novel, hundreds of short stories, screenplays, and I’d imagine songwriters would enjoy those benefits just as much as Tim did.
I do think one of the things Tim touched on is rapidly disappearing, though. The ability to fantasize without the real world crashing down on you. Even when I was in high school, back in the mid-‘80s, I was sent down to the guidance counselor because of the short stories I was writing. Nowadays, I read reports about how truly creative kids can no longer exhibit *any* sort of violent imagery, lest they be viewed as a threat, and either shunned for their creativity or worse, to have it crushed by hand-wringers who can’t tell the difference between a kid who could be the next King or Koontz, and the kid hurting and intent on doing harm to others. I don’t think I could graduate high school today, and got lucky that I had a mentor in HS who not only recognized I had potential, but entered some of those same stories in contests that helped me get a couple bucks of scholarship money and accepted to colleges I absolutely didn’t have the overall grades to get into. I’ve always given the nod to Marge Harris for her ability to see I was a creative kid who liked dark stuff, not a dark kid who liked destructive stuff.
MELISA QUIGLEY: I would say that the movie Titanic allowed me to see destruction without violence. I fantasized about what it would be like to be Rose, in love onboard the ship, witnessing the despair, heartbreak, death and survival. It was also interesting seeing people enjoying themselves, unaware of what was happening to the ship.
I believe being a writer is an escape. I can sit in silence in a state I call ‘the zone’. Writing helps me get in touch with my innermost thoughts and feelings and helps me to process them.
AMY H. STURGIS: I don’t think joy or catharsis are (or should be) the central roles or outcomes of storytelling, either in film or prose. The storyteller’s highest purpose, to my way of thinking, is to try to make sense of the world: to analyze it, to interrogate it, to wrestle with and work through the thought experiment of “What if?” and ultimately to try to find (and say) something true.
I do find great joy in the exploration of certain themes, especially heroism. Perhaps this is why I enjoy certain Westerns as well as Gothic, science fiction, and (more recently) classic Samurai movies so much; many of these works deny the easy hero/villain dynamic and instead wrestle with complicated characters in moral gray areas, asking questions about guilt and redemption, responsibility and choice. As a first-generation and lifelong Star Wars fan from the age of five, for example, I must admit that my favorite film to date in the franchise is 2016’s Rogue One. That is not, obviously, due to any happy ending – all six of the main characters die! – but because it dwells within and peers into gray areas. Each protagonist is broken, damaged, or guilty in some way, none is a blameless “white hat hero,” and their journeys take place before a backdrop of messy, complicated questions that the film can only pose and not answer. Yet each chooses to take difficult, dangerous steps toward redemption and what they believe is right The films that follow Rogue One in the chronology of that galaxy far, far away – two trilogies and counting – all display the lasting ripple-effects of the characters’ courageous, redemptive, and sacrificial choices. That, to me, is a feel-good film (I say through my tears)!
ALEX: If someone wants to get to know you, what one or two films would reflect your outlook or your life experiences enough to say you’d chose them? How would being a writer affect your choices?
NATE BARLOW: As I mentioned before, The Wizard of Oz has perhaps the most universal message of any movie ever. And for so many years, watching the annual broadcast was a ritual for countless Americans (a sad loss amidst the many great advances of today’s on-demand technology). Rituals connect us to our collective past, and even if the annual broadcast is no more, showing that eternal magic of that film to our kids still on whatever media we can is the modern evolution of that ritual. So the viewing of that particular movie works on so many levels. The funny thing is, while I’ve always loved that movie, and family has always been important to me, a sense of home hasn’t always been. I enjoyed constantly being on the move and away from home, proudly counting the days I wasn’t at my domicile (and that was the proper word to call my place of dwelling at the time, since I had no real sense of home). Of course, that all changed once I was married and started raising a family of my own.
MICHAEL BARON: I don't think you can get to know people that way. But the above mentioned films are among my favorites, and we can always talk about them, which is one way to get to know people.
JENNIFER CROW: Galaxy Quest and The Two Towers. Though The Last Crusade and Apollo 13 would be close runners-up (these kinds of lists are difficult—how to choose? It can change from year to year, or even day to day).
ALAN DEAN FOSTER: Journey to the Center of the Earth. Not a great film, but adventure, the lure of discovery, and science together. And a great Bernard Herrrman score.
STEVEN GRANT: Man, I'd hope I'm complex enough that I couldn't be narrowed down to one or two films. I guess if I had to find two I'd choose The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The President's Analyst. But those just scratch the surface. And both are from my childhood; I'm not sure being a writer has anything to do with it, except that both nicely express aspects of my underlying worldview. But my worldview isn't exactly ordered...
MARC N. KLEINHENZ: I'm going to break your rules and give you three films: the Matrix trilogy (1999-2003). The synthesis of so many disparate cinematic elements -- sci-fi, theology, action, mythology, kung-fu, social commentary, and, of course, philosophy -- makes for this incredibly layered worldview, one that is steeped just as much in comic-book history as it is present-day politics. And the central thematic motif of the story, in which the Wachowskis present the premise or the characters or, even, the time period and then completely turn it on its head, is so wonderfully, precisely, perfectly complicated that one's mind can't help but be expanded while watching it -- I mean, just look at Neo! He's at first presented as this Christ-like messiah but is then, by the end of the trilogy, transformed into this Hindu-Buddhist manifestation of cosmic cycles. It's just breathtaking.
And this bucking of expectations and easy answers extends to the overarching war between the humans and the Machines, as well. Whereas other (film) narratives would opt for the easy, traditional way out -- such as, say, Star Wars, in which Anakin Skywalker can only be the Chosen One if he finishes murdering all of the Jedi's mortal enemies -- the Wachowskis end on a thoroughly ambivalent note, in which the Matrix still exists but the war ends, where humanity chooses both freedom and enslavement (because that's what human beings do, after all), and where mankind's sense and perception of self has become so thoroughly distributed that it comes to include robots instead of continually discounting them. It reminds me of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, in which the only way out is for both sides to work together to attain a lasting peace, and I can only hope that my own work manages to achieve just a tiny fraction of this stark, unashamed objectivity.
JOSEPH MONKS: I’d like to say to someone interested, watch Casablanca, and ask yourself, why, as a writer, would Joe find *this* film *so* fulfilling? What about it makes him go, “Wow.” I’d do the same with Jaws. Don’t believe they have anything in common with my life other than having gone to the beach, but as Joe the writer, boy, do those two flicks stand out. And, although dated, the Karloff version of The Mummy is another one, along with, and this’ll probably surprise some, THEM! Yes. Giant ants, 1954. There’s a movie from my childhood that I probably give a little too much leeway, but by the same token, if I could remake one film, and could choose anything? That’d be the one. Anyone got a buddy at Warner Bros?
MELISA QUIGLEY: Sometimes I think spirit speaks in whispers and I was meant to see the 1973 movie, Sunshine, with my parents and sister because several years later my mum died, but not of cancer. The movie is a story about a young woman who lives with her husband and daughter in the woods. She discovers she has terminal cancer and begins a tape-recorded journal of the time she has left. John Denver’s song ‘Sunshine on my shoulders’ was also played. It’s the only movie that has made me cry all the way through it, and it made me realise that we are all here for a certain amount of time and to enjoy what I do. I’ve been reading since I was in primary school and writing in a diary since I was twelve. I’m not sure how being a writer affects my choices.
AMY H. STURGIS: I think two of my favorites, The Lion in Winter (1968) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), probably capture me best. One is considered high cinema and the other B-level genre fare – neither prevailing opinion matters to me and my enjoyment of them, incidentally – and yet both are quite effective at posing difficult questions about the human experience, staring uncomfortable realities in the face, and resisting the temptation to provide neat, reassuring answers. I admire the crispness of both scripts and the performances of both casts. As a historian who also maintains a lifelong engagement with science fiction, I admire how one film uses the past and the other uses the day-after-tomorrow future to talk about our world today. Neither film is comfortable with what it sees in the mirror or out the window, so to speak; I suppose that’s fitting, because I’m not exactly comfortable in and with this world either – and I think, as these films suggest, that discomfort is both warranted and fascinating to explore.
ALEX: I mentioned dark times, and catharsis, do you watch any film over and over as a sort of comfort food? How does it work for you? I used to grade papers as a grad student and would put a Godzilla vhs on, from the first era (Showa). I’d not have to follow the action, but it would keep me company while reading and grading papers.
NATE BARLOW: So, so many! Pretty much any of the films I’ve already mentioned loving, but to touch upon a couple I haven’t otherwise described here, The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark. As a filmmaker who appreciates and studies every element of the craft of moviemaking, when watching a film for the first time, or even the first few times, I never want my eyes to leave the screen. But those films you know so well, so innately, completely that every moment is part of you, are like old friends, great company for any of life’s more mundane tasks.
MICHAEL BARON: Man On Fire, although it's not the happiest movie in the world. It's just so perfect.
JENNIFER CROW: Galaxy Quest is a pure delight. It manages to poke fun at a lot of SF tropes while still appreciating what made me fall in love with the genre. And I love themes of friendship and found family, so watching it does my heart good as it makes me laugh.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER: That would be Gunga Din. Completely takes me out of the present.
STEVEN GRANT: Like I said, I enjoy Sweet Smell Of Success. I watch Touch Of Evil periodically. Both have really simple setups and brilliant dialogue. But there's so much to watch and so little time that rewatching anything is pretty rare these days.
JOSEPH MONKS: There are films I’ve seen hundreds of times, but I don’t actively view the same movies over and over that way. Growing up, THEM! Was a staple of the Sunday afternoon popcorn movie rotation on TV, and back then, there was no cable, so what was on, was on. Saturday Night was Creature Features, so a lot of those old horror classics were replayed constantly because the audience probably wasn’t the same week-to-week, so they didn’t have to worry too much about variety. If you were 11 years old in the late ‘70s on Saturday night at 11:30pm? Choice didn’t really exist. When VHS came out, same thing. We kept renting Scanners for the gore because those were the best F/X any of us had ever seen. We rented Friday the 13th so we could get girlfriends to jump into our laps. We rented Hellraiser for group watchings with friends who weren’t into horror to see who’d run out first. That’s how we got to the point we were so familiar with a lot of those films. Not that they weren’t fun or meant something to us, but Scanners is *not* a particularly great film. Even so, all my friends had the issue of Fangoria that had the still-frame cover of the guy’s head blowing up. Catharsis? Man, I sure hope not, but to me at least, that’s how some of those films became our ‘standards’, if not comfort food.
MELISA QUIGLEY: I’ve only watched the Nutty Professor and Bridesmaids twice. I think the first time I watch something it has a dramatic effect on me. If I watch a movie again the effect isn’t as strong.
AMY H. STURGIS: I’m incapable of multitasking when a film plays (unless the task is something simple and second nature, such as eating a meal), because my attention automatically goes to the words. I tend to rely on film scores for the kind of comforting background support you’re describing, because they evoke a sense of storytelling without demanding the same kind of focus from me. I need to have seen and appreciated a given film to enjoy and use its score in this way, but my favorite scores aren’t necessarily from the films I love most.
ALEX: Lastly, as a writer, while watching film, do you mentally disagree or agree with the film, making edits and corrections in your mind? Do you have any particular examples of such?
NATE BARLOW: All the time, though I can’t separate how much of that is the writer side of me vs. the director/producer/actor sides of me. It’s in my very nature to analyze each of those elements, along with the cinematography, editing, use of music, you name it. As an actor in particular I tend to muse upon how I would deliver the same lines. Indeed I often have to force myself to step back and avoid over-analyzing a film if I simply want to enjoy the movie for what it is. Ang Lee’s Hulk is a good example. Loved, loved, loved the editing, the comic book-like framing. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I loved about it—and that’s why that example stands out!
MICHAEL BARON: All the time! I was looking forward to Strawberry, but it was a disappointment because they did not follow Jennifer Garner's journey. She goes away. She comes back a human killing machine. Cheat! We must see the journey.
JENNIFER CROW: I feel like I don’t know enough about making movies to critique editing choices, but I find it fascinating to watch deleted scenes and editor’s cuts of movies and ponder those choices. As a writer, it helps me frame my own internal discussion of what to leave in and what to take out.
ALAN DEAN FOSTER: While watching I cannot stop myself from mentally commenting on everything from the writing to the editing to the music to the cinematography…etc., etc. My wife refuses to watch most movies with me because when someone else is present I tend to give voice to my observations. Or as she would put it, “Can’t you just shut up and watch the movie?”. The answer is…no, I can’t. I’m too aware of and sensitive to the process. This actually is not a good thing. I should just be listening to John William’s Imperial March and not reflecting on the inspiration it derives from the “Mars” movement of Holst’s “The Planets”. Or how much the opening sequence in the first “Indiana Jones” film owes to the comic “The Seven Cities of Cibola”, by Carl Barks. It’s a bit of a curse.
STEVEN GRANT: Sure, but that comes from spending ten years as a film critic. Part of me just relaxes and watches things, but part of me is always analyzing and predicting the plot, which becomes ridiculously easy with most modern films. I don't make corrections so much as note what I see as missed opportunities, things that were set up that could easily have solved script problems they had later on but they didn't use it or didn't see it. I saw something just recently but I can't remember now what it was. So, no, no examples, sorry. I'll let you know if I think of any, but it usually only happens with films I end up not liking, and films I don't like I tend to forget very quickly. There's joy in that too.
JOSEPH MONKS: Every…single…time. I’ll use a recent TV example, so, spoiler warning if you haven’t seen Haunting of Hill House. Everyone dies when they burn the house down at the end. Okay, that’s not true, but I figured I’d give you a little space before the real spoilers. So, I’m watching this with my wife, another horror fan. And right off the bat, when the family moves in and crazy stuff starts happening, I’m saying, out loud, “Don’t. Don’t just show this character something frightening and after the stinger have another character walk in and there’s nothing there.” But, sure enough…that’s a go-to for the team behind it. Now, I get it, haunted house films and shows have their standard bag of tricks. But they beat that plot device to *death* in that series. On the flip side, know I’m late to it, but I just caught The Conjuring. Liked it a lot. Throw the ‘based on a true story’ part out, because really, who cares? It’s a haunted house movie. It has some of those classic elements. Doors are going to open (or close) by themselves. Someone is going to get trapped in the basement while family members can’t open the door. The lights *will* eventually go out, and something is going to appear when a candle is lit. Okay, fine. I don’t mind. But…don’t keep teasing the audience with this overwrought, “Well, is it realllllllllly haunted, or is Character X just seeing things?” Pffft. The Conjuring hardly bothers. They get every key character into the house, and to borrow a trendy phrase from a couple years back: shit happens. Those guys don’t bother fooling around with spending half the movie waiting to get to the good stuff. They set the ghosts loose early and let ‘em run wild, and that really impressed me, seeing as I’d just been so disappointed by Hill House. While I like Jordan Peele, I think Us has some story elements that simply don’t work, and the film is a bit of a mess. That critics are raving about it, I think, has more to do with Peele not so much breaking storytelling ground, but breaking ground by having his social elements—such as a black family as the protagonists—even though the only change *is* skin color. More spoilers comin’ if you haven’t seen it. Ready?
If you have caught it, the two father characters in the flick are hideously one-dimensional. I get it, the protagonist male is black. Cool, I’m on board. But, he’s the same wannabe tough guy who finds strangers in his driveway and thinks, “Oh, let me go outside with a bat and tell them they better leave or they’re gonna get some whoop-ass.” He’s pretty much every white male protagonist who’s come before who thinks he can out-tough these strange wierdos. Who refuses to believe there’s something truly kooky going on until it’s reported on the news. Sorry, but I find that tired whether your male protagonist is white, black, fat, skinny, whatever. I wanted to love the film. In the end, though, it’s decent as it unspools, but man, I thought it could’ve been so much better. So, yeah, I do it, I compare notes with my friends, and I file a lot of that away to use in my own work. I mean, hey, I went out and *paid* for the chance to see theirs, least I can do is try to pick up something useful, right? I’ve got more stories to tell, after all. Anything that’ll help make them better? Count me in.
MELISA QUIGLEY: When I watch a movie I don’t mentally disagree or agree with the film. Sometimes I anticipate what the climax will be before it happens. After the movie, I like to discuss the plot points with my husband. Sometimes we disagree and go over and over each scene until we come to an agreement.
AMY H. STURGIS: I tend to take mental notes of what works well and why as I watch a film; if a narrative choice really moves me or makes an impact on me, I file that away for future reference. I also tend to insert missing scenes or add epilogues to films I enjoy, filling in the “gaps” as best I can in my own imagination.
If I find myself disagreeing with a film or noting what seems to be a misstep, I look to the source. In some cases, if this comes from filmmakers I deeply trust because of other works they have created, I ask why a certain ingredient feels wrong and what the storytellers may have been intending, why they made the choices they did – in short, I look for what I might be missing and what I can learn from interrogating my own reaction. If I don’t already have a kind of trust relationship with the filmmakers, and those apparent mistakes or missteps happen too frequently, I will become distracted by them and lose interest in the film.
