TBWCYL, Inc. presents This Film Festival Will Change Your Life

We at TBWCYL, Inc. recently read that writer Jonathan Lethem was invited to make the selections for a film festival all his own. We wondered what that would be like and what movies we would pick. We also wondered whether we needed to have some kind of criteria or theme? Should they be movies that influenced or complemented our work? Should they be geographical in some sense or represent a certain time period or sensibility? We weren't sure, so we decided to come up with our initial list and then see whether, or how, they might hang together. Here you go, in no particular order:

(1) After Hours (1985) - Martin Scorsese
(2) Hoop Dreams (1994) - Steve James
(3) Apocalypse Now (1979) - Francis Ford Coppola
(4) Punch Drunk Love (2002) - PT Anderson
(5) Niagra, Niagra (1997) - Bob Gosse
(6) Once Were Warriors (1994) - Lee Tamahori
(7) Barfly (1987) - Barbet Shroedor
(8) American History X (1998) - Tony Kaye
(9) Caddyshack (1980) - Harold Ramis
(10) Short Cuts (1993) - Robert Altman
(11) The Squid and The Whale (2005) - Noah Baumbach
(12) Alien (1979) - Ridley Scott
(13) Swingers (1996) - Doug Lyman
(14) One False Move (1992) - Carl Franklin
(15) Reservoir Dogs (1992) - Quentin Tarentino
(16) Dead Man (1995) - Jim Jarmusch
(17) In The Company of Men (1997) - Neil LaBute
(18) Escape from New York (1981) - John Carpenter
(19) Do The Right Thing (1989) - Spike Lee
(20) In The Bedroom (2001) - Todd Field
(21) Barton Fink (1991) - The Coen Brothers
(22) Kids (1995) - Larry Clark
(23) Breakfast Club (1985) - John Hughes
(24) Requiem for a Dream (2000) - Darren Aronofsky
(25) The Warriors (1979) - Walter Hill
(26) Boys Don't Cry (1999) - Kimberly Peirce
(27) Drugstore Cowboy (1989) - Gus Van Sant
(28) Die Hard (1988) - John McTiernan

So, thoughts? We think these movies are probably all over the place. We also think though that overall these movies do complement the themes our work tends to traverse: damaged people coping with all sorts of struggles - isolation, confusion, fractured families, violence, oppression, adultery, sexuality, substance abuse, and Ted Knight - who don't necessarily have the skills or self-awareness to fully grasp how to handle or make sense of the situations they are in. The coping skills they do have are limited and not always healthy, some times they persevere, and some times they don't. These are our people, and we probably can't go with 28 movies, but that's what we plan to pitch until the officials at the film festival tell us otherwise.