12 Movie Musts
A Fan’s Notes
A dozen movie musts from the writer, director of Almost Famous
1. Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker) (1966)
Gimme Shelter (Albert & David Maysles) (1969)
What’s Happening!!
The Beatles in the USA (Albert & David Maysles) (1964)
Mad Dogs and Englishmen (Robert Abel & Pierre Adidge) (1971)
Tantrums and Tiaras (David Furnish) (1997)
Taken as a whole, these five documentaries prove one thing. The best rock films are stolen portraits smuggled out of their subjects’ lives under the innocent guise of, “Hey, let’s film this tour.” After a time, the artists forgot they were being filmed … and what resulted in each case was a searing and often damning masterpiece, as powerful as the best of their music. And each of these documentaries stole a little of their subjects’ souls, too.
2. Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols) (1971)
Mike Nichols, just a few years down the line from The Graduate, puts on a clinic for directing actors and letting raw, true moments tear up the screen. Carnal Knowledge set the bar very high, and the breeze of a generation of directors trying to comment on “the male experience” hasn’t budged it a bit since.
3. Gregory’s Girl (1981), Local Hero (1983) and Comfort and Joy (1984, all written & directed by Bill Forsyth)
The Scottish master of the miniature. These three films form a Phil Spector symphony built almost entirely from the tiny moments that would be cut from most any other movie. And not a single writer-director has ever used the word “no” better in his scenes.
4. Stolen Kisses (Francois Truffaut) (1968)
I love all of Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel films. The pain in his autobiographical portraits runs deep, often disguised with the lightest comic touch. The greatest moment for me is in Stolen Kisses, when Jean-Pierre Leaud performs a soliloquy to a mirror, in which he repeats the name of a woman … and then his own, for a very long while. Note to future actors: try this scene yourself, inserting your own name. It’s not easy.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan) (1962)
My first favorite film. And the best title sequence ever. When the original cast got together a few years ago for a special video release party, I stood on the outskirts of a press line and managed to get my copy of the original one-sheet signed by the entire cast. Gregory Peck, the mighty Atticus Finch, was the last signature to elude me. It was the late director Alan Pakula (the movie’s producer) who made sure Peck signed my poster. “I’m honored by your fandom,” said Pakula. Thank you, Alan. That was very Atticus of you.
6. Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen) (1986) & Love Serenade (Shirley Barrett) (1996)
The glory of sisters. (And in the important fringe genre of disc-jockey characters on film, let us just hail its one and only King — Love Serenade’s Ken Sherry.)
7. Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder) (1957)
Two moments make this Wilder at his Lubitsch-loving best. Audrey Hepburn’s hallway waltz with her cello as she returns home from a magical night with Gary Cooper. And Cooper’s own drunken liquor-cart scene, serenaded by a herd of gypsies.
8. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir) (1939)
Comedy is rarely this deeply funny, or long lasting. Jean Renoir himself delivers the heartbreaking performance at the c, enter of this masterpiece. His is one of the great “friends” in movies — the sad-sack clown at the circus of love.
9. Broadcast News (James L. Brooks) (1987) & Manhattan (Woody Allen) (1979)
Like a great lingering song by Paul Westerberg or the Left Banke, these two romantic comedies flirt with upbeat endings and then boldly deliver the darker and more unforgettable confection: happy/sad.
10. Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam) (1979)
My favorite love scene. Steph and Jimmy in the alley by the trash cans. It’s random and jagged and quick and powerful. And what hurts most is the classic happy/sad kiss-off Jimmy gets later from Steph: “It was just a giggle.” Even later, Roddam gives us the broken hero returning alone to the site of his former sexual glory, wallowing in the hideous and glorious self-pity. It was a bit of behavior that I imitated myself, in real life, with endless late-night drives past the home of my ex-girlfriend. It wound up in Say Anything in the far more capable hands of John Cusack.
11. Over the Edge (Jonathan Kaplan) (1979)
The forgotten Godfather of the contemporary teen movie. The perfect screen debut of Matt Dillon. Suburban culture explored, exploited … and exploded.
12. Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze) (1999) & Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer) (1998)
Brilliance with not a whiff of pretension. The future is ridiculously bright.
Courtesy of Film Comment – Cameron Crowe – September/October 2000