Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Skidmore Professor Daniel Nathan introduced a new class to his American studies students. 10 Movies that Changed America. As this year's Academy Awards approached, I was invited to sit in on a class reviewing Gone with the Wind, and after spoke with Professor Nathan about the class, his journey to Skidmore College, and his thoughts on the Academy Awards. Professor Daniel Nathan, tell me your story.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Came about in part because of another class. I teach, books that Changed America, and that that class has been a big success.
We've read things like you might expect, like Huckleberry Finn and Henry David Thoreau's Walden. We also read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Betty Friedan's the Feminine Mystique. And we've had some really good conversations about those books, about how they had an impact on the culture. And then talking with some students, some American Studies seniors, they said, you know, we could take this idea and use it as a template to talk about another important cultural form, and that's film. And sitting in this very room, we had some really rich conversations about what that might look like and how would we structure it. And it's really a testament to, like, the kind of freedom that Skidmore gives faculty that I could work with these students to create this new course. And so, you know, we're running it now to see how it goes. And so far, I'm really pleased with the outcome. The students have been lively, and they've done the work, and they're thinking critically and. And they're putting things in context, and they're making connections, and that's what we're trying to do in a liberal arts education.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: When I told my wife how excited I was about sitting down with you and also being introduced to the class, my wife and I, both students in the 80s, both of us probably at the same time.
Where is this when we were going to college? You know, just books that changed America and then film that changed America because we would be, like, clamoring, right? Because there were so much basic structuring, you know, prerequisites, and then your course study, you know, it didn't blossom into that. So, you know, books that changed the merit, was that already here before you?
[00:02:31] Speaker B: No, no, I created that, and it was in part predicated on a book by a guy named Jay Perini, who wrote a book called promised land. 13 books that changed America. And I stumbled across this book, and I read it, and I thought, wow, we can't read 13 books in one semester. I don't think students are geared for that anymore. But we could do Half of them. And so that's where that came from. And I've taught it several times now, and it's gone well, and I hope to keep doing it. But that's one of the great things about Skidmore. One of the great things about my department, American Studies, is that you're encouraged to be experimental. You're encouraged to think about, you know, new ways of developing some basic skills, you know, how to read carefully, how to think critically, how to write effectively. And if you can do that through the. The medium of film, great.
And two, students are really.
They're visually literate.
They are immersed in a visual culture. So it's important that we talk about things that engage them. So we're deliberately trying, right, to come up with ideas, to experiment in ways that stimulate and excite students.
And so far, this class has done that.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: When you're looking to introduce, launch, you know, books that changed America, films that changed America.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: What's. What's the apprehension? Because do you go in with the mindset and again, looking at your bio and embracing baseball, which I admire so much, and we're gonna get back to. Before next year's spring season. I promise, if you build it, they will come. Mantra, or is there trepidation when you want to introduce this or.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Right. No, no. You do have to think a little bit about audience, like, who's going to be interested in this? And there's been some classes over the years that have not hit the mark, but you do need to think about where the kinds of things students are interested in. So years ago, I used to teach a class about HBO's series The Wire, and that's gone over really well. I think that. I think that's the only class in Skidmore, recent history, that's been explicitly about television. And that was gangbusters. It was terrific. And talking about that, just like, you know, these other classes allows you to talk about other important things, like, you know, race and class and gender and these other issues.
But there's been a couple classes over the years that I'd say have not been huge, you know, hits with students, but there's others. I have a class about the Holocaust in American culture. Taught it three times. And it has been just really important, especially, you know, when you consider what's going on in the world and rising incidents of antisemitism, for instance, attempts to whitewash some of the past. It's really important that we have classes that push students to think carefully. And all these courses do that, but some of them do so in ways that they want to engage, they want. I mean, especially to be candid. I think a lot of the Jewish students at Skidmore who have some sort of family connection or some sort of cultural or religious connection, they're drawn to that class. And it's been a huge hit with students. And it just. Every time I teach it, it gets better and better, richer and richer. So I'm not too worried now these days about, like, having enough of an audience, because my experience is that students are really interested in these subjects. And, you know, obviously, I am, too.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Were you always, per se, a movie buff, and then did you look at movies, as you teach now in a critical state, or was it just. That's what you did on certain nights, or it was part of your consistent DNA?
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Right. No, that's. That's a good question. Because I think I am wired to be, like, a critical media consumer. And there are times where I can watch a show just for. For fun, but most of the time when I'm watching it, I'm thinking about, wow, that's a complicated shot. Look how they compose that, or how did they get that shot? Or, oh, this is some really good casting, or this writing is not that. So I'm constantly. When I'm watching these films, I have to admit, I am often thinking like a critic would. But then that's been a long time. And a lot of these students are similar. Like, they're not really, most of them, my experience, passive consumers. Like, they're not just there to enjoy the films. They really want to get after them. They want to critique them. They want to talk about them formally, like, how are certain things? But they also are interested in, like, the production history. They're interested in reading the criticism of the films, which come in multiple forms, like contemporary criticism. So in today's class, which was about Gone with the Wind, we were reading reviews from 1939 and 1940 from different kinds of media sources, including, say, the African American press. And you were in class, you saw that they. They are tapping into that. Like, they. They. They look at these texts, these films in a critically alert way. And that's one of the things we're.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Trying to promote in the process of introducing a movie, introducing the literature that surrounded it in reviews then and now. Right. Like, particularly with Gone with the Wind.
But then you ask the question, because next up is. Is the Godfather, which. I may just come back for that. Yeah.
When you ask who ifs. Who has seen it.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: And I think for you and I, it's part of our DNA.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: If we've seen it 25 times, we've seen it a hundred.
But then four students raised their hands, and then are you like.
But then when 4 see it, but then when 20 see it, then you're having valuable discussion about it. Is that currency for you?
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it is always interesting to ask that question, how many of you have seen? And then you fill in the blank with some sort of classic film. And for a lot of them, they're old, old movies, you know, like wizard of Oz, we watched that last week. That's 1939. Right. And so that's older than most of their grandparents. And so. But at the same time, these films are so powerful that many of them have seen them now. Some of them, you know, haven't seen the movies that we're going to look at. A good number raise their hand in the affirmative for the Godfather, but, you know, that that's an old movie. That. That movie is. It's over 50 years old now. Right. And so in pop culture terms, it's kind of amazing that it survived that long. Most things don't. But that film survived for all kinds of reasons. I mean, one, it's a great piece of art. It's just, you know, it's. It's one of the most highly acclaimed and almost reverentially treated films we have. I mean, it's truly iconic. People, you know, it's a fascinating. People who don't even know that movie can quote lines from that movie. You know, they, you know, I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse, or so. And so Sleeps with the Fishes, you know, that those. That's one of the things we're trying to get at. Like, how does a movie like that become so embedded in the culture, that figures of speech, lines, dialogue from the movie become part of our common language? And so, you know, it's the same thing with wizard of Oz. Like, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto. You know, like, you know, there's this sense that these movies are so impactful that people who haven't seen them know something about them. And I think the Godfather is one of those movies. The Godfather is fantastic because it's about so many different things, right? It's, you know, it's. It's about family, of course, but Coppola thought of it as like an extended metaphor about capitalism. So we can talk about that.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: The.
What was interesting is in. In your class today talking about Gone with the Wind covered so Many things, yeah. So many interesting things that is going to fill my weekend with my wife because it was my mother's favorite film of all time. Because the beauty, because of the storyline, never delved below the surface.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Just embraced it for what it was.
And the one thing that did not come apart, which is what my mother pulled from it and then my wife still pulls from it, is in a sense the cinematic beauty of it. The way it was shot. The Civil War, the hospital infantry scene. Like again, how did they shoot that? Because there were no drones when this was shot. What crane did they use in that type of thing? And then just the beauty of it and just the, the shooting of, of the red petticoat.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Right?
[00:12:16] Speaker A: How rich it was on screen.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Yeah, Technicolor, really. It's beautiful.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: You know, brought that out, didn't come up. And it was interesting. And is that just part of the ability of your students to just scrape, you know, accept it, appreciate it, but dive. Dive.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Well, I will say the class before you visited on, on Wednesday, we did talk a lot about the film's beauty. And I mean, it's just, it is a masterpiece, right? And part of it's the Technicolor and part of it's the composition of the shots and part of it's the terrific acting performances and the editing is really clever and the musical score is beautiful. And like, you know, all the little pieces, the costuming and the sets, I mean, it was among the most expensive movies ever made. It was over a four million dollar production in 1939. And you know, it's, it is really beautiful, well composed. And that's part of the reason it endures because just as a work of art formally, it's really, it's just beautiful. You know, my, my grandmother was her favorite movie, you know, and, and it's because of how beautiful it was and also because of how interesting and dynamic the relationship is between Scarlet and Rhett. I mean, that there's still sparks, you know, it's over 80 years later and you watch that, it's like, wow. And it was fascinating to hear in class, right? That one woman said, you know, I was surprised at how much I could relate to Scarlett. That's incredible, you know, I mean this, this film is over 80 years old and you've got a 20 something student being able to identify with this character. That's amazing. That speaks to the almost. I usually don't like talking about this, but like the timelessness of the film. Now our task in the class is really to put it in its historical period to understand what this film might have meant to people in 1939 and 1940. And it was deeply meaningful. It was also hugely profitable. It made one of our readings in class today suggested in terms of contemporary dollars, this is like a billion dollar film. And if you think about it over, you know, the generations, it's probably multiple. Right. Many billions that this film has generated. And so you can't ignore that. But that's not, you know, the financial aspect of the film is not the only important part. And the students, I think they understand that it can be one, on the one hand, visually and aesthetically, just kind of spectacular. And simultaneously, when you scrape down and you start to think about what kind of ideologies is it trafficking in? What's the messages it's really saying? What's it really telling us about, say, the Civil War and reconstruction?
Those are things that we need to be critical of so they can appreciate it as a work of art and critique it as a product of culture.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: And one of the things that brought us together today is we're in awards season. Academy Awards is coming up. And. And you have the conversation that at the time, right. You know, the largest, you know, highest number of nominees, highest number of awards. And it stood for decades, right before Ben Hur.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Right?
[00:15:35] Speaker A: How. Where is the Academy Awards now? Is it.
So much has been said. We hit Golden Globes, right. Huge uproar, changes. The Academy vowed changes.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: There have been some.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: And where. Where is it now?
Where are the Academy Awards now? How important are they today? Is it. Is it not again, where it was like everything else, because it's. It's three hours, so.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: We lose.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: No, the Academy Awards.
That's interesting. There are people who study this. I'm not one of them, but I've read some of the work sometimes, and it's still an important annual tradition, right. In terms of bringing attention and prestige and honor to this particular medium, Academy Awards are still very important. I mean, just think of it from a marketing standpoint. The brand, the quality of that brand is pretty strong. It still means something to be an Academy Award nominee if you're a winner. Oh, my gosh, it's worth a great deal. You could, you know, an actor or director, they could skate by on that for the rest of their lives.
At the same time, you know, there's something about the Academy Awards that is kind of hard to take sometimes because you have these people who are really talented gathering to celebrate one another. Right. And to praise themselves and their work, which I do think is important. But I like, I have to admit, I like the kind of irreverence that someone like Ricky Gervais would bring to the Golden Globes. The Academy Awards takes itself kind of seriously, and I do think we should think carefully about which films are considered among the best of the year. And over time, you know, how many of them are going to stand up. It's fascinating when you look at the list of nominees from like 50 or 60 or 70 years ago. Many of those films have fallen out of the consciousness of people who are film buffs. Right. But so the winners. It provides almost a kind of what, immortality. So it's a very. It's a. It seems like. I know it's an international events because there's. There's people from all over the world attending them and watching them. But it seems like, to me, like a very American kind of event where Hollywood gets together. It's a small group of people not a member of the Academy, and they come together and they celebrate one another and they have a good time. It's a little bit, you know, incestuous, but at the same time, it's more than just fun and games. It's a way of articulating and awarding products, artwork that is really, you know, exemplary. So I do think. I do think it's meaningful. I mean, obviously it's not going to change my daily life, but I do like seeing what kinds of films get some Hollywood love on them.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Which, when you look at the Academy Awards, tune in or do the. Or do the post game, the Monday morning quarterbacking.
What category is the first one you're looking for? Are you looking for, you know, movie of the year? Or you. Are you looking at actor, actress, screenplay?
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: You know, what's. What's your. What are you looking at? What's your first line?
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Well, no, I. The best picture. I always. I'm always interested in that. I'm also interested in, you know, best director.
It's odd sometimes, right? Like, that's often different. So it's always confusing me a little bit, like, how could this be the best picture? And the. And then the guy or the person, usually a guy who makes the film doesn't get best director, but that happens sometimes. But I also, I also watch carefully for best actor and actress and supporting. I do. Because those acting performances, some of them are just so spectacular, just so wonderful and impressive.
I'm not an actor, but I. I really do have some appreciation for people who can craft a character. And so I pay attention to those. I mean, Obviously, Best Screenplay is interesting, too, because I'm interested in writing and. But some of the other ones I really don't know how to assess. Like, I wouldn't know how to assess the best editing category. I mean, some of the editing in these films is just amazing, but I'm not expert enough to be able to discern, you know, what would be the criteria.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: A pet peeve.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: Within the family, myself and my wife, is you have those years where movies start. Just run the table. They just run the table within the first hour. You're probably gonna guess who's gonna get, you know, Best Picture and probably Best Director. When things start out slowly and these awards are given out, are you a fan of that? Are there movies out. Do you think there are movies out there that deserve to get the sevens and the eights in a given year? And how special does it have to be? What's. If you. If you would say yes to that, what's your.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, sometimes there's a movie that's just so spectacular. Gone With Wind's a good example, you know, that there were so many parts of the film that were interesting that.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's meritorious. I mean, awards are tricky because, you know, they're obviously not just subjective, but also kind of political.
But, yeah, I mean, if. If a movie is fantastic and it's in many different ways, then I'm okay with it. I mean, I. I also sort of simultaneously believe in the. Sharing the wealth and let. Let's spread some, you know, attention and respect and love on other. Other films. But, yeah, I mean, if. If a film, something like, you know, Schindler's List is so outstanding, or something like, you know, Spielberg has been a great director. So you could pick almost any Spielberg movie, I suppose, and say, well, look, I mean, it's. It's an important film and there were great performances in it, and it's really well crafted. And if it wins a whole bunch of awards, I'm okay with that.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Your opinion?
Teaching a class and viewing movies throughout and being aware of the Academy Awards, the blockbusters, meaning the Marvels.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Have not broken the ice yet.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Is it because of just in a sense that cookie cutter is, you know, the critics. It's the same thing. Insert colored character. Green, red, blue, purple, spaceship universe. It's the same thing again and again. Is that what may be preventing them without having a storyline that is deeper? Character development? Character was developed sometimes back in the 1940s.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: That's interesting you say that because there's a student in that class you were just visiting. His name's Jacob, and he knows a lot about Marvel films. I mean, he wrote his senior seminar paper last semester about Marvel films, and he knows more about that than I do. But one thing that I do know is that there are members of the Academy, important people, people like, you know, Martin Scorsese and. And Francis Ford Coppola, who are really critical of those films. They think they're not really cinema, that they are, you know, pop culture. They wouldn't say this, but sort of what they mean is pop culture trash. That they're formulaic. Right. That was your point, that they're formulaic and they're not especially creative.
I don't share that view. I do think they are works of art. Now, the question is, are they good? And the Academy, the members of the Academy, the people who get to vote, they. It seems like they haven't really embraced that idea that they think that they're more, you know, like pop culture kitsch rather than serious works of art or cinema. I don't think that has to be the case. I don't know as much about Marvel films as I should, I suppose, but my sense is that some of those films are actually kind of thoughtful and interesting, and they don't always take risk. But think about a film like Black Panther. I mean, that got a lot of attention, that got some respect.
That's a film that had an impact on America, for sure. And so a film like Black Panther deserves to be in a. In a serious conversation about cinema in ways that I'm not sure that, like all the Captain America or Avengers films do.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: You talked earlier about the freedom at Skidmore, and politely. You're. You're a veteran of education. You've been around the block.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I've been here while.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: You've been here a while. And you've. And you've taught for a while.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: And you've taught and you. And you've been throughout the world.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: What brought you to Skidmore?
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Right. Well, that was fortuitous in so many ways. So the academic year before I came to Skidmore, I was in Finland on a Fulbright. My wife and I spent a year in Tampere, Finland, which is just north of Helsinki. And we came here in part because there was a job opening in this department, and it was a fantastic opportunity. I went to a small liberal arts school as an undergraduate. I went to Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. And my goal all along had been to sort of get back to where I was a kind of small liberal arts community where you got to know students and you could develop relationships with students that would maybe last years. And that has been the case. I wanted basically to do for students what my professors did for me. And I've stayed in touch with some of my professors from Allegheny. One of them came to campus last semester. Brian Rosenberg is a former college president now. He came to campus and it was great spending time with him and learning from him. And I've stayed in touch with a lot of Skidmore students over the years. And I think you can develop that kind of relationship at a small liberal arts college in a way that you can't at a big state university.
It's just a different kind of educational model.
It is, you know, expensive to have this kind of school. But I do think the culture in the country are better for schools like Skidmore. These small liberal arts colleges have all kinds of challenges. A lot of them are financial. But this is a wonderful model for students. But it's also really been terrific for me and many of my colleagues to have a place where you can experiment with ideas, you can nurture and mentor students and simultaneously pursue your own research agenda. So Skidmore has been great for me. I've been here. This is my 22nd year, and I'm not going anywhere.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: Are you going to any front runners? Do you see this year in the Academy Awards from the early, early onset that you think might be solid or if there's a surprise or there's a hopeful in there for you if you were to handicap this year's awards?
[00:27:12] Speaker B: I'm not good at that. I don't have a crystal ball, but I do know, you know, Wicked got a lot of attention and some of the. Some aspects of Wicked are pretty terrific. Cynthia Ervo is just. She's spectacular.
But, you know, obviously the brutalist got a lot of attention to. So it's gonna be really interesting to.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: See what happens when you look back and you. You've selected these movies.
How many, as the saying goes, ended up on the cutting room floor? What movies didn't make the cut that. That you wish it was a two part class and you did, you know, either.
Decades.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Broke that up.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So that. I'm glad you asked. That's a good question. Because we, some students and I, Ezra, Juliet, we sat down and we were talking about, you know, what's the criteria? I mean, we were trying to look for historical breadth. We're looking at different kinds of genres.
You know, obviously historical films, but Also romances. What about a horror film? So we were trying to have the, the list be diverse, both over the course of time, but also different kinds of films. So it was obvious that some of these had to be there. So Birth of A Nation, the 1915 silent movie by D.W. griffith, has to be there. And some other films just absolutely, positively have to be there. If we're talking about the impact on the culture, something like Star wars, you know, that that's a, it's not just a franchise, it's a whole universe. Right. It's like it's really very impactful. But then there were some other. There were some tough calls and some films didn't quite make the list and that was, that was hard.
So a film that I, considering my interest, won't surprise you that I like Rocky. Rocky did not make the cut. And I think that's a shame because that's, you know, it's an Academy Award winning film, best film of the year. And you know, it spawned all these scenes, sequels, and the theme song became so, you know, synonymous with it. And you know, everyone understands boxing metaphors and so Rocky's. But you can't have everything you want. So some things just didn't quite make the cut. So that's one of them that didn't, didn't make it.
Someone made an argument that it was important to have a musical. And if you're going to have a musical, obviously, you know, wizard of Oz is a good one. But I felt bad about Singing in the Rain not making it. You know, that's a pretty important film.
And then, you know, it was hard to figure out what about 21st century films. You know, have we.
Has enough time gone by to figure out what was really quite impactful? So what, what we've done there for that, to deal with that situation is we're going to have a series of conversations and eventually a vote, and the students are going to pick the 21st century film. I don't really know what it'll be.
They're going to have to make arguments for it and it's a good exercise about advocating for something. So we'll, we'll. So the syllabus isn't 100% done because there's still this to be determined film.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: I'll let you know what they pick within the list.
Godfather, Gone with the Wind. Right. Wizard of Oz, Birth of a Nation, all locks.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: If I'm not mistaken on the syllabus, I think Jaws is in there.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Yeah, Jaws. Yeah, Jaws. Well, it's, it's yeah. First of all, I mean, it's Spielberg. You can't have a class like this without some sort of Spielberg film.
But it's an early Spielberg film, and I think it really helped create the phenomenon of the summer blockbuster. And I know it changed the way a lot of people think about the beach.
And if you go back and you look at the primary documents at the time, like, everyone was talking about Jaws. And again, like many of these films we're talking about, it spawned sequels and a line like, you're gonna need a bigger boat. You know, it and its impact on the culture. See, that's the thing about the class. We're not looking for the best films. This is not the American film institute's top 10 films. We're talking about films that had an impact on the culture and not just on, say, like, Hollywood, but on the culture, on the larger culture. And something like Jaws is one of those films. It changed the way people think about summer blockbusters. It's changed the way some people thought about Cape Cod.
And so it's one of those films. You could pick a whole bunch of Spielberg films for this course. Saving Private Ryan was a really powerful film. And I'm not saying Jaws is the best Spielberg film. It's not. But I think in terms of impact, and we're looking for a film that was kind of what, a horror movie in its own way. It fits that niche really well.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Calling upon your love of baseball.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: And sports. Overall, this may be the hardest question.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: And you've heard this on talk radio a thousand times.
Who's on your Mount Rushmore? A film. Oh, who are the four? I've. I just heard it referred to as the letterbox four.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: But being a sports.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: You know, you mean top.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Top four films.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Your four films. Your four films that the infamous. Was on a desert island. Etc. But the four films that if you're at a mixer and you're like, have you seen these four? Shaped your life.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Shaped the life of that Me. Are meaningful across the board. What. What are your four? That. That TBS should be showing every Sunday.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: That's funny. Well, if we mean top four in terms of, like, what I think are the greatest films, that's one thing. If we're talking about what I think are my four favorite.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Your four favorite.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: My four favorite films. That's something else. So.
Well, I'm gonna start with something that's probably obscure to most people, but I do think about it a lot, and it won't surprise people who know me But I really think quite highly of Barry Levinson's Diner. That's one of my favorite movies, for sure. I love Barry Levinson's Diner.
I also think very highly of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. I love that, that film. It's so well crafted, so clever.
So that's up there. Let's see what else.
I do think.
I don't often think about this, but oddly, maybe to anyone but my wife, I think about Tom Hanks and Castaway almost every day. There's something about that film that is really resonated with me about, you know, a guy struggling to survive against all odds and in. In isolation. That. That's a powerful film for me.
Oh, and this one might surprise you because it's a documentary, Steve James's Hoop Dreams.
It combines my interest with sport and cinema, but it's a documentary and it's a long film and it's 30 years old now, but it's about two teenage boys in Chicago and their quest to become NBA players. And, you know, it's just an amazing work of social history, but also art. So those are some of my favorites for the.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Is, is there a bucket list? Is there if we brought back the critics, the opportunity to become a film critic?
[00:35:38] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: You know, is that something you'd be interested in or possibly during your sabbatical, you take a year?
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Well, I've, I've written, I've written some film reviews of, for the Journal of American History and a couple others.
And I do that once, probably once a year. But the idea of doing that like all the time, I don't have the stamina for it. They have to write too fast. And so like I do like writing. I wrote, I wrote a review of George Clooney's Boys in the Boat not too long ago. I've written about ESPN's the Last Dance, which is about Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls. And I have written some film reviews, but they're there for academic periodicals which give me a little bit more time and space.
The film critics, professional film critics. And one of my favorite was He Doesn't Do it anymore, but it's A.O. scott from the New York Times.
I just think they're really impressive because they're cranking out. They watch hundreds of movies a year and they're cranking those things out pretty fast, faster than I can do. So I admire them when they're really good, top notch critics like Richard Corliss and Pauline Kael. These people are really thoughtful, insightful, informed, and I take Their criticism. Seriously.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Who needs to receive the lifetime achievement award, the DeMille Award? Who hasn't gotten it yet that you think is deserving?
[00:37:18] Speaker B: I wouldn't know. I mean, I need to see the list. I haven't thought about, like, who has or who hasn't gotten that. Yeah, I don't know. But there are a lot of people who've done a lot of good work in this industry. And, I mean, I assume Martin Scorsese has won that.
And I just think he's really special in some ways because he's a great artist, obviously, but he's also a film scholar. I've read not too long ago that often on sets that he'll have a screening at night when they're done working, and he'll show a movie and then he'll lead a discussion of it because he knows so much about filmmaking, but also film history. So I think someone like that. If he hasn't won that, I don't know. I assume he has, but if he hasn't, it'd be a damn shame.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: The. Again, impactful, but just movies that maybe shaped our lives or are part of film vernacular 2001.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Is. I think I've. I've been going back and forth knowing I'm gonna ask this question about. About your. About your Mount Rushmore 4.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: And I don't think I can. I can't take it off.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Right. Well, we're talking. The question for me was my favorites.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: That's. And that's where I'm seeing my favorite.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: That's on yours.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: I can't. I don't think I can take it off. It's. You know, again, with your wife, it's not a family favorite by any means. She was automatically in the other room.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, It's. That's an important movie for sure. And I could definitely see that on our syllabus on a different iteration of the course.
Some of it, you know, is a little bit confusing, but you can't. I mean, it even shows up in places you probably saw last summer, Barbie.
So that's how it starts. It's hilarious. You know, like, it's.
It's affected the culture. I mean, that's an old movie. What's that, 1968. That's a long time ago. And yet it's still alive. It's still vibrant. That's a great work of art. I'm sorry, I can't do that, Hal. I mean, people know what that means. And look how far ahead. I mean, what's that really about? That's about artificial intelligence. And so, yeah, I can see how that could be part of the. I'd be fascinating to. To have a conversation with students about that. I would. I would look forward to that.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: We'll get you off on an easy one, a hard one.
Favorite comedy?
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Oh, favorite comedy.
I don't know.
I like Coen Brothers. Like, oh, Brother, Where Art Thou is hilarious. I love that.
I don't know. I hadn't really anticipated that question, Stan. So I don't know.
I like Marx Brothers movies.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: I think Horse Feathers is hilarious. I've written about that. Duck Soup is really good.
So, yeah, it's put some Marx Brothers movies on the favorite comedy list.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: Not movie, but it.
I share it, but it only lands once every five times when someone says the press is here. And I refer to the Three Stooges skit, right? Where it's press, press pull.
Where they're stealing the tags from the toilet to get into the golf tournament for free. Beer.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: Right?
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Press drinks for free.
[00:40:41] Speaker B: See, when I was young, I didn't have much of an appreciation for Three Stooges.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: This is only as I became a more educated young man that I saw the clip and then, you know, doing what I do and then, and then for me, one film that isn't on all that often, but I just appreciate probably because the body of the work and only because, you know, Alan Alda, he's just, you know, entrenched in mash and that's. We know him from. And then later on in roles in. In West Wing. It was absolutely phenomenal. But the same time next year.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. I like that movie.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: I. It is one of just him, his physical comedy.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: His voice, his timing.
Yeah, he's so enjoyable.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: That's a good movie. And you know what, to be honest, that's a good movie for middle aged people. Right?
That, that, that, that holds up.
It's.
There's the other one too, with Alan Alda. I think it might be called Four Seasons. And it's the same kind of thing where you think about, like, your life and the maturation process and the decisions and choices people make. So, yeah, those also, I mean, I admit too, I think some of the old Woody Allen movies are hilarious. Annie Hall's still fantastic. Stardust Memories. There's a whole. Oh, my God, you know what? Another movie I might put on my top four is his movie Crimes and Misdemeanors. I think that's just brilliant. There's a. So there's so many of them. So Many talented films, and I mean talented filmmakers and great films. So it's. It's hard to have these conversations, you know, especially when you look at like a list like the American Film Institute and go, oh, my God, I forgot how great that one was. And. And some of them, you know, I haven't seen.
But, you know, being a good film critic means you're constantly a film student and there's constant. You're constantly seeing old films. It's hard to keep up with the contemporary ones. I don't get to go to the movies as much as I. As I used to.
But, you know, the passion you have for it, that endures.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: We're gonna get you out on this.
Probably the toughest question. I always say that. What's next, huh?
[00:43:11] Speaker B: In terms of like, what. What I'm teaching or where.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: What. What's your again? Is that sabbatical coming up where you have a project? There's a project you're currently working on, your prolific author and contributor. So, I mean, that's very exciting. We're going to come back to that.
[00:43:24] Speaker B: It was exciting to. To mention, you know, at the beginning about the book that just came out, Sports through the Lens, with my colleagues Maureen Smith and Sarah Field. So that just came out last month. And so there are some small things that I'm working on. That's what's next. But one of the things I'm doing right now is I edit a journal. I'm the editor of the Journal of Sport History, and I'm going to do some, I don't know, innovative things. We're working on some special editions and some. Some forums that I'm looking forward to working on. My sabbatical is over a year away, so I haven't thought about it too much. It is for academics, you know, like one of the most beautiful words we know, sabbatical is magical, but it's not a vacation, right? And we do work on the sabbaticals. And I do have a couple book projects in mind. One is actually a combination of my interest in sport, my interest in film. It's a book about sports films.
I've made some progress, but I'm a little bit behind on where I want to be on that. And I also am interested in Back to baseball a little bit. I'm interested in a Negro League project about the Baltimore Black Sox, specifically their 1929 season. So people don't believe me, I suppose, but I'm never bored. I always got something going on. There's a couple classes I'm looking forward to developing in the future.
That's on the drawing board. But I have a lot going on now. I'm trying to get through the semester.
What's next is a couple different things, but they're all interesting and they all keep me going. The juices are flowing.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: And just for your class next week, because they are going to bring food for the screening of the Great Godfather.
[00:45:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: I'd be remiss if I didn't remind them that the one iconic line they did not know was leave the gun, take the cannoli.
[00:45:30] Speaker B: Right, yeah. No, that's a great line. That's actually the title of a recent book by Mark Seale. It's about the. It's a great book. We used it in a class last year. And. Yeah.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli. It's a. I think that might have been an ad lib. I don't know if that's actually in the script. I think the actor who said that came up with that.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: I think so, too.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: But that's what makes film great.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. The creative input from all these different people contributes to making these films.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: Sure. My pleasure.
