Nicole Kidman voice: We come to this place for magic. We come to The Film Lit Pitch to laugh, to cry, to care. Because we need that. All of us. That indescribable feeling we get when we open our inbox, and we read something we’ve never read before. Not just entertained, but somehow reborn—together. . . . Somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this. . . . The Film Lit Pitch: we make movie posts better.
Welcome back to The Film Lit Pitch! (Or, if it’s your first time here: Welcome! Here’s the initial post for this Substack, which you might find helpful.) By way of reminder: next week I’ll pitch Fargo. Today will feature some housekeeping, some scheduling, and a teaser trailer for next week’s post.
*freeze frame and record scratch*
Yep. That’s me. I’ll bet you’re wondering how I got here.
Eventually I will stop opening posts by saying thank you for being here. Today is not that day. Thank you for being here.
Some of you reading this post are people I haven’t heard from in—as the young people say—a minute, and it’s done my heart a lot of good. Some of you reading this post are people I hear from relatively often, and I’ve really appreciated your support and feedback.
One piece of feedback I recently received was about a third group of potential readers, a group I hope will grow as this enterprise moves along: people who don’t know me at all. The specific suggestion was that I let readers know a little bit about me. And so here we go: a short Film Lit-relevant biographical blurb about my “very particular set of skills”:
I’ve loved movies ever since my dad took me over and over again to see Star Wars, and then The Empire Strikes Back, and then The Return of the Jedi in theaters. I trained in English at the Head-Royce School under the legendary Bobbi Barnier, Barry Barankin, and the icon himself, David Enelow. At Stanford, I studied under Ron Rebholz, Seth Lerer, and Jay Fliegelman, to name a few. I also studied screenwriting with Lew Hunter at UCLA, and James Dalessandro. It’s safe to say I wouldn’t be an English teacher but for the influence of these wonderful teachers, especially—yes—Mr. Enelow.
I began teaching Film Lit at Gunn High School in 2003, and have been proud to teach the course alongside such colleagues as Carol Kuiper, Linder Dermon, and Justin D. Brown.
For a long stretch of my film-watching career, I couldn’t settle in to watch a movie in the theater without a giant bag of Peanut M&Ms and the largest Dr. Pepper they had. Today, I’ve evolved, and can’t settle in to watch a movie in the theater without an unnecessarily large tub of Kettle Corn and the largest Diet Coke they have.
(While I’m here: I used to wait until the officially listed starting time of a movie to leave the house for the theater, racing—safely and without speeding, mind you—the trailers . . . just for the juice. I stopped this juice-chasing practice as I became more enamored with and eventually addicted to trailers. The trailer for Suicide Squad—more directly, the anger and disappointment as I experienced the light-year-sized chasm between the hypnotic and alluring trailer and the dumpster fire of the movie itself—cured me of this addiction.)
At least a few biographical elements will pop up in most, if not all posts. But, for now, let’s move on to some scheduling matters.
Coming Attractions
Given that, per Film Lit Pitch Operating Principle 1, my posts will assume you’ve already seen the movie pitched, I figured it only made sense to let my readers know what to expect. To that end, below are three categories of coming attractions.
First, here is the initial slate of scheduled Pitches.
Fargo (1996): January 25
The Bad News Bears (1976): February 8th
A Star is Born (2018): February 22nd
Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019): March 8th
Dr. Strangelove (1964): March 22nd
Little Miss Sunshine (2006): April 5th
Inside Man (2006): April 19th
The Prestige (2006): May 3rd
Second, here is the slate of Film Lit-worthy films I’ll pitch after May 3rd—I just don’t know exactly when, yet.
Casablanca (1942)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Boyz N the Hood (1991)
Back to the Future (1985)
1917 (2019)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Malcolm X (1992)
Interstellar (2014)
Dunkirk (2017)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Starship Troopers (1997)
The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Sound of Metal (2019)
Whiplash (2014)
Third, here are some films I’ll pitch that I adore and will pitch but would need, shall we say, a more creative path to get into a conventional Film Lit course.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Aliens (1986)
Pacific Rim (2013)
Big Hero Six (2014)
Purple Rain (1984)
Ocean’s 11 (2001)
The second and third lists, to be sure, may feature some additions along the way.
Teaser Trailer: Fargo
To whet your film analysis appetite, here are the first four paragraphs of next week’s Fargo Pitch:
I’ve loved Fargo for a long time. It is one of the first films I thought of both when I got the chance to teach my first Film Lit course, and when I first imagined this newsletter. It’s a culmination of everything the Coen brothers do exceptionally well, and is in so many ways a textbook Film Lit film.
You’ll get debate among their legions of fans, but it would not be wrong to call Fargo the Coen brothers’ masterpiece. Perhaps as much as any other, it showcases their range, their mastery of disparate genres. In Fargo, it’s not so much that the Coen brothers blend tones well; it’s that they switch tones quickly and remorselessly.
When I taught this film, I focused on these rapid shifts and stark contrasts in tone and setting—and how they forwarded the film’s agenda. And, to be sure, the Coen brothers aren’t shy about announcing the film’s thesis. I mean, in chiding Gaer, Marge sounds like a chorus from ancient Greek tragedy:
“And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’t you know that? And here ya are. And it’s a beautiful day. Well . . . I just don’t understand it.”
To Be Continued . . .
See you next week, when we officially begin pitching films. In the meantime, please help spread the word; I’m proud of the community we have so far, and there’s always room for more.
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Thanks again.