“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” When John Steinbeck penned those words in the early 1960’s, he was constructing an introduction for his own understanding of the trip that took a small dog and his friend around the country. As the years go by, those words continue to ring true and have been penned in multiple stories, in multiple languages, for multiple reasons. For me, they represent a good mantra: Planning is not useless, but when your plans fall apart, go with the flow and pick yourself back up. This has been a great lesson for my life. If you told me back in 2010 where I would end up at the end of the decade, I would’ve admitted you into an asylum. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would return to Iowa, let alone five times. Never did I imagine myself in a classroom, let alone at the head of it.
The bulk of my big life experiences have lived inside of this past decade. Graduating from college, Gabby Giffords, coaching speech, moving, attending grad school, graduating, teaching, coaching speech again, realizing I was an addict, accepting that disease, applying for grad school again, directing over sixty shows, confronting the most difficult experiences of my life, and finding true hope in ordinary moments. So much has fit into just ten years that it’s hard to encapsulate them on paper. They were lived in, experienced and now they flit away like dust in the wind, memories of an escaped life. But some memories last longer than others.
Art and cinema have served me as lenses into my creative and professional life; this decade allowed me to focus them, to wield my creativity in ways previously only thought before as dreams. I make art and I watch film. Both are essential in my creative journey. Art allows me to watch more film and the ideas of film allow me to make more art. They exist in a perfect symbiotic relationship. I’m blessed to have both of them. As the decade drew to a close, most of my favorite writers released their favorite films of the decade and while you can see my list (pictured right), it occurred to me that writing about my list wasn’t what I wanted to do. Instead, I wanted to combine all those life experiences and all those fantastic films to talk about the four most important films I saw this decade - then I realized it wasn’t the films that made the memories important.
After the Gabby Giffords shooting in 2011, I was a shell of a man. The event rocked me to my core sending never-ending ripples across my soul. But a miracle came out of that despair. A group of local kids were struggling with their choral reading for a speech competition and I came into help. There I met my family. Half a year later, when I took over as coach, they were multiplied and solidified. One of our greatest connections is our love for movies and while our tastes have always varied, we all have a clear idea of what is important to us. Without further ado, the four most important films of the decade through the lenses of four friends from Mount Vernon, Iowa.
1. 2011’s Hugo
Dear god, I hate this movie. This might be one of the rare times where a truly beloved film causes me to convulse with rage that is was even made. For some, Hugo is a cute family picture about the beauty in movies. For me, it’s a soul-sucking disaster from which only over-dramatic acting and convoluted plot construction emanate. So why does it make the list? Early on in our friendship, the boys all worked at the local Bijou movie theatre in Mount Vernon. I, as the local resident, with far too much time on his hands spent many a night hanging out with them at the Bijou. Most of the time we would talk or play inane word games while we waited for the movie to get out and then I would help them clean up. In many ways, this solidified my role as the town loiterer, a moniker I take with great pride (there are plenty worse things to be known for). Eventually, I was invited to the midnight show: a time-honored tradition where workers would screen the films for their friends. That’s where Hugo came into play. And while it remains a terrible film and my memories include physically rolling my eyes into the back of my skull - the times spent in that theatre were some of the best of my life. Whether it was the time someone lost a slap bet or the time I fell asleep watching Tron Legacy, woke up long enough to sing the theme music, and fell back asleep, each moment was special.
2. 2012’s Prometheus
Among us, Zak is someone who takes great pride in silence in the theatre - but even he couldn’t keep his mouth shut during the atrocious Prometheus. Without a doubt, watching this movie was the greatest theatrical going experience of my lifetime. We all sat in the back row and enjoyed perhaps the strangest “comedy” film of the decade that went off the rails within the first fifteen minutes. Never has a movie infuriated me the same way that Prometheus did. Charlize Theron, just run sideways! Why are you running straight? And Rickon Stark, didn’t you ever watch Prometheus? Zig-zag little man, zig-zag. For more problems with Prometheus, look here:
3. 2013’s This is the End
After a tumultuous ending to a difficult first year of graduate school at VCU, I drove back to Iowa to pick up boxes for my thesis project. I didn’t have very long, so we set up a quick double-bill movie night. Man of Steel and This is the End. A year earlier, Zak, Stephen, and I sat in a theatre and remarked how Man of Steel looked like it was going to be a masterpiece. Well, Zack Snyder certainly knows how to cut a trailer together, but not how to make a movie and our first film wasn’t exactly to all of our liking. But in the evening, after switching theaters, This is the End brought about one hell of a good time. I remember having a tremendous headache, but fought through the pain because I was with my family and I was laughing so hard. In many ways, the four of us are like the main characters in This is the End - accept no one is James Franco - there’s just two Seth Rogen’s.
4. 2016’s Arrival
Taken from a review I wrote back in 2016: “It takes a lot of me to cry in a movie theatre; it takes a lot for me to cry in general. In fact, I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve cried in five years. By the time the film was over, I couldn’t see because my eyes were filled with tears. This movie was a religious experience for me. I cannot tell you why; I can’t even explain it. It was like I was no longer in control of my emotions or my body. For a minute, it felt like I had swapped senses. Like I felt language and I spoke feelings. Almost like I was inhabited by a language that transcends the ways in which we conceive that language. As I walked out of the theatre, after nearly ten minutes of silence, I turned to my friend and said, “that’s the best movie I’ve ever seen.” That friend was Stephen and I’m so blessed that I got to share that transported moment with him. Stephen and I have seen many movies together. We were touched by Spotlight, we rolled our eyes at Suicide Squad, we raced through the galaxy in The Force Awakens, he woke me up when I fell asleep during Hail, Caesar, and we shared mutual love for one of my favorites, Hell or High Water. Some of the best creative ventures of my life have been with Stephen by my side. From Brutus to Tony Kirby, from Twelfth Night to The Frogs. In many ways, our friendship is a lot like Arrival. We communicate on a level greater than normal language. It’s love - the type of love that only friends know and understand.
All four of us share this love. Over the past decade, we’ve grown apart in distance but never in friendship. Stephen lives in Des Moines as a reporter for the Des Moines Register, Brandon is the vocal music director for Central Community School District in Elkader, Zak is bartending and writing while following his dreams in New York City, and me, well I keep coaching, teaching, and living, each day a foot in front of the last. “We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” Never would I have imagined to be in the place that I am today with this family by my side - but I am, and everyday of my life is better because they are with me. I love the cinema and while I’ll keep making lists and I’ll keep over-critiquing Superman movies - these four films represent the highlights of my decade all because of the four people involved in making those experiences extraordinary.
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