Jokes, almost inherently, aren’t funny. We all know scores of ‘classic’ jokes from the aristocrats to dead babies to chickens crossing roads. None of them are funny. But, in the right context, we’ll laugh at them, because the joke isn’t what’s funny—the idea of the joke being told is. It’s that extra layer, that prefix, that meta, that deeper meaning, which gives a joke life, and makes it funny, and makes you truly laugh. (Laughing simply because you’re ‘supposed to’ is why sitcoms are popular, despite their unfunniness.)
Continue reading I Don’t Like Jokes, I Don’t Think They’re Funny
Category: Greg’s Essays
A Rebuttal to a Rebuttal: Favorite Equals Best, or, Why Back To The Future is Better Than The Godfather
John,
I’ve been interested in movies for as long as I can remember. The story I tell is that Jurassic Park started it all. It certainly didn’t hurt, but movies had definitely been on my mind for way longer than that. And my parents and grandparents were both movie buffs, so when the AFI released their ill-conceived 100 Best Movies of the First 100 Years of Movies, it was the talk of our family for an entire Thanksgiving dinner. I was ten or twelve at the time. By the time I was fifteen, I had seen 92 of the movies listed.
Continue reading A Rebuttal to a Rebuttal: Favorite Equals Best, or, Why Back To The Future is Better Than The Godfather
The Idea of What a Movie Is: A Very Greg Journey Through Film
A movie.
Just a Bunch of Footage
Security camera footage is not a movie, but screened at a film festival with a name like ‘Big Brother’s Kung Fu Grip’ (or some artsy crap) it is. Andy Warhol filming the Empire State Building for nine hours is a movie—the video the real estate agent showed you of the interior of the house on Maple is not. It’s all about context and intention.
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The Guy Who Made ‘Kundun’
As you can probably tell by my posts here so far, I don’t like many movies. Movies suck. But even an old curmudgeon like me can’t help but love Martin Scorsese.
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Eventually, This Will Be a Review of the Movie ‘Husbands’ by John Cassavetes
Rob Fortucci, one of my best friends, commissioned this review. I met him in tenth grade—in film class, no less. First hour at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School, in affluent/middle class Shelby Township, Michigan.
By the time we met we had each already cultivated our respective cinephile statuses. Mine was completely traditional—my parents and grandparents are movie buffs and introduced me to all the kid-friendly classics, everything from Spielberg to Chaplin. At around 12, I started venturing out on my own into more ‘subversive’ territory, as one does. By the time I met Rob at 14, I was already a Kubrick, Scorsese, and Allen fanatic, and a true student of the 70’s and ‘golden age cinema’.
Continue reading Eventually, This Will Be a Review of the Movie ‘Husbands’ by John Cassavetes