Jeremiah Tolbert

I draw a lot of inspi­ra­tion from film.  I sup­pose it’s my gen­er­a­tion, that I’m influ­enced as much by the visual medi­ums of TV and cin­ema as I am the writ­ten word.  It’s eas­ier to become con­ver­sant in cin­ema than it is in lit­er­a­ture for the sim­ple fact that it takes less time to watch 100 great films than it does to read 100 great nov­els.  I envy writ­ers from the 19th cen­tury.  They had con­sid­er­ably less “canon” to digest.

Movies evoke mood won­der­fully for me, and it’s some­thing I often find I want to emu­late in my short fic­tion.  These are some movies that make me ache with a need to accom­plish for oth­ers what they did to me.

Amelie (2001)

Directed by Jean-​​Pierre Jeunet, this film man­ages to cap­ture a tech­nochrome Paris that almost cer­tainly doesn’t exist.  It’s the pro­to­typ­i­cal slip­stream film to me.  It feels strange and won­der­ful, and from the very begin­ning in which we see a young Amelie, we’re made aware of how her world is very much not like ours.  It inter­sects in places… geo­graphic loca­tions, lit­er­ally, that you rec­og­nize if you’ve spent a lot of time in Paris. But they still seem some­how more alive, rich, than the reality.

The sound­track never fails to recre­ate a sense of whimsy in me when I lis­ten to it, a feel­ing of spin­ning in cir­cles like a sufi mys­tic, always spin­ning, on the edge of los­ing con­trol and col­laps­ing into fits of laughter.

It’s a love story too, a love story for misfits—as all char­ac­ters in Jeunet’s films are. This list could be entirely pop­u­lated with Jeunet films, honestly.

Whenever I think of strange cities pop­u­lated with peo­ple just a few degrees out of sync with nor­mal, I think of Amelie’s Paris.

O Brother Where Art Thou (2000)

The Coen Brothers.  Sometimes, I think they’re the best work­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phers.  Sometimes they make films that leave me cold, and then they make a film like O Brother.

The Odyssey is my favorite epic. I’ve always iden­ti­fied more with Odysseus than any of the more tragic fig­ures of the Iliad, although I think per­haps the great­est descrip­tive phrase I’ve ever read is “the wine-​​dark sea.”   In the hands of lesser artists, retelling the Odyssey in a 1930s South would come across forced, unauthentic.

Oddly enough, this is another one with a bril­liant sound­track.  But it’s less evoca­tive of the feel­ing the movie puts me in.  Whenever I want to feel shame for my dia­logue, espe­cially comic pat­ter, I sim­ply put this one and and wal­low in it.  The Coen Brothers can write snappy dia­logue, sure, but the actors they cast into the roles really make it shine.

Everett is how I wish all my fast-​​talking char­ac­ters could sound like.

Jaws (1975)

The movie that per­fected the art of the sum­mer block­buster and has rarely been sur­passed since.  This movie ter­ri­fied me as a kid, and I grew up in Kansas with­out ever hav­ing seen the ocean.  I was afraid to go near any body of water.  And when you think of just how rarely you see old Bruce, it’s pretty amaz­ing.  Of course, the film did tremen­dous eco­log­i­cal dam­age in cast­ing sharks in such a hor­rific role, but there’s not much we can do about it now.

The pac­ing in this one is just per­fect for me.  And it has what I think is prob­a­bly the great­est mono­logue of all time, deliv­ered by the late great Robert Shaw—you know exactly the mono­logue I’m talk­ing about:

You know the thing about a shark, he’s got…lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that ter­ri­ble high pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin’ and the hol­lerin’ they all come in and rip you to pieces.

The way that scene is wrapped in the rest of the movie reminds me of a Tootsie Pop.  A lit­tle bit­ter sweet wrapped in crunchy candy fun. And the cam­era tech­niques… I can watch on repeat that first major use of the Spielbergian zoom where Brody is on the beach and sees some­thing in the water.  It cap­tures that feel­ing of lean­ing for­ward in shock and fear, of bolt­ing upright at the real­iza­tion of some­thing ter­ri­ble.  Using the camera’s move­ments to evoke emo­tion is kind of like using sim­ple words to build up a mood with­out the reader catch­ing on.  I want to do that!

Hot Fuzz (2007)

I’ve watched this movie a dozen times, and each time I notice some new trick of the script that blows me away.  Every early scene is chock full of easter eggs for later scenes—it’s absolutely a mas­ter­ful piece for demon­strat­ing fore­shad­ow­ing.  The dia­logue is used to great effect here.  The whole freak­ing first act is a giant gun on the mantle­piece, and holy shit does it go off in the finale.  And the way it toys with genre conventions—just bloody brilliant.

I wish I could write scene tran­si­tions like Edgar Wright directs in this film.  There scene where our heroes and drunk and headed to Danny Butterman’s place to watch films, and it cuts back and forth to the scene in the kitchen where the mur­der­ers are set­ting up a late night snack cracks me up and aston­ishes me every time.

A great use of a twist as well that doesn’t feel any­where near as cheap as some of the later M. Night Shamalayan movies.

I’m a sucker for just about any­thing Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do.   I am really look­ing for­ward to see­ing Paul, which sounds a bit off from the descrip­tions I’ve read, but I really trust Pegg as a writer after Spaced.  And it goes with­out say­ing that I’ll fol­low Edgar Wright into any film he’s even remotely attached to.  Scott Pilgrim really cemented his sta­tus as a top direc­tor for me.

Spirited Away (2001)

I could once again prob­a­bly add any of the Miyazaki films to this list, but Spirited Away is one of my all-​​time favorite fan­tasy films.  The feel­ing of strange­ness and oth­er­word­li­ness it evokes is some­thing I try to cap­ture over and over again, and I’ve never done it to the level of my sat­is­fac­tion (I sup­pose I have a few more decades to get it right).

Part of the won­der for me here is that I’m not famil­iar with any of the source mate­ri­als Miyazaki draws on to cre­ate his spir­its, and so each one of them feels unique.  The coal sprites are just about the cutest damn thing ever animated.

And that train… I have dreams about that train.  I’ve rid­den on a train in the U.S. once and it was a thor­oughly unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence, but some­thing about the train in this movie is haunt­ing my imagination.

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There’s noth­ing remotely sci­en­tific about this list.  Ask me again tomor­row and I might draw out of mem­ory an entirely dif­fer­ent set of films.  Right now, I’m really ques­tion­ing whether I should have left Donnie Darko, my favorite sci­ence fic­tion film, off the list, but it’s late and I really want to get this blog post sched­uled, so I’m just going to have to leave my gush­ing over that one for another post.  And yes, I know this list is super-​​heavy with really recent films.  I’m not sure what that says about me, but I’m sure it’s some­thing unpleas­ant.  Let us not speak of it.

So what about you guys?  What movies inspire you to write bet­ter?  What flick­er­ing cel­lu­loid dreams do you want to evoke in your words?

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Tags: amelie, cinema, Film, hot fuzz, jaws, My Writing, o brother where art thou, spirited away