SARAH CLYNE SUNDBERG IS THANKFUL FOR:
BILLY LIAR (1963)
Billy Fisher is a young man with a well-developed fantasy life and a rather disappointing real one. He lives in some unfun industrial Northern town in drab post-war England. Life after graduation is not all it was cracked up to be — despite working at a funeral parlor that hawks plastic coffins and having two fiancés, plus a girl on the side — Billy still lives with parents and grandmother. His closet is stuffed with calendars pilfered from work and unpublished manuscripts. In his spare time he escapes to his own private dictatorship where he is a leader-war hero and adoring citizens greet him with a "left-handed salute." He also dreams of moving to London to work as a scriptwriter, but doesn't seem to be able to get it together sufficiently to leave. A young and beautiful Julie Christie assures him, "It's easy, you get on a train, then four hours later you are there." Billy is not convinced. I saw this movie when I was about 16 and couldn't wait to get out of the European satellite town I lived in. Like some of the best pop music to come out of England, Billy Liar told me that I was not alone and that others had felt my pain. For this I am thankful.
FOXY BROWN (1974)
I saw Foxy Brown at an underground film festival in my hometown, I think I was in my late teens. Despite the rather ramshackle storyline and low production value I fell in love. Hard. There is this one scene where Pam Grier is getting dressed and ready for business. She's all fierce hotness and a little bit of one of her ample boobs is spilling out underneath her bra. She looks amazingly strong and sexy, but not so perfect that you cannot relate. Meanwhile she is stuffing razor blades into her Afro in order to prepare for a fight. As a teenage girl not particularly happy with the state of things in the world, Foxy Brown impressed me. She has a good job and a useless little brother. She knows no one was going to look out for her if she didn't do it herself. In short, she kept it together in a world that did its best to break her. This was a woman to follow. Over the course of the movie she is bruised, battered, raped and nearly killed. But she is a lady all the way and ultimately she comes out on top. Jack Hill wrote the script, but the movie would be nothing without Pam Grier. Thank you, Pam.
THE GRADUATE (1967)
There are few truths in life that aren't dealt with in The Graduate: love, aging, quashed dreams, generational strife, loneliness. It's a great movie to begin with and gets better with each viewing. (I should know, given that I've seen it upwards of fifteen times.) I think I may have started out just liking the story and the exquisite cinematography. Somewhat later I identified with poor Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) and his existential angst. (Who doesn't?) Now, as I begin to enjoy high balls and have accumulated more than my fair share of animal print clothing, I have shifted to feeling more kinship with Mrs. Robinson, Benjamin's aging paramour. She once was an art history major, but after getting knocked up by Mr. Robinson, her life took a more prosaic course than the one she hoped for. Now, she and Ben are two outsiders with vaguely artistic aspirations, too dark and severe for the sunny Southern California they inhabit. In short, The Graduate is like a Nina Simone compilation, the bible, or a nice flask; It'll help you through just about any situation.
Click Here For More Thanks From Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark & Leonard Pierce
Contributor: Sarah Clyne Sundberg