Sharing an American classic with the kids during quarantine

Plus a list of long movies I'm going to be using to help break up the days

Welcome to another week of life in quarantine.

Another slow start off the block this week. I’m strategizing now. I’m coming up with ways to keep my brain busy because it’s starting to feel really hard to keep the anxiety at bay long enough to get anything productive done.

There are totally different requirements on the weeks that my boys are home. On those days, they’ve been working on school remotely, each of them on their own laptop in different rooms, while I’m working in another room and my girlfriend is working in her office, and the dog’s constantly trying to herd all of us into one room while we’re all trying to focus on the work we’re doing, and it’s delightful low-grade chaos all the time.

Now that they’re back at their mom’s house, I’m leaning into that quieter schedule and I’ve got a lot of things I’m going to try to finish this week. While the boys are here, we’re watching media together at night, and during the day, I’ve got people constantly in and out of my workspace, meaning anything I’m watching is getting broken up and interrupted. On a week like this week, I can have more control over the stream, and we’re not necessarily all getting together around one thing each night.

Last week we watched Field of Dreams, as I wrote about, and then I took a big swing with the kids on Friday night and showed them Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Toshi was decidedly mixed on the movie, rolling his eyes at the plotting of it. “Dad, we know where this is going,” he said at least twice during the film. He admitted later that he liked some of the way the film was shot and the way it was played, but overall, it was decidedly not his cup of tea. I was surprised that Allen, who hasn’t studied any Shakespeare yet, had a better reaction to the film overall.

I realized how much I’ve been using the dog as a proxy for my own desire to get out of the house when she hurt her foot over the weekend, requiring us to run her to the vet to get her paw fixed and bandaged. We had to keep her in the house for several days as the foot healed, and I think it was worse for us than it was for her. We’ve just got the bandage off and started walking her again in time for the rains to hit, leading to all sorts of frustrated energy in the house. It’s just part of it, and I suspect everyone’s dealing with their own versions of this right now. I’m used to working at home, but it’s definitely different now that everyone’s here all the time. I’m trying not to just dump endless piles of movies on the boy, making it more special when we watch things together.

For example, there was Saturday’s film…

FILM NERD VS THE GODFATHER

Over the holiday season, Toshi surprised me when he texted me one day with a single question:

“hey pop can i watch the irishman”

I texted him, back, surprised.

“I don’t know. Do you WANT to watch The Irishman?”

Not only did he watch it, but he ended up amazed by it, his curiosity piqued. He told me afterward that he wanted to know more about Al Pacino and Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. Before that, he had seen Good Fellas as one of his birthday movies last year, and he was quite taken with that as well. Then he watched The Movies, the CNN series that I was on last year, and he ended up going back to watch the ‘70s episode repeatedly. He’s asking or more from that era, and he’s been circling one title in particular for a while, thanks in no small part to my nickname when I played on The Schmoedown.

So on Saturday night, after much anticipation and discussion and one almost-viewing when Allen fell asleep fifteen minutes into the screening, we finally pulled the trigger on Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. With any film, it’s a gamble. I figured the boys have shown me enough of an attention span and enough of a grasp on what’s actually happening in a film that I figured they were ready to actually enjoy this American standard.

And, yes, I think of The Godfather as one of the foundational American texts in any media, a movie that anyone who is even casually interested in films should eventually contend with. You may love it. You may hate it. You may decide that it doesn’t speak to you at all. But what you can’t deny is the enormous cultural footprint that it left and continues to leave, one that stretches far beyond the confines of any screen. It is a movie that will unlock so many other films and ideas and conversations, and it floored me to see how quickly the boys not only got what they were watching but decided that they were all aboard for it. We had a mid-movie break, and they were giddy about what was happening at that point. Every new twist in the story landed on them like a ton of bricks. Things that I’ve forgotten about in the movie played like brand-new for me because I watched them reacting to all of it.

And the moment it was over, they announced that they will be watching The Godfather Part II next time they’re over, no questions and no debate.

When I drove the boys back to their mom’s house in Northridge the next day, they used the entire drive to debrief me. They were both trying to absorb how Michael, who started the film as such a clearly positive guy, a war hero, could end the film in the place he did. That wedding sequence is so big, and there’s so much that is accomplished in terms of story and character over the course of just that one sequence, that we talked about that all by itself. You get so much of the dynamic of that family laid out so clearly, and you also learn volumes about the way the world itself works.

Here’s something I’d forgotten: if you don’t know what’s coming, the structure and the title of the film are deceptive. Both of the boys thought they were watching a movie about Don Vito, with him as the main character. Michael was simply one of the three brothers, and Fredo and Sonny were just as interesting. After Don Corelone was gunned down and Michael goes to that restaurant and guns down Sollozzo and that corrupt police captain, the boys were positively flabbergasted. They had no idea what to expect. Sonny’s death flattened them. Then the entire Italian detour for Michael floored them again. They thought it was great that Michael found love and that he was happy while the gang war raged away somewhere else, and Appolonia’s death caught them completely off-guard. When Michael returns to the states and begins his serious evolution into the cold-blooded killer who pulls off that five-family sweep during his godchild’s baptism, they were completely absorbed, and ultimately disturbed when they realized what he’d done.

They had so many questions about the rest of the series, and I’ve been very careful not to describe anything else that happens, other than the general shape of the second film. They know that Robert De Niro plays young Vito, and they know that there’s more about Michael. But beyond that? Nothing. We talked about some of the real-life parallels between the first film and the history of American crime. We talked about Frank Sinatra for no reason whatsoever. Ahem. We talked about Vegas and what (and who) built that town. We talked about the history of Italian immigrants in America and the way certain cycles play out over and over in terms of America’s acceptance of an immigrant population. We talked about where we are right now in the immigration conversation in America and why. We talked about my own intersection with organized crime out of New York and the time I was photographed outside a wedding by the FBI. We talked about all sorts of things, and the boys could have kept talking for another hour if we hadn’t arrived at their house.

It was exciting for me because The Godfather is one of those films I’ve seen so many times that I feel like I’ve stopped seeing it when it’s on, and that wasn’t the case this time. When the car blew up outside Michael’s house, taking his new bride with it, I watched Toshi clap both hands over his mouth, shocked. When Sonny pulls up at the tollbooth and the guy drops the change and then closes the door, Allen sat bolt upright and yelled, “LOOK OUT!” They reacted like they were watching any blockbuster action film I’ve ever taken them to, and they just couldn’t get over the film’s final sucker-punch, with Michael lying to Kay’s face, then closing the door on her. It devastated them to realize who the Godfather of the title was, and what it apparently cost him.

God help them, Part II is going to kick their asses.

It’s exciting to see them respond so positively to a film like this because it opens up so many opportunities for other things we can watch together. If you’re ready for The Godfather, you’re ready for “real” movies, for some pretty serious meat and potatoes movies. My god… in one quick trip, they saw both this and Yojimbo and they had a great time with both. That’s so gratifying. I wouldn’t keep showing them movies like these if they weren’t enjoying it, and if anything, they’re starting to get more ambitious and demanding about it.

Toshi’s 15th-birthday triple-feature is going to change him forever. But that’s still months away, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Speaking of long movies…

A VERY LONG LIST

Maybe I’m just obstinate. Maybe there’s something built into my brain that causes me to be oppositional by my nature. But when I spent a few minutes scanning the landing page of Quibi, my first response was to log out, go to Plex, and start building a playlist of the longest goddamn movies I could find.

I love that The Godfather was three full hours on Saturday night. We were about halfway through when we took a break so the boys could make some dessert, and they got so excited when they realized they had an entire other movie still to go. My favorite film is Lawrence of Arabia, and part of the appeal is that you go on a huge journey in that film. You have to hand yourself over to that experience for that full three hours. You can’t just zip through a few highlights and get it. Long films are, hopefully, long for a reason.

In the end, I spent about a half-hour pulling from my Plex library, and I put together a list of 70 titles. It’s not every long film ever made. It’s not the longest films ever made. It’s just a whole bunch of long-ass movies. Some I love. Some I haven’t seen since they came out. Some I’ve never seen. One I kind of actively dislike. The point is the grab-bag nature of the list and the length of each title. You guys can have Quibi. I’ll play Russian roulette with cruise missiles in every chamber instead. 70 Films with a total running time of nine days.

With Plex, which I’ve written about here before, I love the playlist function. I have running playlists for all sorts of things. I can put 50 trashy drive-in films on a playlist. I can put an actor’s entire filmography on a list. I can put all of the James Bond movies in order. Whatever. I love hitting shuffle on a playlist, and that’s exactly the point here. I did it for the first time just now, and as I prepare to hit publish on today’s edition, I’m neck-deep in The Towering Inferno. And it is glorious.

I’m going to include the running time of each film, so you know which cut I’m including if there are different cuts available of these films.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (2:52)
Lust, Caution (2:38)
Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World (2:18)
The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2:39)
The Aviator (2:50)
The Age of Innocence (2:18)
The Color Purple (2:33)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2:27)
The Day of the Locust (2:24)
Kingdom of Heaven (3:13)
JFK (3:25)
The Last Temptation of Christ (2:43)
There Will Be Blood (2:38)
Cloud Atlas (2:51)
The Right Stuff (3:12)
Lincoln (2:29)
1900 (5:16)
Underground (4:54)
Until The End of the World (4:48)
Giant (3:21)
Alexander Revisited (3:33)
Branagh’s Hamlet (4:02)
War and Peace (3:28)
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (3:21)
Cleopatra (4:11)
An Elephant Sitting Still (3:58)
The Tree of Life (3:08)
Amistad (2:34)
Betty Blue (3:04)
Ali (2:36)
Les Miserables (2:37)
Eyes Wide Shut (2:39)
Anatomy of a Murder (2:40)
Avengers: Endgame (3:01)
Braveheart (2:57)
Camelot (3:00)
The Towering Inferno (2:44)
Interstellar (2:49)
The Best Years of Our Lives (2:50)
Magnolia (3:08)
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2:50)
Salem’s Lot (3:03)
The Thin Red Line (2:50)
The Green Mile (3:08)
Hoop Dreams (2:52)
Avatar (2:58)
Red Beard (3:05)
The Cardinal (2:59)
Casino (2:58)
Kagemusha (3:00)
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (3:02)
The New World (2:52)
The Sand Pebbles (3:02)
Celene and Julie Go Boating (3:05)
Around the World in Eighty Days (3:01)
Wyatt Earp (3:10)
It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (3:01)
El Cid (3:08)
Exodus (3:27)
War Horse (3:20)
Blood In, Blood Out (3:10)
Heaven’s Gate (3:37)
Malcolm X (3:21)
The New Land (3:22)
The Emigrants (3:12)
Margaret (3:06)
How The West Was Won (2:44)
The Good Shepherd (2:47)
Children of Paradise (3:10)
The Great Ziegfeld (3:05)

And, alright, to be fair, I’ll also have some thoughts on Quibi later in the week. My first take? I’m not sure why this is anything other than “YouTube that plays on fewer platforms.”

The future may be here. It may not. But in the meantime, I’ll be watching some long-ass movies to burn those daylight hours, and I’ll be bringing you plenty more to read as I do.

Today’s newsletter is a freebie. For those of you who are already subscribers, thank you so much. You’re the best. And you like what you read and you want to get access to everything, it’s only $7 a month or even less if you sign up for an annual subscription!

Image courtesy Paramount Pictures
Image courtesy 20th Century Fox