“My favorite movie? Well, that’s a difficult question. My favorite genre is sci-fi fantasy, so the easy answer would be Star Wars. The first one, which was only renamed ‘A New Hope’ in later releases. But if we’re honest, despite the way that it was a cultural phenomenon and a special fx powerhouse, it was fairly derivative and the script has a lot of flaws. This is controversial, but I think the best film in the series, as a film taken out of context, is ‘The Last Jedi’. That’s the eighth one. At the same time, it’s also the weakest entry into the series. It just doesn’t belong with the others. A misfit, a lot like me. And if my favorite movie is the one I’ve seen more than any others, there are some cheesy comedies like Amazon Women on the Moon that I’ve watched more times than I can count, and I quote them all the time (‘Ain’t no Thelma here!’), but it feels strange to call them my favorites because they’re just not quality movies, you know? Like, is a favorite movie one you watch a lot, or is it one you think is like the perfection of movie-making? For the latter, there’s something like A Clockwork Orange, but that’s not something I want to watch over and over because it’s so brutal. And you know, Kubrick deviated from the novel in a key way, specifically, making the protagonist Alex and his droogies several years older. Imagine if that film had been made with a boy the right age. It was barely legal in the United States as it was. It was originally released with an X, but Kubrick cut it back just enough. There’s no way he could have done that with a 15 year old. Malcolm McDowell was nearly 30 when the movie was made. And then there the movies that feel like serious movies, and have a certain place in my heart, but which, I don’t know, they just don’t feel like favorites so much as fond memories. Like Labyrinth and Brother from Another Planet. Everyone’s seen Labyrinth, but have you seen Brother from Another Planet? Definitely worth checking out, very quirky, but also a product of its time. I haven’t seen it in years. I used to have it on VHS tape, that shows how old it is. How old I am. So anyway, back to the original question: I guess the answer is, I don’t really know. Get back to me. I’ll think about it some more.”
In the awkward silence that follows, I remember two things: The first is that I was just supposed to give a quick answer; the point was for them to get to know me, not for me to give an essay response to a short answer quiz. But the second is, how will a short answer show who I am, if I’m an essay response kind of person?