Thursday July 04, 2013
What's the Great All-American Movie?
I asked that question yesterday on Facebook and got more than 50 responses. These were the movies with more than three votes.
Movie | Votes |
Citizen Kane | 7 |
The Godfather | 6 |
The Grapes of Wrath | 5 |
Idiocracy (!) | 5 |
The Best Years of Our Lives | 4 |
The Right Stuff | 4 |
I kept categorizing all the different suggestions in my mind:
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses:
- The Godfather
- Scarface (1982)
We‘re better than our PR:
- The Right Stuff
- Singin’ in the Rain
Truth, justice and the American way
- Rambo
- Rocky V
- Rudy
- Superman
Something is disappearing (Tony Soprano's lament):
- American Graffiti
- Breaking Away
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
- High Noon
Something's wrong here, not sure what it is:
- The Best Years of Our Lives
- Being There
- Five Easy Pieces
- The Grapes of Wrath
- The Parallax View
- Poltergeist (“It's all in the subtext”)
- Rebel without a Cause
We venture out to go home:
- Apocalypse Now
- Apollo 13
- Citizen Kane
- Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
- Sullivan's Travels
- The Wizard of Oz
We‘re fucked:
- Idiocracy
I also got many complaints that it was an impossible question. “You have to be more specific,” one said. “There’s no such thing as an All-American movie,” another said.
But that's the point, isn't it? Since America isn't more specific.
But this was my favorite response, via Twitter:
@ErikLundegaard Nothing says “America” like Apocalypse Now.
— Jason Lamb (@KarlShowJason) July 3, 2013
Happy 4th.
We came.
We soared.
We watched TV.
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