Far more of you were nice enough to send your five-movies-for-a-desert-island lists than I could possibly print in the column even if I did nothing but that for the next five years. I’m going to have to stop after the week ahead — but before I do, I thought I’d sum up for you some of the things I’ve learned by reading your lists.
– You’re really good writers. So many of you have prefaced your lists by saying something like: “I’m not very good with words, but . . . .” You don’t give yourself enough credit. I have been delighted, intrigued, and often moved by what you have had to say about the concept of what five movies you would want with you on the island for the rest of your life if you had no other companionship and no other diversions. I think I’ve done you a disservice by having to edit your responses down to the bare bones, in order to get as many of you into the column as I can; your writing unedited is even better than what I’ve been able to print, and I’ve had a great time reading it. You also have made me want to see enough movies that if I saw every one you got me interested in, I’d never have time to do anything else. Which, at certain moments, sounds just fine to me.
– Movies matter to you — a lot. Not as artistic statements, but as touchstones for your own lives. The same way that certain songs take you places you’d like to be, so do certain movies; asking you the question about the desert island prompted you to think about that, and in so doing you unearthed things not just about the five movies, but about yourselves. I thank you for letting me listen.
– I think I blew it on one thing: I said that this was going to be an e-mail only exercise — only e-mailed lists would be considered, and lists that came in by U.S. mail would not. Some of you have let me know that this made you angry — especially some older readers who said they don’t have e-mail, don’t plan to, and were insulted to be excluded.
My intention was not to do that — the reason I made it e-mail only was that I knew I was going to be on the road for much of the time your lists were going to be coming in, and I wouldn’t be seeing regular mail. I should have explained that. It wasn’t that I didn’t want lists from older readers (although so many older men and women sent lists that I know it’s not merely a chronological divide), or that I didn’t want lists from readers who can’t afford computers. My apologies for not being clearer.
– I was asking myself what was more amazing — that the lists came in from Japan, or from France, or from Sweden, or from Africa, or from New Zealand, or from Germany, or from Australia. . . .
And then I decided that the most amazing thing was that a list came in from Pat Sajak.
(He began his list by asking: “Are game show hosts eligible?”)
One of his movies was “A Hard Day’s Night.”
– I don’t know quite how to say this, but . . . .
You know how, in the popular culture, men are supposed to be . . . .
Well. I’ll just put it this way:
I can’t recall one list sent in by a man saying anything particularly salacious or lust-driven about a female actress. But what some of the female list-writers had to say about certain male movie stars, and why it would be important to have those stars with them forever on an island . . . .
Let’s just say that the language and verbal imagery was rather explicit, and leave it at that. A lot of men wrote about helicopters and cowboys and soldiers; a lot of women wrote about . . . .
Let’s move on.
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– But we can’t move on too far, because this next point is one I’m not quite certain how to approach, either.
It’s this: Pornography has evidently become mainstream.
How else to explain that so many of you named as movie No. 5 on your lists a porno film — either by name, or generically. Many of you have favorite “adult movie stars” (as if, say, Humphrey Bogart and Grace Kelly were not adults who were movie stars). You mentioned these movies matter-of-factly, almost like you would mention that you would like to have a saw or a hammer on the island. You would say — and men and women both would say it — “As long as I’m going to be on the island forever, I’d want . . . .”
It’s not so much that you said it — it’s that you said it so casually. Drama, musical, mystery, comedy, porno . . . . Don’t mean to offend anyone — but the trend seems worth mentioning.
– There was one movie that appeared on more lists than any other. I never would have guessed it — and no one I have asked to guess has come up with it. You might have thought the most-mentioned movie would be “Gone With the Wind,” or “Casablanca,” or “Titanic,” or “The Sound of Music,” or “Citizen Kane.” . . .
No. The movie that more of you mentioned than any other was a movie I have never seen:
“The Shawshank Redemption.”
Monday we begin the final days of this.
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– Bob Greene comments on the news of the day Thursdays on the “WGN News at Nine.”