Q&A with Tom (4/7/20)

I really wanted to write something today, but wasn't sure what to write about, so I crowd-sourced some ideas on Instagram (follow us here if you haven't already!!). Do I consider myself important enough to have a Q&A session? Absolutely not! But I got a lot of great questions and general topics to write about, so I'm going to do one anyway. Some people gave me great long-form ideas that I'm going to use for articles in the future (don't worry, I'll shout you out), but for today I'm just going to get to the questions. Feel free to rip me in the comments or on social media.

1. From Mallory: Movie theater popcorn. Butter? No butter? What's your official stance?
   Okay, so the clear answer here is with butter. However, what makes a true popcorn connoisseur (popcorn-oisseur? ugh, nevermind, sorry) is the method. Movie theater popcorn runs the risk of being extremely buttery/oily at the top and completely dry underneath the top layer. Who wants to get up during a movie and re-butter their popcorn? Nobody. So when applying the butter, you have to funnel it through a straw which you stick into the bag of popcorn at various depths and areas to make sure it's evenly distributed. That's the way to do it. That's the only way.
   

2. From John: Could Tropic Thunder and The Office be done today?
   I'm going to assume this is referring to the Robert Downey Jr. blackface performance in Tropic Thunder and some of the more "offensive" episodes of The Office like Diversity Day. This question and others like it come up so often nowadays, and the answer is clearly yes! While I am not here to say whether someone should be offended by content in movies and TV, in 2019 we had an Academy Award-winning movie which had a whimsical version of Adolf Hitler as one of the main characters and a popular sitcom where a character tries to entrap women into hooking up with him by opening his former roommate's bedroom as an Airbnb. That show also has a "Racism" tab on its wiki. Yes, we can have "offensive" content in movies and on TV. It's the tone and the target of that content that makes it generally acceptable or unacceptable.
   
   I actually think I might talk about it this more in a future article because I think it's an interesting debate. If you're looking for more on this right now, check out this interview that George Carlin had on Larry King's show in 1990 talking about "punching down" in comedy.
   

3. From Chris: Ryan Gosling's atrocious defense in Remember the Titans
   This isn't even a question, but it needed to be addressed. Ryan Gosling has done a lot of great stuff over the years. He's a better actor than he's given credit for, he does a lot of charity work, and he weirdly owns and runs a Moroccan restaurant in LA. One thing that was not great was him getting roasted in the state championship game (and repeatedly throughout the season) and almost costing the Titans the championship. Thank god for Donald Faison.
   

4. From Sergio: How A Bug's Life is Samurai Seven but with bugs
   I haven't seen Samurai Seven, but man, I'm really intrigued by this and I want to know more. Someone pitch this case to me.
   

5. From Katie: Best plot twist/surprise ending in a movie
   I think we might do this as a full-scale article at some point, but I want to at least acknowledge it because everyone loves a good twist. There's obviously some incredible ones, but I knew a lot of them before I watched the movie (i.e., The Sixth Sense), so I'm going to restrict these to those that I did not see coming. I try to keep it spoiler free here, so I'll just list some movies without explanation: The Prestige, Ex Machina, Unbreakable, Get Out, Parasite, The Usual Suspects, Se7en, Saw, Scream, The Others, Shutter Island.
   

6. From Chris: The femme fatale theme of Mildred Pierce
   Stay tuned for our deep dive on Joan Crawford when we get to the 1940s bracket.
   

7. From Alex: Why Forrest Gump is the greatest motion picture ever made
   I guess our brackets will play this out, but I believe at some point I'm going to make the case that Forrest Gump wasn't even the best movie the year it came out!
   

8. From Kushal: The weather
   It's really nice out today (67 and sunny). Here are some things I like about movies that had good weather. I really enjoyed the beach scenes in Us, and I thought they contrasted the sunny weather and unsettling tone perfectly. I also thought Midsommar perfectly played its ambitious idea of filming a horror movie (almost) entirely in sunlight. Jaws is a classic. I think a lot of Weekend at Bernie's took place at the beach too. So those, I guess.
   

9. From Lizzy: The Gingerdead Man (2005)
   I bet you thought you'd catch me off guard with this one. But I've seen this movie, and I have witnesses that can back me up. It "stars" Gary Busey as a killer gingerbread man. Honestly I'm not even sure anything else matters. I don't remember much about it other than at one point he chased a guy around a restaurant-style kitchen and stabbed him to death I think? I just looked it up and found out there were sequels subtitled Passion of the Crust (2008) and Saturday Night Cleaver (2011). I haven't seen those yet. Maybe we'll have to amend the 2010s bracket for Saturday Night Cleaver.
   

10. From Jon: The movie you think you've watched the most amount of times start to finish.
    This is a hard one. Talladega Nights has to be in the conversation. So does Spaceballs. So does 21 Jump Street. Oh, maybe The Room too. Popstar and John Wick: Chapter Two are climbing the ranks for newer ones. Those are the ones off the top of my head.

Well, that's it for now. I'm still accepting topics and questions on Instagram, so feel free to send them over! This was fun. I'll do it again soon.