Brett Goldstein is one of my favorite parts of “Ted Lasso.” He also hosts a terrific podcast called Films to be Buried With that he started in 2018, but I didn’t discover until late in 2022.
The setup is the same for every episode: Goldstein brings on his guest (usually a stand-up, actor, or filmmaker) and they chat a bit. Eventually, Goldstein breaks it to his guest that they’ve “died” and gone to whatever their version of heaven is, where people want to talk about their life through the prism of film. He then asks a series of questions to learn about the films that mean the most to them.
It’s a simple premise, but really highlights how much insight you can get into a person just by hearing about the movies they like or watch the most. I’ve often wondered if my answers would tell on me—and if so, what they’d say. So I’ve decided to answer the Films to be Buried With questionnaire without waiting to be asked…
What’s the first film you ever saw?
The first movie I have a real, clear memory of seeing is The Empire Strikes Back. We saw it at a drive-in, with my family in one car and a neighbor kid and his dad and stepmom in another. Empire was the first half of a double bill with Alien. The adults’ plan had been to take us to see Empire and then let the kids sleep in the car while they got to watch Alien. But the “I am your father” reveal had all of us losing our minds. There was no chance any of us were going to sleep, and I remember the adults talking, very disappointed, knowng we kids were way too young to handle the chestburster. We left before the second movie started.
I know I had seen other movies before that, the first Star Wars (obviously) and The Wizard of Oz and some Disney stuff, but I have no memory of actually seeing them. So for the purposes of this question, they don’t count.
What’s the film that scared you the most?
Zombies are my number one category of movie “threat,” so you can’t go wrong with the first few Romero movies or a 28 Days Later. But if you want a single, specific film that scared me the most, I have to go with John Carpenter’s The Thing.
The gore effects are legendary (and still extremely fucked up), but even apart from those you’ve got a series of great horror concepts stacked one on top of the other: people trapped in an isolated location; being hunted by some deadly, otherworldly menace; and the constant paranoia that comes from not being able to trust anyone around you. It’s just fantastic stuff.
What’s the film that made you cry the most?
Old Yeller. No question. I’ve always loved dogs, and the end of that movie just absolutely wrecked me. I haven’t seen it in more than 30 years, but I’m sure it would still get me if I watched it again.
What’s a film that isn’t popular or very well-regarded, but you love?
Up until recently, my answer would have been Miami Vice. I was kind of alone on an island when it first came out in 2006 (and was almost universally rejected by critics and audiences). But I feel like that one’s been reclaimed over the last handful of years. People seem to like it now.
Sadly, the same can’t be said for Vanilla Sky.
I get why people don’t like this movie. I do. It’s cheesy as all hell and the ending is a massive (some would say unearned) swerve, Still, it’s a big, earnest swing, and I have a real fondness for those, even when they don’t totally work. Vanilla Sky does work—for me, anyway—and I think I actually like it more now than I did when I first saw it. Penelope Cruz is just heartbreaking, and it’s one of the great underrated Tom Cruise performances. I may die alone on this island, but I’m okay with that.
What’s a film that most people like, but you don’t?
At the risk of getting kicked off of Letterboxd… for years, I would hear people rave about this “masterpiece” called Being There. It was talked about with the same kind of reverence people have for classic satires like Network and Doctor Strangelove.
When I finally got around to watching it, I was really disappointed. It feels so artificial and…pedantic, maybe? Like it’s worried you won’t get it unless it keeps pounding you over the head. None of the characters behave like real people (except maybe the doctor played by Richard Dysart). And the story only works if you buy into the idea that pretty much everyone on Earth is a total moron.
I dunno. Maybe I just went in expecting too much, but that movie really didn’t work for me.
What’s a film you used to love…but not anymore?
The first time I saw Sin City, it absolutely blew my mind. Visually, I’d never seen anything like it, literally like a comic book come to life. Back in the early 2000’s, that was still a novelty. I saw it three or four times in theaters and bought the DVD as soon as it came out.
I saw it again recently for the first time in…ten? maybe twelve?…years, and it really does not hold up. It still looks good, but the novelty’s worn off. The visuals aren’t enough any more to paper over the movie’s weak spots. The performances are all over the place, and I think the clunkers badly outnumber the ones that work. In retrospect, it’s obvious most of the cast was struggling with the combination of such highly stylized material with mostly green screen environments.
I never got around to seeing the sequel; given how underwhelmed I was rewatching the original, I’m really glad I didn’t.
What’s the sexiest film you’ve ever seen?
Desperado, maybe? I mean, Salma Hayek? Antonio Banderas? Together? That’s almost not fair, man. Since I just dumped all over Sin City, it seems only right to give Robert Rodriguez some well-deserved flowers for this one.
Subcategory: Troubling boners and worrying wide ons…a film you found sexy but probably shouldn’t have?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I saw it as a pretty sheltered high school kid in Indiana in the late 1980’s and just had no idea how to process it. That movie is just indiscriminately horny in every direction…including a few I just was not ready for.
What’s the film that means the most to you?
The original Star Wars. Hands down. That movie, and the whole original trilogy, really, was such a huge part of my childhood. It’s what kicked-off my lifelong love of sci-fi stories, from the high-minded to the comically inept. And watching all the behind-the-scenes, making-of stuff was crucial to me wanting to make movies and understand how they work.
Since then, there’s been a lot more Star Wars and it’s been pretty hit and miss. But when it lands, it still hits me like it did when I was a little kid. I don’t know what I would be like if Star Wars never existed, but I’m sure I’d be a wildly different person.
What’s the film you relate to the most?
The Tommy Lee Jones character in No Country for Old Men resonates with me more and more all the time. Especially here in the MAGA era.
It’s not just about getting older (although that’s certainly part of it). It’s also about watching the world change around you and become something else…baffling, darkly amusing, and in many ways unrecognizable. More than any other movie I can think of, it captures that unsettling sense that the way you’re used to doing things and relating to the world is disappearing a little more each day.
What is objectively the best film of all time?
I’m cheating a little here, because I know from listening to the podcast that there’s a list of movies people are asked to avoid when answering this question, because they’ve already been talked about ad nauseam. I don’t know everything on the list but the obvious first-round picks (Casablanca, The Godfather, Citizen Kane) are all there, along with who knows how many others.
(Brett Goldstein. He knows. But he’s not here to ask.)
So, in the name of “keeping it interesting,” I’ll go with The Silence of the Lambs.
It’s on a very short list of films that swept ALL the top Oscars (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay), it’s got a handful of iconic set pieces, all-time quotable lines, and it’s been ripped off by countless films since then (including the official sequels) trying desperately—and unsuccessfully—to capture a tiny fraction of its moviemaking magic. There’s not an ounce of fat on it and all the big beats still resonate, even when you know what’s coming. There may be meatier or more “important” movies out there, but I’m hard-pressed to think of many you might call “better.”
What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?
Remember earlier when I talked about loving comically-inept science fiction?
StarGames pushes that love to its absolute limit. I first came across this thanks to the RiffTrax version of the movie, but then had to watch the original just to be sure I wasn’t getting pranked. The effects look like something from an 80’s syndicated TV show, despite the movie being made in the mid-90’s. There are so many inexplicable choices—including an alien computer program manifesting as a guy in clown makeup doing a bad knockoff of Robin Williams’ Genie, and Tony Curtis agreeing to be in it at all.
What movie made you laugh the most?
It’s close, but I think I’ve gotta go with Dodgeball. I remember seeing that at the Arclight in Sherman Oaks (RIP) and laughing so hard I literally could not breathe. There are bits that haven’t aged well, but Rip Torn chucking wrenches at the team during the training montage will never not be hilarious to me.
Caddyshack is in the conversation, but it ultimately came down to this or Anchorman. It’s crazy to realize Dodgeball and Anchorman came out like three weeks apart… and even crazier to realize that was almost 20 years ago now.
What movie have you watched the most (or could watch the most)?
There are a handful of real contenders for this one. We used to use the VCR as a way to babysit my younger brothers, so a lot of late 80’s VHS staples got played until the tape broke: RoboCop, The Princess Bride, stuff like that.
But only one of those movies stayed in heavy rotation for me through my college years and into adulthood: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I say this without exaggeration: I think I’ve seen that movie in full at least 50 times, and in bits and pieces over 100 It’s just a phenomenal combination of hammy overacting and fun set pieces, with real emotional beats running throughout the movie (culminating in the death of Spock).
It’s ridiculous and perfect at the same time and I just absolutely love it and will watch at least part of it anytime I see it on.
It’s your turn to pick a film for Movie Night. What are we watching?
Ocean’s Eleven. The Soderbergh one, obviously, not the Rat Pack version. Endlessly rewatchable. Great if you’re paying attention, also very pleasant as a thing to have on the background while you’re hanging out. It’s a movie that feels like it’s just kinda fucking around, even though there’s a lot of hard work and craft on display in every frame.
Jeff Dellinger 