HIS GIRL FRIDAY, SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, REMEMBER THE NIGHT. My kids have seen all of these films but not in a vacuum. I've talked to them about it ahead of time - and we talk after as well. These films are all wonderful. And they also have appalling representations of Black people.

When Marty talks about curation, I take all of his points joyfully and add this one, that movies like, say, CITIZEN KANE, *require* curation. Period. You don't start someone on 100yr old Scotch, don't start someone on PERSONA. Curation is building bandwidth, not gatekeeping.

Honestly. If you're teaching someone to read, you're not starting them on Derrida. Do that and you're in danger of putting them off reading altogether. But if you curate a path to Derrida, you'll likely find something like bliss when you get there. Warts and all. Ditto film.

And as you're doing it, be sure not to ignore how the art that humans create don't only tell us how people lived when we lived in caves, but how we lived in 2020. You can just see art as decorative function, I'm not policing your kink. But curation allows it to be more than that.

This sounds patronizing. I never presume you don't know something. Ever. But if you take a class from me, or you just reach out to me and say, hey, I'm curious about this, we'll figure out the path there. I started watching John Ford because I loved DIE HARD when I was 15.

I loved it so hard, I spent $80 to buy the VHS from the store. That's $20,000 in 2020 money. McTiernan is influenced by Woo who was influenced by Peckinpah ---> Leone ---> Kurosawa ---> Ford. I watched STAGECOACH about a year after DIE HARD because I went down this rabbit hole.

I used Ebert's and Maltin's guides. I used Video Watchdog. I took notes and looked at the "special thanks" sections of the credits. I did this with music, too. The algorithm won't recommend RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY after DIE HARD. But there's a tether there if you have a curator.

It should be easier to go on these journeys now, but the ubiquity of information and the AI on these streaming sites, can be very distracting. My joy now when I watch movies is finding something amazing and then being inspired to reverse-engineer its influences. That's curation.