Every once in a while on social media, people start participating in a repost game captioned “10 movies to get to know me by,” followed by a list of ten movies that…I don’t know, serves as an introduction to them as a person? At least I assume that’s the intention. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just “10 movies I really love,” which I don’t think necessarily always means the same thing.

Whenever I spot people playing this game, I consider for half a minute joining them, then freeze with indecision. The concept of a movie serving as an introduction to a person feels so complicated and difficult to put into words. Certainly too nuanced for a context-less list accompanied solely by emojis.

I also realize I am most likely entirely overthinking this thing, which would align with my nature as a human creature physically unable to resist excessive elaboration.

So anyway. I spent the last, uhh…three days thinking about this. I don’t know what this finalized list says about me, to be honest. I don’t think I end up looking the greatest, but at least I get to demonstrate my incredible taste in cinema. If you want to get to know me, here are ten movies I recommend watching (list ordered from oldest to newest):

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Arguing is so much fucking fun. Is that a deranged thing to admit? I don’t care. It is. There is something so thrilling about fighting with someone, especially a friend, especially someone you love, with the confidence that later it will be like the fight never happened. There is a theatrical element to it that I quite adore. If I hate you, you will never hear a word from me. But if you have a piece of my heart, then I will rejoice in arguing all day long. Edward Albee’s stageplay, along with the film adaptation, is a perfect representation of this part of me. For better or worse, I am Elizabeth Taylor’s Martha.

Misery (1990)

This is the movie that first got me seriously interested in writing fiction, although it didn’t introduce me to Stephen King’s own written work (that would be Stand By Me, which convinced me to read “The Body” from Different Seasons). I don’t know how old I was when I first watched Misery. If I had to guess, six or seven. I think I’d started trying to tell stories by then, but I never thought of myself as a writer. Not until Misery fell into my lap. As someone who missed a lot of school in their youth due to Little Kid Depression, I spent many, many school days watching DVDs. One of those was Misery.

Listen, what I’m about to say right now is going to sound fucking psychotic, but it’s the absolute truth: me, six or seven years old, sad and watching a movie about a woman holding someone prisoner in a single room and forcing them to work on a typewriter all day? Nothing had ever felt more…romantic in my life. And, if I’m still being honest, the feeling hasn’t disappeared. When I watched Misery back then, and also when I watch it now, one consistent thought has remained in my diseased brain: Dear god please let this happen to me.

Demon Knight (1995)

The source of my obsession with weird green goop and siege stories?

The Truman Show (1998)

When I was a teenager, my family lost the house and we spent the next three years bouncing around various hotels in Northwest Indiana. I was pulled out of school and spent every day in a hotel room, either alone or with my parents, depending whether or not they’d decided to go fuck off at the casino that night.

At some point I watched The Truman Show on the USA channel and went insane. Soon afterward I convinced myself that I was also going through a kind of Truman Show situation, and would frequently search for cameras and try to tempt hidden producers into stopping me from committing suicide by dangling out of windows and cutting myself with a pocket knife. “I’m gonna really do it this time,” I’d shout to an empty room. “I’m gonna jump.” Nobody ever showed themselves.

Anyway, it turns out Truman Show Delusion is a very real thing and uhhh that’s what was going on with me. I wrote about it in a novella called Indiana Death Song, which can currently only be read in my collection Abnormal Statistics, although I have plans to reprint it as a standalone piece sometime early next year. Also, before you say anything, I literally just now made the connection between my teenage experience living in hotel rooms and my prepubescent yearning to get Misery‘d. Wait a goddamn minute, is blogging therapy?

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

I’ve dealt with anger issues all my life. I firmly believe rage is hereditary, and—like many other unfortunate traits—I inherited it directly from my parents, who were some of the angriest people to ever grace this planet (maybe this also goes back to my Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? infatuation). I swallow things back and bite my tongue and pace around and force smiles and pretend like everything is okay until I eventually lose my mind and embarrass myself. I don’t know what to do in social interactions and I loathe being perceived. When things don’t go right, especially when it’s my fault, my brain freezes up and refuses to comprehend the situation with anything rational.

Adam Sandler’s character Barry Egan in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love is the perfect representation of the person I feel like most of the time. I’ve never seen it depicted in a movie quite like this before, but every time I revisit it I can’t help but think, Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. Of any character in any movie, I probably see myself in Barry Egan the most. I’ve never abruptly smashed a giant window with a hammer during a family dinner, but man I’ve wanted to. I’ve wanted to so much. Oh my god. Blogging is therapy, isn’t it?

Zodiac (2007)

I love mysteries but hate explanations. Conclusions are never more exciting than the buildup. I will always prefer speculating about what happened over learning what actually happened. Unleashing my brain in a vast, untamed field and letting it run wild is sometimes the only reason to get up in the morning. Obviously I’ve seen David Fincher’s Zodiac more times than any other movie ever produced. Once, for a podcast that no longer exists, I watched it three times in one month. It’s so fucking good, man. Obsessing over weird mysteries and compiling clues and trying to figure shit out and failing every, single, time…what more is there to life? Also, another reason I love this movie is I am literally the real Zodiac Killer.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Charlie Kaufman gets me more than any other filmmaker. I probably could have included any of his movies in this list and it would have been accurate, but Synecdoche, New York takes the cake when it comes to depicting anxiety and depression and creative obsession and taking it all to its ultimate, unpreventable conclusion. I love this movie so much, and I think watching it is a good lesson on how my own brain operates, like…on a day-to-day basis. That’s what’s going on up there. Please help.

Kajillionaire (2020)

If you’re unfamiliar with Miranda July’s incredible film Kajillionaire, here’s the first paragraph from the Wikipedia’s plot summary:

“Old Dolio Dyne, an emotionally stunted 26-year-old woman, is in a manipulative relationship with her con artist parents, who treat her as an accomplice to their petty thefts and scams rather than as a daughter. The family owes $1,500 of back rent on their apartment in Los Angeles, which is actually a leaking office space attached to a soap factory.”

If we ever watch Kajillionaire together, you’ll spot me doing the Leo-Pointing-at-the-TV meme half its runtime. These are (kind of) my parents. This is (similar to) my childhood. I am (sorta) Evan Rachel Wood. I love rewatching this movie. It makes me miss my parents. It makes me miss everything.

We Need to Do Something (2021)

The best way to learn about an artist is to check out their work, and since this is a list about movies and I happen to have written a movie that got produced and released back in 2021, I’m obviously going to recommend you check out We Need to Do Something. I wrote the source material novella but I also wrote the screenplay adaptation. I was on set in Detroit and present in the editing room. There’s a lot of me in it everywhere and I think it’s required viewing for people who clicked on this article. It used to be available on Hulu but I just checked and it’s no longer streaming there. So I guess you can either rent it on VOD or buy the blu-ray or…honestly, just go pirate it. I give you permission. It’s okay.

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

😬😬😬

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My latest novel, I Believe in Mister Bones, is available now through Apocalypse Party. Buy a signed & personalized copy HERE.