David Jett Explains Films To Be Buried With
You can learn a lot about someone from the movies they like.
Films To Buried With is a highly entertaining podcast from comedian/writer/actor Brett Goldstein, who you may know from his portrayal of gruff Roy Kent on Ted Lasso or his role on Shrinking, which he co-created with Bill Lawrence and Jason Segal. The premise of the podcast is as simple as it is genius. He tells the guest that he/she has died and there is a heaven populated with people who want to know about your life, but through films. He then asks the guest (actors, comedians, filmmakers) a series of questions such as “what’s the first film you remember seeing?” and “what film made you cry the most?”
I just recently discovered the podcast which has been going on since around 2018, so obviously I have a lot of listening to do. I’m not a famous celebrity. I’ll probably never be a guest on the show, so I thought I would use this space to pretend that I were.
Here we go:
What’s the first film you remember going to see?
The first movie I have any memory of at all as far as seeing something in the theater was Jungle Book. I was so into this film as a kid, that my mom bought me a record with all of the original songs. To this day I probably know 85% of the words to both Bare Necessities (sung by Phil Harris) and I Wanna Be Like You (the King Louie song, performed by Louis Prima.) It was my first real introduction to music, and you won’t find a better start than Louis Prima.
What’s the film that scares you? Do you like to be scared?
It takes a lot to scare me, and most horror films don’t do it. I don’t count things that startle you or that disturb you. If you’re talking about a film that actually scared me, that would be Helter Skelter, a made-for-tv movie about the Manson family murders. I would have been 12 years old when the film premiered on tv. I sat in the living room with my family and was completely horrified. Up until this point, I wasn’t aware that things that fucked up were actually happening in the world. And the scariest thing about the movie was the very end. It stated that Charles Manson would be eligible for parole in just a few years. My young brain didn’t know that he would never be paroled. All I could think about was that he would get out and kill more people, and since the murders seemed so random, maybe I would be the next victim. That film, and the events it depicted, scared me so much that to this day, I get chills whenever I hear the names Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger and Leno LaBianca.
What film makes you cry? Are you a crier?
I’m not a crier in the traditional sense. I don’t cry at sad real life events (unless it involves the loss of a doggie.) I tend to cry at more happy or hopeful things. It often works like that while watching movies. A movie might make me feel sad, but I don’t necessarily cry. Sometimes the crying sneaks up on me. What I mean by that is that I’m not full on bawling, but all of a sudden I notice that tears are starting to roll down my cheeks. My expression and demeanor haven’t changed, but somehow my robot body is crying.
The dumbest example of me crying during a film is hands down Working Girl, a film in which Melanie Griffith’s secretary character proves her worth, hooks up with Harrison Ford, and gets a big promotion. At the end of the film, she comes in to work, and her secretary (she’s no longer a secretary and has one of her own!) welcomes her. Melanie sits down at what is her secretary’s desk. Her secretary says “that’s my desk” then guides Melanie into what is her new, huge, actual office. Every time I see this movie, I’m so happy for her that I often feel a tear running down my cyborg cheek.
What’s the film you love but people don’t like it and it’s not critically acclaimed?
Cannonball Run. It’s not a good film. It doesn’t even make any sense (the cars in the race leave at different times, but the winner is determined by who crosses the finish line first, not who does it in the shortest time.) But it’s Burt Reynolds, a bunch of idiots and famous women with cleavage being Burt Reynolds, a bunch of idiots and famous women with cleavage. Chef’s kiss.
What’s the film that you used to love but you watched recently, and you don’t love it anymore?
Logan’s Run. I loved this film as a kid when you didn’t get as many sci-fi films as you do today. I recently watched it, and I’ll agree that it’s not a good film. The acting is bad, the dialogue is laughable, the special effects are low budget. But Jenny Agutter still gets naked in it, and I’ll plant my flag there until I die.
What’s the film that means the most to you, not that the film itself is any good, but the experience you had around seeing it will always make it important to you?
A Clockwork Orange. I was a junior or senior in high school (don’t remember) when my history teacher asked me and my group of friends to put together a project for the city’s history day student competition. I had no interest in it at all, but finally agreed to spearhead the project. We won city. Then we won state. And then we got a trip to a university in Maryland for the national finals. During the day, our history teacher, who was fairly young and cool for a teacher (possibly a former heavy drug user,) took us to all of the Washington DC monuments and museums. The night of the finals and award ceremony, we asked him if we could skip it. I didn’t think we were going to win nationals (we didn’t) and I had found out that the campus had a movie theater and they were showing A Clockwork Orange. None of us had seen the film, and I was a big film buff from an early age and was certainly aware of it. To his credit, our teacher let us skip the awards and accompanied us to the movie. The movie, by the way, blew my mind.
I went to the movies a lot when I was young and I have a lot of other movie going experiences that could have been the answer here. I’ll save those stories for an upcoming article I have planned about movie theaters.
What is the sexiest film you’ve ever seen?
I was tempted to say Y Tu Mama Tambien (which features a young Diego Luna, although not the reason I found it sexy.) It’s a Mexican coming of age movie which was not only a compelling movie but had a decent amount of sex and nudity.
But I think I have to go with The Last Seduction. Not only is it a great film by director John Dahl, but Linda Fiorentino is so sexy in this film. She’s intelligent, gorgeous, sexy, manipulating, evil, and will use and fuck over any guy who gets in her way. I could not have been more attracted to her.
What’s a movie you found arousing, but you probably shouldn’t have?
Leon, known as The Professional in the US. I don’t know how old Natalie Portman was in this film (narrator: she was 12,) but I for sure know I shouldn’t have been attracted to her. To be fair, I wasn’t attracted to her as a child, more the idea that this child was showing qualities I would find attractive in an older woman, like being a hit man. Fuck, I don’t know. There was sexual tension in this film, even though neither character wanted to have sex with each other. It was obviously done on purpose by director Luc Besson so blame him. I would also like to say that in addition to the great performances by Portman and Jean Reno, fucking Gary Oldman is peak Gary Oldman in this masterpiece. So to sum up, shut up and fuck off.
What is the film you most relate to?
I’m cheating by having two answers to this. The first is Pulp Fiction. It was revolutionary for me when it came out as it was the first movie that sounded like it was written by someone from my generation and social circles. Lots of pop culture references and just being cool. When Sam Jackson called the weird haircut dude “Flock of Seagulls,” I knew this movie was for me, not my parents.
My real answer would be World According to Garp, based on the John Irving novel. Garp lived a wild and wacky life full of adventures and love and heartbreak and random events, kind of like my life. He was a writer and an amateur wrestler/wrestling coach. I was a writer and a pro wrestling announcer/booker. When Garp was a kid, his mother asked him “Are you gonna go to sleep or you gonna stay up and think your weird thoughts?” Young Garp replied: “I'll stay up and think weird thoughts for a while.” I’ve never felt so connected to a character.
Side note: years after the film came out, I was hosting a local cable show and was on a press junket for another film during which I got to meet and interview Mary Beth Hurt, who was in Garp.
What film is objectively the greatest ever? Not necessarily your favorite, but objectively the best?
I would almost answer The Godfather, but it has that weird part where Michael is exiled to Italy, meets a girl, falls in love, and then she gets blown up. Was any of this really necessary?
Most Martin Scorsese films would make a good answer, as would a lot of Kubrick films.
But there’s a movie that doesn’t have a bad scene, not a single false note, and is entirely captivating, and that movie is the Coen Brother’s Fargo.
What film is the one you’ve watched the most?
I’ve seen a lot of the Marvel movies multiple times. Same with Goodfellas and Casino and Godfather and American Gangster. If the tv is on and Step Brothers is playing, I’m most likely stopping to watch it. A lot of 80’s movies fall into this repeat viewing category for me: Animal House, Blues Brothers. Anchorman ranks up there. But the movie I’ve probably seen the most is a result of me being the right age when my family first go HBO. I was so enamored with being able to see uncut films at home for the first time, that I would watch stuff over and over, especially comedies. And the king of my teenage rewatching was Caddyshack.
What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?
I could with Brown Bunny, a self-indulgent movie starring Vincent Gallo and directed by Vincent Gallo, a self-indulgent actor/directer who thinks he is more talented and more interesting than he actually is. But I’m going to go with Joker, a self-indulgent movie starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips, a self-indulgent actor and a self-indulgent director who both think they are more talented and interesting than they actually are.
Most people say Joker 2 was horrible. I never saw it since I thought Joker was a piece of shit. It took elements from the great DeNiro film King of Comedy and mixed them up with a boring look at how a poor schlub was mistreated and disrespected enough to make him a homicidal maniac. It’s a shit story with an ending that is a foregone conclusion. Are we supposed to feel sympathy for him? I felt sympathy for anyone who had to sit through this dragging, boring, over-acted masturbation session.
What’s the film that made you laugh out loud the most?
Caddyshack is right up there. Anchorman. A lot of the films I mentioned earlier. But for this one, I’m going with a lesser known comedy, Hollywood Knights. It’s Porky’s before Porky’s. The movie, set in the 50’s, takes place in one night as a group of teens pull pranks and cause all sorts of shenanigans. It has some of the most ridiculous lines and jokes ever seen in the cinema and I still use quotes from it to this day. It’s one of the earliest films for Tony Danza, Fran Drescher, and Robert Wuhl, whose character is named Newbomb Turk, which was later used as a name for punk band The New Bomb Turks.
Some out of context lines:
“He grabbed it with his dick!!”
“That looks like a penis, only smaller.”
“Did you come? Newbomb, did you come?”
“Bong, bong, bong, live from Tubby’s Drive In, the Iron Box Twins!”
“Lawrence. Lawrence of Arabia.”
“Does have a little wang in it.”
And that’s it! Make sure to check out Brett Goldstein’s podcast Films To Be Buried With!