From a New Yorker article about Quentin Tarantino:
One of the many personal genres that Tarantino has made up is "hangout movies" -- movies whose plot and camerawork you may admire but whose primary attraction is the characters. A hangout movie is one that you watch over and over again, just to spend time with them. "Rio Bravo," one of Tarantino's favorite movies of all time (the two others are "Taxi Driver" and "Blow Out"), is a hangout movie. Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused," perhaps Tarantino's favorite movie of the nineties, is another hangout movie, and when Tarantino is abroad, in a hotel or some apartment he's rented, if he feels lonely he goes to a video store and rents "Dazed and Confused," and then he doesn't feel lonely anymore. The characters in the movie have become friends of his. -- Larissa MacFarqhhar, "The Movie Lover," The New Yorker (October 20, 2003)
Below are mine. As I reflect on these I'm struck by the lack of writers and directors who are women and/or people of color and/or not from the US or UK and/or not straight. Perhaps hangout movies are narcissistic by definition. I will note that all of these movies have amazing performances by women (with the exception of Django Unchained). In any case, I'm going to have to think about that and review my choices. Off the bat, I think there might be qualification by films by Lisa Cholodenko, Spike Lee, and Jordan Peele. Maybe Lone Scherfig. Sounds like a good film fest, right? I might argue that some of these directors below are cognitively different but I'm not sure how I'd evaluate that with any seriousness.
The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935). Before I was 12, my Mom would let me see old movies at the Baxter Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky. (They'd show the classics in the 4 PM to 7 PM slot, right before they started showing porn; so the attendance was a little peculiar when I'd be getting out of the theater for a pickup by my mom.) Most of the films were old Chaplin flicks, but somehow I managed to see a double feature of The Lady Vanishes and The Thirty-Nine Steps. I adored and still adore The Thirty-Nine Steps. Parts of it still give me the creeps. I saw the Broadway parody play, and it was silly compared to the movie. I've read the Buchan book, but for me, the movie is tops.
There's rather a lot going on in this movie besides the pretty linear plot. The protagonist is Canadian, and he is both within and without the culture; the movie is about spies, and he is himself something of a spy.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). You know this as a classic Woody Allen movie, but perhaps in the second tier (behind such movies as Manhattan and Annie Hall). This is actually a very strange movie. If you've given up on it, or saw it, or didn't like it (or intend to never watch it again because we now know bad things about Woody Allen), I'd like to ask you to give it another try, with one word in mind: "envy."
This movie is all about envy and triangulation. Repeatedly you see two people in competition for a third person. Hannah and Lee are in competition for Elliot; Holly and April compete for the attention of the architect David (played by an uncredited Sam Waterson); Mickey and Elliot are (implicitly) in competition for Hannah; it goes on and on. The characters are trapped in the idea that there is some zero-sum game around desire. What saves the movie is the last scene with Mickey and Holly, which is based on the idea that miracles exist in everyday life, and it is such ruptures that explode the trivial "economics" of envy. I used to think that this was a later Allen movie that didn't have some connection to child abuse, but in fact child abuse is joked about in the scene where Mickey is a show-runner for a SNL-esque show. So now I wonder if I should stop watching it. Incidentally, the punk band is played by the real Canadian band The Thirty Nine Steps.
Dazed and Confused (1993). This is set during the last day of school in 1976. I would have been 16, completing my sophomore year in high school, just about to go into my junior year. That means I would be one year behind the characters in the movie like Pink who were about to become seniors. This movie gets everything right, allowing for differences between Texas (the movie) and Minnesota (my reality). I could easily have been Mike Newhouse or Tony Olson (more Tony than Mike, surely). And of course I would have had a terrible crush on the character Cynthia Dunn.
This movie is misunderstood by most viewers. This is really about personal determination and ethical choice. At the beginning of the movie, the junior Pink is given a sheet he has to sign promising to not take drugs in his senior year, etc. By the end of the movie, Pink rejects this and hangs with the stoners. This is a big deal. I think that the positioning of this movie as explicitly "post-60s" is trying to make a point that despite the cultural heroism of the 1960s, young people were still (despite the conventional story that tells us about 70s apathy and narcissistic pleasure-seeking) trying to do the "right thing" in the 1970s.
American Graffiti (1973). I saw this for the first time in the 2nd floor screening room (refitted from a balcony) at the Grandview Theatre in Saint Paul. I loved everything about it. Either just before this movie or just after I acquired the K-Tel album 25 Rock Revival Greats (1972), which was probably the best collection of 50s rock of its time (though the American Grafitti soundtrack, which came out a bit later, was also amazing -- though more white; for instance, no Bo Diddley), including both white and black artists.
Obviously the most provocative thing about the movie is the intensity of the drag race at the end. But it also told me that moving across country for college and leaving your friends was a thing. I didn't have friends as portrayed in the movie, so the whole experience was a little alien, like reading a really great anthropological ethnography. After this movie I went downstairs and snuck into the main room which was showing "The Sting." There was only one seat left: Front row, far left. My neck was so cricked afterwards I can't say I've ever thoroughly enjoyed re-watchings of "The Sting" though by other measures it might be on this very list. I highly recommend watching More American Graffiti (1979), set in 1964-1967, which fills in the near future that the characters couldn't have imagined in their original setting of 1962.
Pulp Fiction (1994). I saw this one in Sedona, Arizona, when it first came out. I was buzzing for days afterward. I don't have a lot to say about this one, but re-watchings benefit from checking out YouTube for videos on "details you missed in Pulp Fiction" and "Pulp Fiction in chronological order."
Fargo (1996). I struggle a bit to explain why I love to hang out with the characters in this movie so much. It almost doesn't make the list because of the light satiric mockery of the characters, which maybe isn't necessary (the film makers almost use it like a crutch to insinuate: oh we're not really being so serious . . .). The more I think about it, the more I home in on the pathetic scene between Marge -- the pregnant cop who figures out the crime that drives the plot -- and Mike Yanagita, the sad sack who supposedly divorced his wife and has some weird crush on Marge. This is one of those scenes where critics and viewers have said . . . "wha?" It turns out that this scene is the crux of the movie, because it amps up Marge's skepticism of what people say about themselves. When she realizes that Mike is full of shit, she goes back to her case with fresh vigor. This seems to be one of the few discussions that gets it right.
City Lights (1931). This is another movie, like The 39 Steps, that I saw when I was 10 or 11 at the Baxter in Louisville, Kentucky. The movie is almost sickeningly sentimental. I didn't see it for years and then saw it streaming and it opened up a gulf of hidden-away emotion.
Saturday Night Fever (1977). This movie bears re-watching for the stories of Frank, Jr., Annette, Bobby, and of course Stephanie. I think it's better to understand the movie as "around" John Travolta's character, Tony, rather than about him. This is one of those strange movies where everything supporting is in fact primary and the point of the movie.
Django Unchained (2012). I never felt that Tarantino's other movies really lived up to "Pulp Fiction." There were moments that were as great as the best bits from "Pulp Fiction," but over the whole course of the movie, none could compare for tempo and narrative creativity. But "Django Unchained" had me simultaneously in shock, cheering, and thrilled in a new way. I think it's Tarantino's best, and I want to hang out with its characters for a long time to come.
Almost Famous (2000). For me the problem here is that the Stillwater band is kind of awful, compared to the models (IMHO, The Allman Brothers and Grand Funk), but this is another one that has stayed on the turntable, so to speak. I think the miniseries (but not the book) Daisy Jones and the Six got more right, but it's not a movie, and for me it's hard to hang out with a series.
Close but not quite:
Alien (1979). It messes with your consciousness of what's real and what's fantasy. If you don't love this crew of losers, what's wrong with you? True story: I saw this in Des Moines in 1979 or 1980. One the way back to middle Iowa, I sat in the back seat of the car, and I swear that the damn Alien was somewhere in the shadows of that vehicle, getting ready to eat me. I looked around quite suspiciously for a glint of little teeth. I was scared. Later when my peeps and I got back to our house, I noticed Stu sitting in the living room; I gestured with my hands as though something was emerging from my mouth, and Stu lept out of his seat like he had been shot. Now that's a powerful movie if it makes people think that their real-life housemates have gigantor parasites inside of them.
The Godfather (1972). In my original version of this list, it seemed hackneyed to add it, but I seem to have "hung out" with this movie quite a bit, so here it is.
The Squid and the Whale (2005). This one hits hard personally. A lot of my dad was in the character of Bernard; a lot of my stepmother in Joan. but I still hang out with it.
New ones, potentially:
My Old Ass; The Poseidon Adventure; Julia; Airport; Civil War; Soylent Green; Barry Lyndon; Love and Mercy; After Hours; The Martian; The Sound of Music; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; Big Night; The Holdovers; The Last Days of Disco; Grand Illusion; After the Thin Man; The Wizard of Oz; Midnight in Paris; 24 Hour Party People; Metropolitan; All the President's Men; Adventureland; Patton; Nashville; The Conversation; The King of Comedy; Rio Bravo.
Movies that are absolutely not on this list, with my reasons, but I suspect are on the lists of others:
The Godfather, Part II (Just weaker than the first movie and the plot makes no sense); THe Godfather, Part III (Ridiculous); Boogie Nights (The characters need more depth); American Beauty (Too mean); Stand by Me (Too trivial, and the pie scene disrupts the world-building); The Shawshank Redemption; Star Wars movies; The Big Lebowski (Too much cruft); When Harry Met Sally (Insufferable); Blue Velvet (Does anyone need to see it a second time?); Boyhood (Tedious); The before sunrise stuff (Tedious); Up in the Air (Has its moments but ultimately trivial); Back to the Future movies (Too zany); James Bond movies (No character development); Thelma and Louise (Conceit is too easy); Casablanca (I have a hard time not going to sleep); Fast Times at Ridgemont High (The coerced sex scene bugs me); Super Bad; The Breakfast Club; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Clerks; Office Space; High Fidelity; Goodfellas; The Royal Tenenbaums; Reality Bites; Swingers; My Dinner with Andre; The Princess Bride; 2001\; Blade Runner.
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