A couple of months back, Tanner, Chris, and myself had settled on doing our next Director Day on April 11th. Chris is up next and we usually get something weird with him, so there was the usual anticipation for the upcoming date. Since then, things have gotten weird without Chris' input and frankly, these days are a little scary. The world at large has started to feel like a movie. With the barrage of "end of days" films that have been prevalent over the past couple of decades, it almost feels like life imitating art doesn't it?
For us, Director Day is an event. We usually schedule it every 3 months or so, and for me it's one of my favorite days of the year. I'd rather skip any sort of birthday celebration than miss a Director Day. These are people I like to spend time with and since we all love movies, it's a win for all of us. Needless to say, the COVID-19 nightmare has caused us to take pause and re-evaluate our date. Sure, we could have tried to be safe and do all the necessary steps leading up to and during the day itself, but that's just not the prudent thing to do right now. Instead, we brainstormed and came up with an alternative plan.
We have long decided that since we all love the work of Quentin Tarantino and none of us wanted to be tasked with having to decide on three movies from him that we were all likely very familiar with. With that in mind, we decided this crisis, with it's "shelter in place" and "social distancing" guidelines in full effect, that we would decide on three movies of Tarantino's and communicate with each other before and after each film via ZOOM. Now, that means we don't get to eat some delicious BBQ, but hell, you can't have it all can you?
Chris devised a plan to whittle us down to three films. We each had to rank QT's movies in order of preference, 1-9. The three films with the lowest number of points, would be the ones we would watch. We were given a couple of days to get our list in order and send it to Chris for compilation. At 9 pm on "Selection Sunday" Chris announced the choices.
They came out in this order;
1. Pulp Fiction
2. Kill Bill Volume 2
3. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
I had no doubt that the top spot would be a consensus and my boys didn't fail me. "Pulp Fiction" is a classic and a masterpiece that has long been a favorite film overall for each of us. The final ranking worked out really well for me, since all of these movies were in my top four picks. Of Tanner's top four picks, two of the films were in there and also two for Chris. With a small sample size, it wasn't very hard to come up with the three that would be most satisfactory. All of the films we are watching were in the top 5 for each of us. There were a few interesting differences though. For example, I had "Jackie Brown" as my third favorite, but both Chris and Tanner have it as their least favorite. They also had the "Kill Bill" films near the top and grouped together, while I had Volume 2 as my 4th favorite, but Volume 1 as my 7th favorite. "Inglorious Basterds" is another film that split us up. It was 2nd on Tanner's list, but Chris and I had it as our 8th favorite.
I'll likely do either a follow up or an addendum to this just to record how the day went watching movies alone, yet kind of together. I'm rather looking forward to the experience. Take a peek below for how each of us voted on our favorite Tarantino films first to last.....and by last it by no means should indicate that we didn't like the movie. I chose "The Hateful Eight" as my bottom film and I'd prefer to watch that over a large percentage of any other movie not made by our living legend and hero, Quentin Jerome Tarantino.
CHRIS
1. Pulp Fiction
2. Reservoir Dogs
3. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
4. Kill Bill I
5. Kill Bill II
6. The Hateful Eight
7. Django Unchained
8. Inglorious Basterds
9. Jackie Brown
TANNER
1. Pulp Fiction
2. Inglorious Basterds
3. Kill Bill II
4. Kill Bill I
5. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
6. The Hateful Eight
7. Django Unchained
8. Reservoir Dogs
9. Jackie Brown
FREDDY
1. Pulp Fiction
2. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
3. Jackie Brown
4. Kill Bill II
5. Django Unchained
6. Reservoir Dogs
7. Kill Bill I
8. Inglorious Basterds
9. The Hateful Eight
UPDATE
4/11/2020
We held our day and worked it out that we used ZOOM to communicate before and after each film. We also exchanged texts during the movie and since we all had seen them numerous times it never took us out of the enjoyment. In all, it was kind of interesting and fun to do out Director Day while not being together. If the virus lock down continues, we will likely do this again. Having it go off so flawlessly is a positive so now, we realize we can pretty much do this at any time and enjoy the experience.
4/11/2020
We held our day and worked it out that we used ZOOM to communicate before and after each film. We also exchanged texts during the movie and since we all had seen them numerous times it never took us out of the enjoyment. In all, it was kind of interesting and fun to do out Director Day while not being together. If the virus lock down continues, we will likely do this again. Having it go off so flawlessly is a positive so now, we realize we can pretty much do this at any time and enjoy the experience.
