There’s a lovely predictability to all Letterboxd ‘Top Four’ interviews. Firstly, our cornered celebrity grimaces and exclaims, “Oh no, Letterboxd? The film-lovers are out to get me!” They complain about their lack of preparation, then effortlessly list their four favourite films in this particular order:
An absolute classic that is almost certainly a gangster movie or a western, something artsy they’ve seen recently created by a director they want to work with, a film from their childhood—it’s got to feel down to earth, they can’t be too pretentious—and of course, a wild card.
Not everyone fits into this neat box. I don’t know any of Emma Stone’s choices well enough to tell. But what is consistent is that laughing pantomime of awkwardness, the fear that our actor might be found out to be a philistine. However, for Jack Black, there was no such awkwardness.
While promoting a film about a massive snake, Black’s top four are unnerving for such a funny guy. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Shining serve as his well-known favourites, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as the childhood category and Hereditary as the modern indie darling. I like to think that Black had no previous knowledge of this, that he’s someone who has his favourites to hand at all times.
It’s interesting that for an actor known for such heartwarming films as School of Rock, Jumanji, and Nacho Libre, he so enjoys stories of thwarted men trapped in mental facilities and rural hotels. Maybe there’s more than a physical resemblance between Jack Nicholson and Black. A lot of the interviewees have one central reason why they love the films they do and for Black it seems to be the thrill—the full body shock of The Shining and the tension of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Themes of masculinity are also present in Kung Fu Panda and Nacho Libre, but in his favourites, they are subverted to horrific ends. There are a lot of parallels to be drawn between Black’s work and these films, but while the films he stars in emphasise humour and a happy ending, in his spare time, he seems to prefer a more downbeat version.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory might come across as a more banal children’s film, but the Roald Dahl adaptation is soaked in the blood of stupid and annoying children. It serves as a kind of inverse to School of Rock, where the kids turn out to be rather charming. It is theatrical in its violence too, and Gene Wilder’s performance as the charismatic but unknowable Wonka inspired a raft of remakes and imitations.
As for the final film, I haven’t seen Hereditary, and Black’s enthusiastic review in which he states, “It took me a few days to recover,” hasn’t convinced me it is something my heart could handle.
Letterboxd top fours might be increasingly performative. Actors have a lot to gain from liking the ‘right’ movies, and the act of pretending they haven’t discussed this with a PR agent beforehand is becoming silly. But there’s still something tantalisingly revealing about it, unveiling some insight into a career that is often defined by a series of business decisions. Maybe Jack Black made Anaconda because he really believes in its vision of man vs snake, and he just so happened to make a ton of money from it too.
Photo by Vagueonthehow on Openverse.