It started for me in the backseat of my parents car watching movies on a portable VHS player that we’d sandwich between my brother and me on long car rides. We’d watch movie, after movie after movie, and then I’d beg my brother to watch the “Making Of.” In the era of streaming, I think I miss “The Making Of’s” the most. 

That’s where my love of filmmaking started. Or at least, that’s how I remember it. I remember, vividly, Steven Spielberg discussing lens choices in the Making Of “Saving Private Ryan” and wondering, so deeply in my gut, “what do those numbers mean? How can I find out?”

Now, after film school and having worked on film and TV sets, both large and small I understand the “how.” I’ve lived “The Making Of.” And while it still excites and engages me, I find myself more and more not questioning “how”, but “why.” Why do we make these things called movies? Why do some of them punch us in the gut while others don’t? Why do some moments make me cry or laugh? Why do we love movies?

In this blog I hope to explore those questions by watching, in chronological order, over 150 of the world’s “Most Influential Films” of all time. These special films were chosen as a collated list from The New York Times, IMDB, AFI, and of course, my own personal choices.

Throughout this journey I hope to ask a lot of “why’s,” and maybe, in asking “why,” figure out where we’re headed. Why do great movies stick with us? I guess there’s only one way to find out.