John Dwyer

“Oh, okay, so this, obviously fantastic. Naked Lunch. Howard Shore, Ornette Coleman soundtrack, David Cronenberg, Burroughs. This is a full package.”

“Okay, Grey Gardens. This is a perfect example of kind of where I grew up. Like, these ladies remind me of women in my family. Not just with, like, the sort of New England, Northeast quality, but also the, family versus family and, slight lovable insanity.”

“Oh, and then of course one of my favorite films of all time, and I'm so glad—I actually looked online to make sure you guys had done this before I came here, because Repo Man. Harry Dean Stanton, amphetamines, Emilio Estevez, punk rock. This is a great flick.”

“Is this Graham Greene? Odd Man Out. Carol Reed's fantastic. Really like, anybody that would put Orson Welles in a movie and have him do the Orson Welles rule, where you talk about the bad guy for the whole movie and then meet him in the last, like, 30 minutes of the movie. It's like a real payoff kind of thing, but they're like, you know. So I felt like Carol Reed always came from the same school of cinema as Orson Welles, and they worked really well together, and this is a great flick too. It's psychological noir, perfect. Also, the line, "A robbery that goes horribly wrong." It's classic cinema.”

“This movie is upsettingly good. I make my girlfriend watch movies with me constantly to the point where I think she's sick of watching movies and probably sick of me, but this was one of the movies that I think made it all worth it. Watched it together, she was like, "That's a great fucking movie." And like, after that, like, every now and then I'm like—like, to get her to watch a movie, I'd be like, "It's Frankenheimer," and like, reluctantly, like, "Okay." But yeah, this is, this made me dig into all of Sinatra's other films as well that he acted in, like The Man with the Golden Arm. And, you know, Sinatra's great because he is exactly what he is when he's emulated, and everyone loves his music, but this was his finest work. Like, Frankenheimer really got a great performance out of him, and I already own this, but this movie is perfect.”

“Fantastic. David Byrne, True Stories. Great music, great movie. I just—the Talking Heads sort of started in my hometown. I'm from Providence, Rhode Island, and there was a, like, there's all this mythos. I grew up—the first apartment I lived in when I was 17 was with, like, two people I barely knew. It was a nightmare, it was a shithole, it was in the basement, we got robbed. But right around the corner was a place that they called the Vault that apparently used to be—I don't know if this is true or not, but it used to be an old bank, and apparently the Talking Heads used to live there and practice there. And I remember hating the Talking Heads when I was a kid just because it was too twee for me and I was into, like, punk and metal. Now I love the Talking Heads and I have a little point of pride, so I've been buying all this stuff and I bought this. This is fantastic. And, you know, I just saw David Byrne play recently and he was great, and I can't say enough good stuff. And now I'm, like, reading about them working with Brian Eno and, like, looking into how they wrote music and even taking a little bit of that for our band and emulating something that I hated when I was a kid, which is a very strange thing to do, but there it is.”

“Okay, this is the one—this is one of the ones that I actually came, in, and totally in love with this flick when I was a kid. This was probably one of the first black and white movies I saw. I'm a huge horror fan, and it kind of blew my mind that somebody—Night of the Living Dead, that somebody, sorry, that somebody would have made this film, and it kept my attention as a hyperactive kid, you know, black and white. Like, if you look on Amazon now, I was like looking up, just, just for morbid curiosity. Looking on Amazon reviews of films is a terrible idea, and I remember reading somebody's like three-word review that just said, "Ew, black and white," you know? And I was like, really? But then I was like, wait, I think I actually might have felt like that when I was a kid too, that like if it was old, it wasn't good. But this movie was the first black and white film I saw that actually kind of like kicked open the door, realizing that a lot of old movies are better than movies now, frankly. And this is a—this is a perfect piece of cinema, and because of that, I just love everything George A. Romero does. I still have all the Fangoria magazines that have interviews with him and stuff, and this was Tom Savini? Maybe it might be too early for the two of them. But anyway, I'm very excited to see that Criterion did a fat collection of this flick, because it's a statement about civil rights and war, and also happens to just be a zombie flick, which is awesome. So, perfect film.”