Tom Rothman

“The movie I’m going to start with is the movie that started me. This is Down by Law, and I’m starting with this movie not only because somewhere my name appears here as a coproducer, but because the incomparable Jim Jarmusch made this film and Jim Jarmusch was the man who first believed in me, when we were both young and making our way in New York. And I wouldn’t be in this Closet, and I wouldn’t have had the career that I had, except for Jim. And Jim is still keeping the faith and making great art all the time. So you can’t go wrong with anything by Mr. Jarmusch.”

“From Down by Law To Be or Not to Be, the Ernst Lubitsch version. In my line of work, running studios for many years, people always ask me, “What’s your favorite film?” And I try to say, “Well, what kind of film? I love all my children,” but my favorite comedy is To Be or Not to Be, and that’s even though I’m the man who greenlit Something About Mary. But this… this is nearly perfect. And here’s what’s interesting about it: this movie was a big failure when it came out. Satirizing the Nazis wasn’t cool, but Lubitsch was way ahead of his time, and it’s now a classic.”

“This is Harlan County USA, I think the best documentary I’ve ever seen and one of the most, most important ever made. This movie asks, in song, “Come to Harlan County, which side are you on?” And I think that’s a question that we all need to be asking ourselves right now: which side are you on? The powerful or the powerless? Harlan County.”

“Winchester ’73. Well, this is remembered as the first of several significant collaborations between Jimmy Stewart and Anthony Mann. But, actually, for folks like me who’ve spent many, many years dedicating their lives to the studios, Winchester ’73 is significant for a different reason. This is basically the first movie where an actor got to participate in the gross receipts of the movie, what came to be known as the back end, and Jimmy Stewart was a big enough star to do it. And it also had the effect of starting to break the studio system. When Jimmy Stewart came back from the war and the Nazis shooting at him, he didn’t really give a shit what Louis B. Mayer thought anymore. He wanted to do what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. And that’s just the first of those.”

“To Sleep with Anger. I worked for many years at the Samuel Goldwyn Company, when indies were indies, and there is no truer indie auteur than Charles Burnett. A powerful, beautiful, enduring film, To Sleep with Anger. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.”

“This one I’m definitely taking home. The criminally underrated Ice Storm by Ang Lee. I made six films with Ang Lee and this is one of my favorites. But then I am a child of the ’70s, and if you want to see what it was like, shag carpet and all, you got to check it out.”

“I pulled The Big Chill for purely mercenary reasons, on the off chance that Larry Kasdan or either of his incredibly talented two sons happen to be watching this. Because once a year I go to Larry Kasdan and I say, “Come on, man, how about a sequel to The Big Chill?” They’re grown up now. They have kids. They have grandkids. But Larry, maybe wisely, thinks it was pretty good as it is.”

“I picked this last movie because perfection in the movie business is very, very hard to achieve. Almost no movie is as good as people say it is, and certainly no movie’s as bad as sometimes people say it is, but every once in a while you can achieve perfection. The Philadelphia Story, this is a perfect film.”