Our director writes:
There's a question anyone in any particular field dreads. Kind of. It's the equivalent of, having been cornered into admitting that you speak a language, being asked to 'say something in (X)'.
And suddenly, all the words disappear from your brain and you're left stumbling for my wife's pear is not yet ripe.
As soon as I admit that I'm a wannabe filmmaker (unless you take the advice of Robert Rodriguez, in which case, I AM A FILMMAKER! - except, kind of and kind of not) - there's the inevitable question;
What's your favourite film, then?
And there's the sudden mental blank, right there, right then.
Except that, it turns out, it's a question of confidence. There are approximately three stages of evolution in this conversational gambit;
Stage One
Go completely mentally blank and either choose something banal or embarrassing; you may be shocked to know you had a hitherto unknown love for Josie and the Pussycats, to your eternal chagrin. You will probably then be reminded of this every time you meet that person and/or anyone else they've met, at which point you'll have to grin and bear it instead of, for a purely hypothetical instance, emigrating to Khartoum to start up a hermitage.
Stage Two
Confidence begins to grow, but so does the need to impress; so suddenly you find yourself picking something wilfully obscure in the desperate hope that the other person doesn't know it and will drop to their knees, the light of salvation in their eyes, and proclaim you the most knowledgeable film buff ever.
This can include foreign films - if you're stuck for a lazy analogy, there's always Nanni Moretti, because you can then immediately start an argument about him being "The Italian Woody Allen" and you can argue whatever side you want because no-one will care. If you want something incredibly obscure - to a British audience, at least - there's always Утомлённые солнцем, which is actually a good film with a tense, taught structure and a prominent third-act reveal before a gut-punch of an ending.
Alternatively, just choose Day Watch and pray the other person hasn't read Sergey Lukyanenko's work and isn't looking for a semantic argument about whether the second film should have adapted the first book's second section or the second book's first.
Stage Three
This can only happen when confidence has been attained and you can actually state with pride that you have a favourite film, as opposed to some sort of faithless love for all film.
After years of wandering the Favourite Film desert, I actually realised that it doesn't matter as long as you can justify your love. I've been through several. The first one I actually felt comfortable justifying was this; but then, kind of a given.
Then, for a while, there was this, which was kind of cool at the time.
Then, I realised, you have to stop giving a fuck about what other people think and, most importantly, stop trying to look cool. Nobody really cares, unless you admit to liking a film that's so offensive that you may as well have walked into the room naked with a chicken on your head to cause less offence.
I currently have two favourite films. That's just how I roll. The first would be this: In Bruges. It's not perfect, but it's kind of close, and I have a whole hash of personal reasons for liking it beyond the fact that it's clever and funny and features a cocaine-snorting racist demi-mondain.
But the real favourite - deep down, all the way - is this.
And because it's the real deal, I don't have to justify it.
That's confidence, baby.
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