Okay, this is fiendish.
As I said in the introductory piece we ran on Monday about “Ask Drew,” a new video series that we'll be doing here at HitFix, I love my video team. They're turning out so much good work these days, and they do it every single day.
They came to me with this idea, and it sounded like a great one to me. The premise is simple. You guys send them questions via e-mail at video@hitfix.com, and they pick a handful of questions each episode. I don't see them until I am on camera, and then I have to answer.
I must be crazy to agree to this.
What I tend to forget is that you guys have absolutely amazing memories, and if I've ever mentioned anything on the site, one of you will no doubt remember it. Sure enough, there's a question this time around that almost made me run out of the studio. Still, I agreed, so I answered it, and I hope all the parties involved can smile and laugh about it at this point.
We also played a round of Movie God, a game that I created with my friends Pat and Scott, and it's a great way of trying to understand what someone considers a priority about film. The rules, for those of you who didn't listen to the podcast, are simple. In the game, one person is Movie God. The other person names two things… films, actors, directors, genres, shots… and one of them has to be stricken from the record completely. That means it never happened, and whatever happened as a result of it also never happened. If you erase someone's breakthrough film, you might be erasing their career. If you erase a director, you might be erasing anyone he inspired. It is not an easy game. At times, it's downright sadistic. But, boy, it makes you define what is most important to you, and that's the point.
So of course it was total torture.
Not every question is right for this show. If you read the kick-off piece, I included a fairly lengthy response to a question from a reader about films that defined America in some way. I'm happy to answer questions like that in print. But if you think you've got the right question for the show, send it to the video team. We're going to do a few of these a month to start, and if it goes well, we'll move up the schedule.
Enjoy this first one, and if you want to use this comments section to discuss the list from Monday's article, I'd be happy to wade in and discuss it with you.
You can also find “Ask Drew” on our YouTube channel, which you can find here, along with lots of the other great content our video team produces.