Whiskey Fizzles My List Before Your Very Eyes

Too many critics, I think, rack up lists of favorite things (i.e. “My third-favorite ‘My Favorite Things’ is from Coltrane’s 11-18-62 Paris, second set”) without including absences; that is, their favorites among things they have imperfect or no knowledge of. To correct this to a degree, and to add something human to this blog for a change, I offer

My Favorite Movies That I’ve Never Seen, and Likely Never Will

The Dead Hate the Living
As this is my favorite movie title of all time, I’d hate to adulterate my appreciation of it by actually seeing the film. Plus, since that’s pretty much the summation of every horror movie ever made, I feel I’ve already seen it hundreds of times over.

Zorba the Greek
Having read Nikos Kazantzakis’ marvelous tale a couple times, I can’t imagine it filmed properly, nor imagine Anthony Quinn in the title role. But I grew up hearing the soundtrack, which featured snippets of dialog as intros to stirring bouzouki reels, and cannot now have dinner in a Greek restaurant, or hear the Pogues’ “Hell’s Ditch,” without thinking of the following:
Alan Bates: “Teach me to dance.”
Quinn: “Did you say---dance? Come on my boy!”

Zabriskie Point
I have no idea what this film’s about, but again, it’s a matter of soundtrack. I owned the cassette in my early twenties, and couldn’t imagine being that age without smoking dope and listening to obscure brilliant Pink Floyd tracks like “Heart Beat Pig Meat” and the dazzling understated “Crumbling Land” (“In his hand, a moving picture of the crumbling land…”).
Throw in John Fahey and Roscoe Holcomb and you’ve got a perfect movie—without the movie.

Only three, eh? But see—while trying to think of more, I stepped out on my balcony for a smoke and saw what I wish you could have seen, so I wouldn’t have to try to explain it: a moth circling the kitty-corner streetlamp, itself illuminated by its attractant such that it glowed just as brightly, as if on fire as it surely wished to be—a illusory firefly in a northern clime opposed to such phenomena. Beautiful, impossible, and surely a sign that I have to get my ass to bed posthaste. More to come, I’m sure: my favorite novels I never finished reading, my favorite baked manicotti recipes I ended up burning beyond edibility, and so on.