antipaucity

I want you to watch these 6 movies (in this order):

• The Wizard of Oz
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• Night of the Living Dead (1968 edition)
• The Godfather
• Pi
• Inception

Watch them with a notebook and pen or pencil handy (yes: use physical writing and recording tools; don’t use your laptop, tablet, or phone).

Write things you see that jump out at you about the story – how it is told, what is explicitly stated, what is implicitly hinted-at, what is alluded-to, etc.

Start with the very first thing you see after the title credits finish.

I’ll give you a hint, and highlight a small handful of items from the first ~15 minutes of The Wizard of Oz:

1. Everything is gray (well, sepia)
2. Dorothy is whiny
3. Dorothy is obsessed with her dog
   1. Why is Toto going anywhere with Dorothy off the farm grounds?
   2. Especially, why is Dorothy taking Toto near Ms Gulch’s cats?
4. Dorothy is an orphan
   1. Auntie Em & and Uncle Henry are on the farm, but
   2. no parents anywhere in sight
5. When Dorothy wakes up in Oz, everything is in eye-popping, brilliant Technicolor

Tell me what you find – I’m intensely intrigued to see how your lists compare to mine.

Also published on Medium.