AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Almost everyone has a favorite movie, right? But the movie you may have loved when you were 12 might not be the same movie you loved when you were 17 and then 49, for example. Films that capture us can change over time, just as we change over time. And I wanted to talk about that with a couple of real-deal movie lovers - NPR film critic Bob Mondello and NPR culture reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento - because I just wanted to reminisce a little about the movies that have meant the most to us. Hey to both of you.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Hey. Good to be here.
ISABELLA GOMEZ SARMIENTO, BYLINE: Hello. Thank you for having us.
CHANG: Hello. OK, so I know that both of you spend a lot more time thinking about films than I do, but the cool thing about movies for me is that no matter if you're a professional movie critic like Bob or just a moviegoer like me, like, some stories just implant in you, right? And if I were to start this conversation back in childhood and you asked me what movie grabbed me, like, as soon as I watched it for the first time, what movie did I replay over and over again in my head after I left the theater, it would have to be "Back To The Future," which came out in third grade for me.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BACK TO THE FUTURE")
MICHAEL J FOX: (As Marty McFly) Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me that you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?
CHANG: I had this huge crush on Michael J. Fox, whom I had already...
MONDELLO: Sensible.
CHANG: ...Adored on "Family Ties." But here's the thing about that movie. This movie helped me think about nerds. Like, I always felt like a nerd growing up...
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Aw.
CHANG: ...Even back in elementary school. And watching George McFly rise to become the boss made little Ailsa so freaking happy. Was "Back To The Future" important to either of you? Like, Isabella, were you even born yet in 1985?
MONDELLO: (Laughter).
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Drag me. I was not born in 1985, but I do love this movie.
(LAUGHTER)
MONDELLO: Boy, in 1985, I was in my - what is - 40s, 30s, late 30s.
CHANG: Ooh, well into adulthood.
MONDELLO: But as a practical matter, yeah, of course it affected me.
CHANG: (Laughter) OK, wait. Bob, what was your childhood favorite?
MONDELLO: Well, I had a couple. When I was 10, a movie came out called "Journey To The Center Of The Earth."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMES MASON: (As self) Ladies and gentlemen, this is James Mason. Come along with Pat Boone and me, Arlene Dahl, Diane Baker and Gertrude the Duck, and discover sights and sounds and wonders no living man has ever witnessed before.
(LAUGHTER)
MONDELLO: Gertrude the Duck - now, this movie is about going to the center of the Earth. It's based on the Jules Verne story.
CHANG: Right.
MONDELLO: It is big and special. And there - what I remember most vividly about it is that there was a enormous lizard somebody stepped on at one point, and it glowed red, and it had looked like it was a - it was just a stone. But the thing was, like, 50 feet long and huge and had a 40-foot tongue, and it was like, oh, my God.
CHANG: (Laughter).
MONDELLO: Anyway, I think when you're 10 and you're a little boy, that appeals to some aspect of growing up and being rambunctious.
CHANG: (Laughter).
MONDELLO: I watched that one four or five times when I was a kid. They let me keep going back to it. So that was me.
CHANG: (Laughter) I love it. Isabella, what about you? Childhood favorite.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: My childhood favorite was Disney's "The Aristocats."
CHANG: Oh, yeah.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: It, like, romanticizes Paris. It, like, inspired my love for cats. I am a huge cat lover. I have a cat today. It has a fantastic soundtrack.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THOMAS O'MALLEY CAT")
PHIL HARRIS: (As Thomas O'Malley, singing) I've got that wanderlust. Got to walk the scene. Got to kick up highway dust, feel the grass that's green.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: And I think it just opened me up to this adventure of, like, these very privileged cats that are, like, sent out into the world to discover, you know, what they've been sheltered from in their very comfortable life. So maybe it also kind of sparked my class consciousness at a young age.
CHANG: (Laughter).
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: I just - I come back to it all the time. It's an incredible movie.
CHANG: I love it.
(LAUGHTER)
MONDELLO: I - boy, that's a real NPR sentiment there.
CHANG: Totally.
(LAUGHTER)
MONDELLO: That's very impressive.
CHANG: Well, OK, what about, like, your teenage years? So for me, like, my favorite movie in my teens was "Dead Poets Society." I think, again, it was about crushes. Like, I had a huge crush on Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard. But what I really loved about the film was this idea that a great teacher could give you the courage to think differently from your parents, which was a thing beginning to form in my head.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DEAD POETS SOCIETY")
ROBIN WILLIAMS: (As John Keating) Now, we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go, that's bad.
CHANG: Even though there were some serious consequences in the movie for that defiance, like, it got me to start thinking about, like, thinking for myself.
MONDELLO: Fair.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Ailsa, the crush on Ethan Hawke is still very valid today...
CHANG: (Laughter).
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: ...And I support that point very much. But my favorite movie as a teenager was "Harold And Maude," the Hal Ashby movie about this, like, you know, tortured young man who doesn't fit in with his family and he meets this very eccentric, eclectic old lady who takes him on this big adventure.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HAROLD AND MAUDE")
RUTH GORDON: (As Maude Chardin) Hey, this old thing handles well. Ever drive a hearse, Harold?
BUD CORT: (As Harold Chasen) Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF BRAKES SQUEALING)
GORDON: (As Maude Chardin) Well, it's a new experience for me.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: And I think I loved it for similar reasons to those that you're mentioning, Ailsa, of, like, teaching you to think for yourself and that it's OK to not fit into the status quo. And it's...
CHANG: Yeah.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: ...Probably better to embrace that than to make yourself miserable trying to conform.
CHANG: Totally.
MONDELLO: I saw that picture 19 times...
CHANG: What?
MONDELLO: ...In my college days.
CHANG: Wait, how do you remember that number...
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Oh, my God.
CHANG: ...So clearly?
MONDELLO: Because it became crazy after a while, and I was keeping track.
CHANG: (Laughter).
MONDELLO: I saw "Harold And Maude" again recently, and it was interesting to see it with a brand new audience and to realize it works very much the same way for college students that it was working for me way back when.
CHANG: I need to see that movie again.
MONDELLO: It's really lovely.
CHANG: So how do you both think your movie tastes have changed, evolved over time?
MONDELLO: I think what happens as you get older is that you start to gravitate to films - we're talking about films that mean something to me, for instance.
CHANG: Yeah.
MONDELLO: The one that got me - now, I guess I had been together with my husband at this point at about - for about 18 years. And finally, there was this movie called "Brokeback Mountain."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN")
JAKE GYLLENHAAL: (As Jack Twist) I wish I knew how to quit you.
HEATH LEDGER: (As Ennis Del Mar) Then why don't you? Why don't you just let me be? It's because of you, Jack, that I'm like this.
MONDELLO: I - it was desperately important to me that this movie catch on. And so I wrote afterwards about its success, about how they had marketed this movie across the country and how it became, for a time, the most popular movie Western ever made and one of the most popular romantic dramas ever made, which...
CHANG: Wow.
MONDELLO: ...Astonished me.
CHANG: Yeah. I didn't know that.
MONDELLO: And the fact of its success and the fact that I thought it was a very good movie made it important to me at that time in my life.
CHANG: And so validating, I imagine.
MONDELLO: Yeah.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: You know, I feel like I've just graduated to more complex understandings of these themes that, like, even "The Aristocats" presented. My favorite movie now is "Y Tu Mama Tambien," the Alfonso Cuaron, like, road-trip flick, which is obviously one of the...
MONDELLO: Yeah.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: ...First times we see this magnetic duo...
CHANG: I mean, not to bring up crushes again, but - OK, yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: No, no, no. Exactly. You're catching my drift. You're catching where I'm going with this. The most magnetic duo of Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal - but I think it deals with some of these same concepts of, like, being out in the world and kind of finding your purpose and your place, and learning from people who are very different with you and how your internal conflicts manifest in your friendships and your relationships. And I think also, you know, I'm Venezuelan American and grew up in the U.S., and I think my exposure to, like, capital F, serious film was mostly English language and American films. And I think...
CHANG: Yeah.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: ...Discovering this beautiful tradition of Mexican cinema kind of cracked my world wide open.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CHANG: That was NPR's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento and Bob Mondello talking about some of their favorite movies over the years.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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