AN INTRODUCTION, BY WAY OF EIGHT QUESTIONS

1. What is this book?

It’s a book about movies, is what it is. I wrote it because I really like movies. They have been important to me since I was a child. They’ll probably be important to me all the way up until I’m dead. Or, at least until they stop making The Fast and the Furious movies. It’s a toss-up on which of those things happens first.

2. How does the book work?

It’s very simple. The book is 30 chapters long. Each chapter is a different movie question that needs to be answered. Sometimes the questions are silly. Other times, the questions are serious. But they’re always answered with (what I hope is) a clear amount of care and respect.

And you don’t have to read the book in order. You can go in whatever order you like. You don’t have to have read, say, chapter 13 (which is about action movies) to understand chapter 14 (which is about Selena).

Oh, also: There’s a lot of art in the book. I like including art with the stuff because it helps give everything a slightly firmer shape, and helps place the reader in the same kind of headspace that I was in whenever I was writing a thing. So, for example, there’s a chapter written as a press conference held by Michael Myers, the iconic movie monster from the Halloween franchise. And that’s, of course, a silly idea, but there’s a piece of art in there with Michael sitting at a conference table in front of a bunch of reporters and seeing that drawing helps turn it into something that feels a little more real, which helps it feel a little more substantial.

3. Didn’t you do a book like this before?

Yes. It was called Basketball (And Other Things). It came out in 2017.

4. Did you know that you were going to write Movies (And Other Things) back when you were writing Basketball (And Other Things)?

Yes. I knew I wanted to write Movies (And Other Things) as soon as I settled on the title for Basketball (And Other Things). But that’s not because we had any kind of grand plan in place to turn the (And Other Things) premise into an actual series or anything like that. Mostly it was because we realized that after Basketball (And Other Things) had proven itself to be successful you could put “(And Other Things)” behind basically anything and it sounded like a fine idea for a book. Basketball (And Other Things). Movies (And Other Things). Rap (And Other Things). Hot Dogs (And Other Things). Roofing (And Other Things). Crossbows (And Other Things). Literally Anything (And Other Things). I Can Do This All Day (And Other Things). You Get the Point (And Other Things).

5. Are there any guidelines or rules that you had in place when you were working on this book?

The closest thing to a guideline or a rule is that, generally speaking, I didn’t want to spend a ton of time or energy talking about movies that came out before the ‘80s. There just haven’t been a lot of times in my life where someone was like, “Hey, man. What’d you think of Tony Curtis in 1959’s Some Like It Hot,” you know what I mean? (In fact, the only reason I know that that’s actually a movie is because Cher mentions it in 1995’s Clueless.) So I just focused on movies that I liked from time periods that I liked. A few of them are from the ‘80s, and all the rest of them are from the ‘90s, 2000s, and 2010s.

6. Wait, I just realized that the reason you’re doing the introduction in a question and answer format is because the chapters in the book are all written in a question and answer format. Is that what’s going on here?

That’s a bingo.

7. Why did you ask John Leguizamo to write the foreword?

Well, there are two reasons why. For one, I asked him to write the foreword because it made sense because this is a book about movies and he is a movie star who has been in a number of films that I enjoy a great deal (he was brilliant as the uncontrollable hothead Benny Blanco in Carlito’s Way; he was brilliant as the venomous Tybalt in Romeo + Juliet; he was brilliant as the charming chop shop owner Aurelio in John Wick; etc.).

But that’s just a part of it. And not even the most important part of it, really. Because the main reason that I asked him to write the foreword is I have looked up to him and admired him and respected him since back when I was in high school and watched Freak, his first one-man Broadway show that ran on HBO.

I thought he was incredible in it. I thought he was smart and I thought he was funny and I thought he was cool and I thought he was talented, and all of those feelings were multiplied by about a billion percent because he, like me, had dark brown hair and dark brown eyes and a last name that ended in a vowel. And I’d for sure seen him in movies and on TV before then (two of the three movies I mentioned above came out before his Freak special, as had The Pest and Spawn and Executive Decision and several others). But it was watching him up on stage in Freak, carrying the entirety of evening on his shoulders, being a total and complete powerhouse, that made me say to myself, “Wow. I… I don’t know who this guy is, but I know he’s going to be someone who will be in my brain for a long time.”

8. Why did you ask Don Cheadle to write the afterword?

Same as with Leguizamo, there are two reasons why. First, because he’s fucking Don Cheadle, is why. He was Basher in the Ocean’s movies. He was Miles Davis in Miles Ahead. He was Mouse Alexander in Devil Wears a Blue Dress. He was War Machine in the Marvel movies. He was Montel in Traffic. He was Buck Swope in Boogie Nights. He was Rocket in Colors. He was Earl “The Goat” Manigault in Rebound. He was Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda. On and on and on.

Second, BECAUSE HE’S FUCKING DON CHEADLE, one of the four or five coolest people on the planet. I actually asked him about exactly that when we spoke ahead of time for the afterword. I mentioned the cameo he had in the “D.N.A.” short video that Kendrick Lamar made and asked him what it felt like to exist every day as someone who was universally recognized as cool, and of course he gave an answer about how he definitely did not see himself that way, but he did so in the coolest way possible, which was incredible. It was like watching Steph Curry tell you he’s not good at basketball as he’s in the middle of making 45 threes in a row.