What is the "Best Movie Ever"?

Not!

The world will never agree on what the Best Movie Ever is, even though it's quite clear to me that the answer is "Back to the Future."

See? You're already saying, "What the fuck kind of choice is that?" You might choose "The Godfather," and you'd have a hell of a case. You might say "Casablanca," and only an idiot would immediately disqualify it. You might run into some guy who thinks "Turtle Diary" was good. Of course, if that last case were to happen, you'd be within your Constitutional rights to throat-punch him, then go to his house, burn it down, and kick his dog, but let's be reasonable.

The point is, questions like "What's the Best Movie Ever?" are inherently subjective, and therefore cannot be positively determined. What makes a movie "the best" or even "good" differs from person to person. If the question is "What's the most influential movie ever?" then you at least have some kind of parameter. But even then, "Birth of a Nation" (in which the KKK are the heroes) would be near the top, and you'd probably have to include something like "The Jazz Singer," which is godawful bad, but it was the first "talkie," thus making it influential as all hell.

But the idea of a "Best Movie Ever" is nonsense. You could take a vote or something, but since when is art democratic? And who would vote? Everyone who's ever seen a movie?

I think the best answer to "What's the Best Movie Ever?" is whatever your favorite movie is. If it's your favorite -- and I don't care if it's "Citizen Kane" or "Billy Madison" -- that's the Best Movie Ever as far as you're concerned. Which again proves my scientific theory that "Back to the Future" is, in fact, the Best Movie Ever.

Why "Back to the Future"? Because I love it more than the others, that's why. And if I had to qualify it somehow, I would say that it does just about everything well, in terms of what movies can do: Great characters (George McFly, Biff, Doc Fucking Brown, et al), a super-creative story (boy travels back in time only to have his future mother fall in love with him), great music (Huey Lewis and doo wop?!), ground-breaking special effects, memorable dialogue ("I am your density...I mean, your destiny."), tremendous action sequences (the skateboard chase ending in manure-on-Biff), emotionally touching moments (George and Laraine finally kiss, and Marty can play the guitar again!), an excellent ending ("Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."). What more could you want out of two hours?

But that's just me. If we were, for example, to vote on what this blog's Best Movie Ever is, my money would be on "The Princess Bride." After all, it has certain qualities even "Back to the Future" (BTTF) can't claim. Some of these are fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, and miracles – all good things for a movie. And yes, BTTF has fighting, chases, escapes, true love, and – if you're a strict laws-of-time-and-space guy – miracles. But while these qualities have the same name, those things occur very differently in each film. If I had organized this post better, I would have used that whole bit as evidence that voting on the Best Movie Ever doesn't make it so for, say, anyone else reading this.

I guess the point is that calling a piece of art – in this case, a movie – the Best Ever is a waste of time if you're actually serious about it. LJT and I have argued for years about the Best Rock Band Ever, with LJT claiming The Beatles and my saying Led Zeppelin, but I think we both enjoy the argument more than the “answer.” He isn't “right” and I'm not “right” (even though I'm right). I agree with him that the Beatles are more “influential,” and he agrees that Jimmy Page was the Best Guitarist of either group. We both agree that John was the Best Beatle, and we've both recently discovered a greater appreciation for how awesome Ringo was, but neither of us would say he was a better drummer than John Bonham.

I guess the joy is in the discussion, not the resolution. Someone else could enter the room and say that Keith Moon was better than John Bonham, or that "Goodfellas" is better than "The Godfather," or that Pepsi is better than Coke, or that Walter is funnier than The Jesus, or blah blah blah ...

It all boils down to the fact that there's no way to measure these things. “There's no accounting for taste” and all that. It differs from an argument over, say, who the Best Baseball Player Ever was. With baseball, you can examine what each player actually did. Records are kept, and they offer clear-cut evidence of performance. If you analyze that, you cannot say with intellectual honesty that the Best Baseball Player Ever was anyone but Babe Ruth. If you choose someone else – and you are free to do so – I can show you piles of evidence that you're wrong. Baseball players leave an observable and objective record of performance, which we can measure, unlike bands or movies or even pieces of candy (Snickers being the best).

Anyway, I know a lot of this is fairly obvious, but it's something I've thought a lot about and this is a blog and as a blogger I feel obligated to let it out here, in the hopes of generating discussion, of course. Hell, if Side Bar can list a bunch of restaurants in Teaneck and elicit all those thoughtful comments, I figure “What's the Best Movie Ever?” might work.

"Back to the Future" is the Best Movie Ever. Am I wrong to say that?

The Perfect Song

An idea came into my head recently and I don't think I've really worked in through to its conclusion, but I'll put it out there anyway. I was trying to decide if there was a perfect song. Or maybe there's even more than one perfect song. I guess the problem is in the criteria, given that music taste is almost entirely subjective. I mean, someone bought all those Iron Maiden albums, and I know it wasn't me.

I don't know what constitutes the perfect song, but like Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography, "I know it when I see it". (Yeah, I cheated. I had to look up the name of the justice in order to quote him.) But I think a perfect song should be concise, have a nice melody, and say what it's trying to say. I think there's a big difference between a great song and what one would call a perfect song. And a song need not be perfect in order to be great or fantastic or one of the best ever, or even your favorite song.

So far I've come up with one perfect song, "Yesterday" by the Beatles. It is just 2 minutes and 5 seconds of perfection. It's concise, it's eternally hummable, it's message is entirely clear, yet open to analysis. If you're into this sort of thing, it's relatively easy to play a passable version of it on the guitar. It is, simply put, a flawless song.

Without actually coming to the same conclusion, the rest of the world seems to agree with me. First off, the song is one of the 3 or 4 most played in radio history, totaling 7 million plays in the 20th century. (Incidentally, check out the list of most played songs. The one that kindof surprises me is "Every Breath You Take" by The Police. All of those other songs are from the 60s and 70s. The Police made the list even after giving the other guys a 20 year head start. "Every Breath You Take", by the way, though phenonmenal, is not a perfect song because of the misconception in its meaning. Sting meant it to be a stalkery kind of obsessive thing, and he was really surprised when people started using it as their wedding songs. Sorry about that long side note. Back to the point.) So yeah, it has been played on the radio more than almost any other song. It's also the most covered song in history with over 3,000 recorded covers. Three thousand covers is a hell of a lot. Obviously this is a song that strikes a chord with a lot of people.

Now I'm only arguing for the McCartney version of the song as perfection. The other mutations are inferior. Two examples are a capella versions by both En Vogue and Boys II Men. Both are interesting and still very good, but lack something. Even though they're both a capella, and seemingly stripped down, both are really overwrought with harmony and added melodrama. The McCartney version just lays it out there. I mean, it's just beautiful.

I'm afraid I don't have any concrete evidence, nor have I really argued my point very well. Well, actually I did provide some evidence, but still I don't know if I made the point. I just really feel that this is the case.

I tried to think if there were other perfect songs and searched in maybe some too obvious places. I thought of the Beatles, and they've got some other great ones, but maybe not perfect.

Led Zeppelin has some stunning songs, but I think they err on the epic side of perfection a lot. "Fool In The Rain", for example, is my favorite Zeppelin song, but that part in in the middle where it turns into a fiesta is really arbitrary and doesn't detract from the song at all, but somehow makes it imperfect. "Stairway To Heaven" is very good, but so out of the ordinary as songs go in terms of length and structure. There's no chorus and the lyrics are kindof nonsensical. And you may call me a blasphemer, but I think "Stairway" is overrated. It's not even one of my top 5 favorite Zeppelin songs. Let me take a step back from that statement. It's overrated in the way a billion dollars is overrated by Bill Gates. "Stairway" is fucking fantastic relative to all music as a whole, but in the Zeppelin subset it falls short for me. "That's The Way" is damn near close to perfect for me, but I am a little upset by the fact that you have to retune your guitar if you want to play it. Otherwise it would be so easy. And how many Zeppelin songs are easy to play on the guitar? Very few is the answer. This is a long side note, but I think guitar playability is what makes "Stairway" so popular. Jimmy Page is a fucking maestro on the guitar and most of their songs are near impossible to play for novice guitarists. "Stairway" is relatively easy and sounds good once you get it down.

I thought about "Baba O'Reilly" by The Who, but Kathy thinks the beginning part is weird and actually doesn't like the song, so I guess it's not perfect. "Brown Eyed Girl" might be a candidate. I can't really think of anything that takes away from it. That's the best I've come up with so far. Any thoughts on other perfect songs? Or on why you think "Yesterday" is or isn't?