My Letter to Bruce Springsteen

In October, I wrote a letter to Bruce Springsteen - the first "fan" letter I believe I've ever written - to express the extent to which his music and ethos have influenced me. I highly doubt the letter actually reached him, but nevertheless, I thought I'd share it here.

Dear Mr. Springsteen,

When I was ten years old, my father – who, at the time, was in and out of rehabs across Texas to treat his alcoholism – was visiting my mother and me during a period of brief recovery. It was the early days of purchasing music from the internet, and I was happily showing him how it worked. When I asked him for a song selection, he said to me, “Download Human Touch by Bruce Springsteen.”

Less than a year later, he died of a heart attack, in large part due to his drinking. I was left with a fleeting image of a man I would never fully know – but I held on to the things he loved, the pieces I had picked up during my childhood that formed my image and understanding of him. And in listening to your music, your voice grew, over the course of many years, into the narration of my life.

I mention this because I had the privilege of attending Springsteen on Broadway for the second time this past August. I saw the show during its initial run in 2018, where – even from the back row – I could feel the power and resonance of your every word. Songs I’ve known for what feels like my entire life were given new meaning and context. And with each new chapter of your life, I felt like I was there – the details and imagery in each story were as evocative as the song that accompanied them.

When I saw the show this summer, I was able to sit a bit closer – with my mother by my side, which added a tremendous amount to the experience (particularly during your renditions of My Father’s House and The Wish, during which we were both choking up underneath our face masks). But I was struck most by your admission that you crafted your stage persona in your father’s image, and how this act felt like a way of getting to know him better.

I found myself nodding in recognition while listening to this passage of the show. My father felt similarly unknowable, and as I get older, I see more of him when I look at my reflection in the mirror. I wonder what he was experiencing at my age, what internal demons he wrestled with, his joys, his sorrows – and his relationship with your music. It’s a funny world where a few words said off-hand to a child lead to a lifelong connection with an artist – one who has shaped the way I think, feel and relate to the world.

I have no doubt you receive letters like this by the hundreds daily, and I hesitated at first to write, because I’m certain my relationship to your work is not unique. I’ve heard the story in which a fan approached Bob Dylan and told him his music changed his life – to which Dylan supposedly replied, “What do you want me to do about it?” But in this case, the connection feels deeper than just the music. It’s the ethos, the pains taken to live a life well, the disappointments and resentments either embittering us to the world or providing a pathway to renewed growth and strength – all of these tenets find their way into my heart and mind through your music.

If I may add a bit more – one of the many things I love about your songwriting is your directness. I learned a key lesson from your work early on – life isn’t perfect. Lyrics like “You’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above,” or “Round here, baby, I learned you get what you can get,” or “I know I ain’t nobody’s bargain but hell, a little touch-up and a little paint” – these words feel like an honest representation of what life is really like. Your music is truthful about so many things, chief among them love.

More than anything, you’ve provided me with two essential lifelines over the years. The first is solidarity when I’m heartsick or despondent (I have struggled with depression and anxiety ever since my father’s death, and I am deeply moved by the candor with which you’ve described your own mental health struggles). Whether it’s the haunting loneliness of Stolen Car or the world-weariness of The Wrestler, devastation never feels quite as brutal as it might if I didn’t have a Springsteen song by my side.

The second is perhaps even more important – you’ve always extended me an invitation to the party. I’ve recently started dating someone after a rather prolonged and messy break-up, and I’ve warmed up for each date by watching one of your live performances. I’m talking about the hip-swinging, guns-blazing rockabilly of Cadillac Ranch live in Tempe, Arizona in 1980; the joyous medley of Sweet Soul Music and Raise Your Hand during your 1988 tour; the 11-minute Amnesty performance of Twist and Shout, which delightfully morphs into La Bamba midway through. To quote a seemingly improvised line from your 19-minute rendition of Tenth Avenue Freeze Out at Madison Square Garden, “It’s all right to have a good time.” Sometimes I need a little reminding of that.

Simply put, there’s not another soul on this earth who can play so readily to these contradictory feelings – joy and anguish – that make up so much of our lives.

But back to my original reason for writing you. Watching Springsteen on Broadway this last time around and hearing you talk about your father, I felt I had come full circle from when I first heard your music. It took me back to the genesis of what drew me to your work. And in a year marked by so much loss, the choice to close the performance with I’ll See You in My Dreams felt right. The power of your show comes not just from us getting to witness your onstage visitations with those you’ve lost, but the joy of having our own memories and ghosts pop up right alongside yours.

God bless you, sir. Thank you for a lifetime’s worth of encouragement, and for your continued inspiration with every new record (Western Stars and Letter to You get a lot of play in this household). I’m forever grateful you have been able to use your gift to lift people up everywhere – myself included.

With deep admiration and gratitude,

Jack Kyser

I Just Want to Fight Like Everyone Else

My senior thesis film You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory has had a great recent run at film festivals over the last few months. On Saturday, August 8th, my film screened at the 9th Athens International Short Film Festival Psarokokalo in Athens, Greece. Please take a look at the festival's program here, which gives a nice run-down of the film.

On Saturday, August 15th, I drove up to Monroe, New York with lead actors Mike Wesolowski and Mary Goggin to attend the Hudson Valley International Film Festival, where You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory screened at 10:35 AM in Theater 3. Here is a link to the festival schedule, where you can see a nice write-up about the film. To the right, you'll see a picture of us on the festival's red carpet. We enjoyed a nice day of seeing the film in a lovely new theater, attending a few other films and enjoying the charm of small-town Monroe.

The next weekend, on Saturday, August 22nd, my film screened at the Black Cat Picture Show in Augusta, Georgia at 6:00 PM (here is a link to their full schedule). Le Chat Noir, which hosted the event, did a wonderful job promoting the festival and championing the movies, including posting about our film on Facebook with a great write-up - I truly wish I could have been there. You can see pictures from their excellent screening below (here's a link to one of their posters they had up for the festival, which you'll see prominently features my crayon drawing poster for the film)!

And then, on Sunday, You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory actually won the Best Student Film prize at the Black Cat Picture Show at their award ceremony!

Here's an article from Metro Spirit about the Black Cat Picture Show, and a picture of their awards before the festival began.

On Thursday, October 1st, You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory screened at the Santa Monica Independent Film Festival at 7:30 PM at the Santa Monica Playhouse. Here is a link to all of their Official Selections and their screening schedule, as well as our film's page on their website, where they posted an extremely kind write-up about our film:

"This delightful short hailing from Brooklyn, New York opens with a great little visual hook and just gets better from there. Director Jack Kyser pulls off some exceptional filmmaking while exploring the deeply flawed character of Charlie, expertly portrayed by actor Mike Wesolowski. Cinematographer Benjamin Dewey shows off his formidable camera skills and helps shape Kyser’s vision with some pretty cool stuff. An NYU Tisch School thesis film, You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory is a true cinematic achievement and we can’t wait to see what comes next from this talented director." Thank you so much, SaMo Indie!

I sadly wasn't able to be in Los Angeles for the screening, but my friends and loyal supporters Bolton Eckert and Laura Donney attended the opening of the Santa Monica Independent Film Festival, and they said You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory played to an awesome, enthusiastic crowd. You can see some of Bolton's pictures from the festival to the left and above (and check out more of the SaMo Indie website here).

By Sidney Lumet, the great film on which I'm honored to be an Associate Producer and Assistant Editor, continues to have an incredible film festival run. The film will screen at this year's Austin Film Festival at the Paramount Theatre on Friday, October 30th at 2:00 PM. Director Nancy Buirski will be there for a Q&A. I'm thrilled to go back to Austin for the screening and see many of the other films at this year's festival, including Todd Haynes's Carol, Paolo Sorrentino's Youth, John Crowley's Brooklyn and Brian Helgeland's Legend. It will be particularly exciting to see By Sidney Lumet at the Paramount, a theatre where I've seen countless films and enjoyed many of the seminal theatrical experiences of my life - Lawrence of Arabia, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Godfather among them.

By Sidney Lumet also screened on Sunday, October 11th at the Hamptons International Film Festival for its North American premiere, followed by a Q&A with Buirski, Jenny Lumet (Sidney Lumet's daughter and writer of Rachel Getting Married) and the great actor Bob Balaban - all of this after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May! Here's a great write-up from the East Hampton Star about the film. It was a lot of fun to travel to the Hamptons, as I had never been, and see the picture there with a large audience.

To the right, you'll see a picture of our editor Anthony Ripoli (Margaret) and me in the edit room preparing the cut for our latest screenings. Like our Facebook page for more information, and I'm excited for everyone to get to see this movie about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, whose work - from Dog Day Afternoon (1975) to Network (1976) to Prince of the City (1981) - has inspired me for years.

Throughout June and July, I put the finishing touches on my new film Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding. My wonderful collaborators Benjamin Dewey and Bobb Barito did a remarkable job, as they always do, with the color correction and sound design of the picture. We finished the film in late July after completing the color, sound, visual effects and titles - check our IMDB page for the film!

On the evening of Friday, September 11th, my friend and collaborator Lucas Loredo and I screened Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding for the first time at NYU. Before the screening started, Alex Fofonoff premiered an exclusive trailer for his feature film Blood and Thunder, in which I have the honor of starring. In that sense, it was a night showcasing some of my acting and directing. We had an incredible turn out, with almost every seat filled in the theater. Thank you so much to everyone who came out to see Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding - you are all the best! Lucas and I appreciate it so much.

Speaking of Blood and Thunder, we had our final day of ADR in September (see the picture to the right). I've had the chance to watch the final film, and I am very proud of the work we've done - Alex has made a really extraordinary first feature, and I'm honored to be a part of it.

Near the end of July, I visited Los Angeles for the first time in seven years, and I had the chance to spend a lot of time with my lifelong friend Bolton Eckert, who now lives in Los Angeles and recently graduated from the Art Institute of Santa Monica. I started the trip off by meeting up with an awesome group of close friends from NYU, including Spencer Jezewski, Jeremy Keller, Lauren Ciaravalli, Stevo Dwyer and Auri Jackson at Bulgogi Hut, where we ate some Korean BBQ. After dinner, Spencer took Bolton and me on an excellent hike along hills overlooking Griffith Park and a truly incredible nighttime view of Los Angeles.

The next day, we had lunch with a friend from high school and then travelled with our moms down to the Hollywood area, taking a guided tour of the Dolby Theater (where the Oscars are held), walking along the Hollywood Walk of Fame and visiting the handprints outside the Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Though I visited this same area seven years ago, it was much more fun this time around, particularly having a guide who knew the area - not to mention the added tour of the Dolby.

That evening, Bolton showed me around the Art Institute of Santa Monica campus, and then we paid a late-night visit to The Piano Bar in Hollywood, where we heard some great live music (followed by some In-N-Out Burger). On Saturday, Bolton, his mother and my mother took a tour at Warner Bros. Studios, led by our high school friend Eden Gallagher, who is now an Official Tour Guide. It was fascinating not just to hear the history of the great studio (the home of Clint Eastwood, all of the Batman films, as well as many of the greatest Scorsese and Kubrick pictures), but to hear it from an old friend as she drove us around the studio backlot with other guests.

After a mid-day visit to Venice Beach (and the chance to meet up with Spencer again at a nearby restaurant), we had dinner Saturday night with our friend from high school, Elizabeth Lefebvre, in West Hollywood.

On Sunday, Bolton and I drove out to Universal Studios and enjoyed an awesome day there. Because Bolton's wonderful grandmother, Myr, kindly bought us Front of Line passes for the day, we were able to ride almost all of the Universal rides without any wait, including the rides for Jurassic Park, The Simpsons, Minions, The Mummy and Transformers - not to mention taking the official studio tour, where we went through the Universal backlot and were treated to recreations and tributes to films such as Psycho, Jaws and King Kong. As with Warner Bros., Universal has such a rich cinema history, with Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg among the iconic filmmakers who help define the studio.

I was particularly enamored with one particular section at Universal Studios - The Simpsons World, which was full of life-sized characters from The Simpsons and classic Springfield establishments such as the Kwik-E-Mart, Krusty Burger and, of course, Moe's Tavern, where Bolton and I enjoyed some fine beverages (specifically, a Flaming Moe and a Duff). I truly felt like a kid here, and probably could have spent days in The Simpsons World section alone.

On Sunday evening, Bolton and I met up with Stevo and Auri at the New Beverly Cinema, which is owned by Quentin Tarantino. The New Beverly was showing a beautiful film print (from Tarantino's own collection) of Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) that evening, and it was a joy to get to see Tarantino's all-time favorite movie in his own cinema. I've been hearing about the New Beverly for years, and I'm so glad I finally got to see a picture there.

In May, I took a weekend trip to Boston with my friends Ben, Sally, Morgan and Catie. We stayed at Morgan's beautiful house in Winchester, Massachusetts, which overlooks the Mystic River. Over the weekend, we played games, went swimming at Walden Pond and enjoyed the beginning of summer - it was a blast.

I turned twenty-five in August, and to commemorate it, here's a throwback video to my first birthday party in 1991, a now-1990s-period-piece at Waterloo Ice House in Austin with memorable appearances from the late, great John Kyser, Richie Donnelly, Hazel Smith and Cathy McElroy.

Jack's 1st Birthday - August 5th, 1991 from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

Also, here's a video of the Kyser family in New York in 1996, including my father, mother and me on top of the World Trade Center.

The Kyser Family in New York - 1996 from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

Shortly before my trip to Los Angeles, I attended a conversation at Videology between film critic Matt Zoller Seitz and the great filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, where they discussed the films of Oliver Stone, followed by a screening of Stone's Natural Born Killers. I was fascinated by the discussion, as Stone is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers and someone whose work I haven't heard critically discussed as much as some of his contemporaries. I was excited to see the reverence both Seitz and Bahrani have for Stone's work, and their analysis of some of his greatest films.

Back in June, I very much enjoyed attending the High School Film Film Festival, organized and curated by Blood and Thunder cinematographer Oliver Anderson. It featured a lot of early films made in high school by NYU graduates, including a fun short I directed called Brokeback Santa. Here's the link to the full slate of shorts - you can see Brokeback Santa at 3:55.

Although I'm sure I'll write about many of these films more in depth in my end-of-year top ten list, I've seen several outstanding movies over the last few months worth mentioning. Ridley Scott's The Martian is an electric piece of cinema. It's one of the best Scott films and Matt Damon performances, and that's saying a lot. Damon has starred in many of the best films of the last twenty years, and his performance in The Martian is up there with his best work in The Departed (2006), True Grit (2010), Margaret (2011), Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Good Will Hunting (1997).

On Saturday, October 3rd, I attended one of the centerpiece screenings of Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs at the 53rd New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. The film is masterful, and in a strange way, it almost feels like Birdman in terms of its energy and pacing. With Boyle's stunning direction and Aaron Sorkin's breathless dialogue, the film is almost sensory overload - there's no way to see this film once and fully absorb everything that's happening. It does so well what many biopics fail to even attempt - Steve Jobs give us the experience of being inside the mind of its subject, and the result is a frenetic masterpiece.

On Thursday, October 8th, my friend Jess Mills and I attended an early screening of Steven Spielberg's excellent new film Bridge of Spies, which was followed by a Q&A with Spielberg and Tom Hanks. I have never had the opportunity to see Spielberg live before this event, and it was a thrill to see one of the greatest filmmakers and actors discuss their excellent new film.

Last week, Lucas invited me to a secret early screening of Charlie Kaufman's Anomolisa, his highly anticipated stop-motion animated picture. Lucas contributed to Kaufman's Kickstarter campaign for the film back in 2012, and the screening was held at Village East Cinema exclusively for its Kickstarter backers. Anomolisa is Kaufman's first film since Synecdoche, New York (2008), one of the best films of the last ten years, and his new picture has remained with me ever since I saw it - it's an extraordinary work of art that feels like something I might have dreamed. I suspect I'll be seeing Anomolisa again and hopefully become more articulate about its effect.

Scott Cooper's gangster picture Black Mass is stuffed with masterful performances, particularly from Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Peter Sarsgaard, Rory Cochrane, Kevin Bacon and Julianne Nicholson. Depp's performance in this film might be the best of his career, right alongside Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994) and Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco (1997). This is a great, bleak and haunting film that only gains in power upon multiple viewings - and as someone who loves their gangster movies, this is a really great one.

Noah Baumbach's Mistress America is one of my favorite films of the year and absolutely guaranteed to rank high on my end-of-year top ten list. In August, I saw an early screening of the film at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, followed by a Q&A with Baumbach and star and co-writer Greta Gerwig moderated by Kent Jones. Mistress America does everything right - it has masterful staging of actors, it is shot precisely how a comedy should be filmed, and it's every bit as funny and moving as Baumbach and Gerwig's previous collaboration (and masterpiece) Frances Ha (2013). Man, I would love to be friends with them. They are making the kinds of movies I want to make.

James Ponsoldt's The End of the Tour is as moving and perceptive as movies come. As someone who has never read any of David Foster Wallace's work, I didn't know how I would respond to the film. While watching the movie, I found myself constantly identifying with Jason Segel's Wallace, but in retrospect, I of course recognize that I'm much closer (in terms of the way I live my life) to journalist David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg). There's that moment in the film when Lipsky goes into Wallace's bathroom and starts writing down the names of every pill bottle in his cabinet. And we don't realize the beauty of that moment until the end, when we see Wallace alone with the tape recorder. While Lipsky was trying to get the story - obsessively detailing the small things - Wallace was living in the moment. We want to be Wallace, but I think most of us are living our lives as the Lipsky character.

I connected deeply with Lipsky's need to document everything about his experience near the end - scrambling around Wallace's house with his tape recorder and describing every detail. Even if he didn't fully realize it at the time, the weekend meant something profound to him, and he was frantically trying to capture it before it was over.

Wallace is a deeply lonely character, and it seems to me that if Lipsky wasn’t trying so hard to get the story, the two of them could have been good friends, without any other journalistic objective in the way. When they’re spending time with the two women they meet in Minneapolis, Julie (Mamie Gummer) and Betsy (Mickey Sumner), simply hanging out and enjoying their company is enough for Wallace. When Lipsky tries to turn it into something else, it makes Wallace uncomfortable. Just be a good guy, he says to Lipsky. Even though Lipsky thinks Wallace is just putting on an act to appear like one of the "regular" people, Wallace really does feel that way - he's trying his best to remain uncorrupted. Eventually, he says, the technology will be good enough that we can be alone all the time and never have to experience anything authentic with other people.

Talking with Lipsky late at night in his bedroom, Wallace gives him a brief, honest look at his depression, which really isn’t a salacious Rolling Stone story at all - it doesn't involve heroin, as Lipsky seems to think. The next morning, when Lipsky says he doesn’t want to leave, Wallace says he knows how he feels. The End of the Tour is so perceptive in these small moments, and it has the richness and feeling of a memory pulled from one's own life. Without any real context for the film and its subject, I walked away as moved and enlightened from a film as I have in some time.

I am happy to report that Nancy Meyers's The Intern features Robert De Niro talking to himself in the mirror and Anne Hathaway making a Rachel Getting Married joke. But seriously, I loved this movie - show me De Niro in a leading role and I'm there. Speaking of De Niro, he turned seventy-two this August. With this year marking the twentieth anniversary of Michael Mann's Heat, there have been some excellent pieces written about one of the greatest of all films, including one from Variety about how the film should have been a major Oscar contender, and another with Mann speaking about the film. Mann released his first film in six years earlier this year, the masterful Blackhat, which was as artful an action film as you'll find and criminally overlooked by audiences.

Also worth checking from this fall and this summer are Woody Allen's Irrational Man, with great performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone (I don't think I've written about how much I liked this film, as well as Allen's picture from last year, Magic in the Moonlight, with Stone and Colin Firth as charming as they've ever been - here's an excellent interview with Allen from the The Wall Street Journal); Maya Forbes's very moving Infinitely Polar Bear, featuring another wonderful performance from one of the best actors alive, Mark Ruffalo; Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, which may surpass all other Mission Impossible movies as the best one yet, and, for my money, the best action movie of the summer; The Wolfpack, a documentary that made want to compare 30-best lists with the Angulo brothers (I love that multiple brothers agree that Oliver Stone's JFK is #2) - here's an excellent article from The New Yorker on The Wolfpack, a piece on watching Goodfellas with the Angulo brothers, and a video of the brothers meeting their hero, Robert De Niro; Joel Edgerton's The Gift, which scared me enough that I let out a loud yelp in the cinema; Inside Out, which may very well be my favorite Pixar movie and brought me such joy that I now own a Bing Bong action figure; Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World, which has hilarious Vincent D'Onofrio hovering and iconic Chris Pratt riding with his Velociraptors (the only thing Jurassic World is missing is Jeff Goldblum emerging from the darkness in the old Jurassic Park bunker, channeling Tim Robbins in War of the Worlds or something - "So you kids want to learn about the original Jurassic Park, eh? Follow me."); Thomas Vinterberg's beautiful Far from the Madding Crowd; Shira Piven's darkly hilarious Welcome to Me, with a great performance from Kristen Wiig; Stevan Riley's extraordinary documentary Listen to Me Marlon; and, lastly, David Wain and Michael Showalter's Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, which, as its own four-hour movie, is one of the funniest comedies ever made.

On a side note, after four consecutive film experiences earlier this summer without anyone talking or being an annoying-ass moviegoer, the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin has my heart. Particularly in New York, there are fewer and fewer cinemas where you can find a respectful and quiet audience serious about watching cinema (or theatre managers even remotely willing to police their audiences), so I'm grateful to the Alamo for doing what they're doing at a time when audiences only seem to intensify in their disrespect.

It's been a great year for one of my heroes, Al Pacino. He turned seventy-five this year, and you should celebrate it by seeing one of his three masterful recent performances: Dan Fogelman's Danny Collins, which I saw twice in cinemas, has beautiful performances not only from Pacino but also Bobby Cannavale and Annette Bening; Barry Levinson's The Humbling, an unheralded treat from 2014 written by Buck Henry and featuring excellent work from Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Charles Grodin and Dianne Wiest (I can't believe this film didn't get a huge theatrical release); and David Gordon Green's Manglehorn, shot in Austin and a truly remarkable triumph of mood and feeling.

Here's an article from Film Comment on the greatness of Pacino's recent work, and here's my ranking of Pacino's performances on MUBI. John Lahr wrote a great New Yorker article on Pacino last year, and here's an excellent video accompaniment to Lahr's article. In an interview with The Talks earlier this year, Pacino said, "You can't let your skin get too thick." It's a welcome return to the screen for Pacino, who I last saw onscreen in 2013's Stand Up Guys, a very enjoyable hang-out movie with Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin.

I haven't written about my reaction to this year's Academy Awards yet, but I was truly hoping to see Richard Linklater onstage winning Best Director. Boyhood was almost unbelievably overlooked by the Academy. It's a strange feeling, because on my original end-of-the-year top ten list, I ranked Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's Birdman as my favorite film of last year - and it walked away with Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography Oscars (but, infuriatingly, not with the Oscar it deserved above all others - Best Actor for Michael Keaton). However, upon watching Boyhood again, I cannot help but feel that time will reveal it to be my favorite film of 2015 over Birdman. I cannot complain, though, because Birdman is easily the finest and most inspired choice, in my mind, for Best Picture since No Country for Old Men (2007). Still, a Birdman-Boyhood Best Picture-Best Director split would have made me very happy.

In a perfect world, Linklater, Iñárritu and Wes Anderson all would walked away with Oscars this year, and a truly inspired script would have won Best Adapted Screenplay, such as Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, Damian Chazelle's Whiplash or Gillian Flynn's not-even-nominated Gone Girl.

But, as always, the best way to enjoy the Oscars is to just not visit the internet, where everything is an outrage and people actually don't like movies. And to anyone claiming that the Oscar winners this year didn't have enough box office appeal, remember, as Sam Adams wrote in this great IndieWire article, "the Oscars haven't abandoned movies with mass-audience appeal... it's theatrical audiences who, with rare exceptions, have abandoned anything but big-budget spectacle."

The Best Films of the Decade: #10

10. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001; Wes Anderson)

Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) wasn’t the last movie my father and I saw together before he died – in fact, we actually saw quite a few movies together over the New Year's holiday in January 2002 at my grandmother’s house in Hallsville, Texas. I vividly recall the night of January fourth – my dad was extremely excited to take me to see the weekend’s new movie, Imposter (2002; Gary Fleder) that night in Longview. The movie was merely okay, but his joy and excitement – to go out for pizza with his boy and then head to the Longview movie theater – was endearing.

It was only a few weeks earlier in Austin that I had first seen The Royal Tenenbaums at the Arbor cinema with my mother, my good friend Manny Munoz and his mother Beverly. At eleven years old, I was already claiming that I had seen “the best film of the year.” As it turns out, I was right.

While staying at my grandmother’s house that January, I wanted more than anything else for my father to see The Royal Tenenbaums with me. I knew he would love the movie and appreciate its dry sense of humor. Alas, the nearest theater showing The Royal Tenenbaums was over an hour away – in Shreveport, Louisiana. But my father – sharing my love for movies and, more than anything, wanting his son to have a good time – decided to make a road trip out of the situation. And so one morning we drove out of Hallsville and stopped in Marshall on the way, and he bought a cassette tape of the Bryan Adams album So Far So Good at the Marshall mall, and I bought a cassette tape of Bruce Willis and his band performing live (my father’s car still only played cassette tapes – and his two favorite tapes, bar none, were the Adams recording and the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?).

When we arrived in Shreveport, we bought tickets to The Royal Tenenbaums, and then my father drove me around the city and showed me the casinos of Shreveport. Eventually, we got to the theater and watched the movie. I can’t really recall exactly what he thought of it – I’d love to say that my dad loved Anderson’s movie as much as I did, but I really don’t know. All I remember is that he never laughed as hard as I did at the movie’s dark humor.

My father and I would see a few other movies together in January, including The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001; Peter Jackson), In the Bedroom (2001; Todd Field), The Shipping News (2001; Lasse Hallstrom) and Black Hawk Down (2001; Ridley Scott) along with my mother in Austin, but it’s The Royal Tenenbaums that provides the most powerful and interesting memories. I wish, more than anything, I could be back in that Shreveport movie theater and watch the movie all over again with my dad.

Only in the years since my father’s death have I truly been able to appreciate The Royal Tenenbaums on an entirely different level. When I was eleven years old, I believe I was drawn to the movie because of its incredible cast and its note-perfect melancholic balance between absurd comedy and devastating tragedy. I don’t think I need to mention the incredible style of the film – it goes without saying that Anderson is the finest example of a modern-day auteur filmmaker, and every one of his films are exquisitely shot.

But after watching Anderson’s story of an eccentric New York family countless times in the past decade, I can’t help but look at the character of Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) without thinking of my father. No, my father was certainly not estranged from the rest of his family, nor did he fake having stomach cancer in order to get back into the good graces of his family. But the humor, the wit, the possibilities of redemption, the reconnection between father and son, the reuniting of a family of oddballs, and the lasting impressions made before death – these are the aspects of Royal Tenenbaum that speak to how I remember my father.

The Royal Tenenbaums is a very funny movie, and it is also a very sad movie. When I was eleven, I was enamored by the droll and heartfelt performances from Hackman, Angelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson and Danny Glover. I immediately bought a copy of the film’s soundtrack, one of the hallmarks of any Wes Anderson movie – Tenenbaums alone brilliantly uses Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling Stones, These Days by Nico, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard by Paul Simon, Judy is a Punk by The Ramones and a cover of Hey Jude in joyous and cathartic ways that only Wes Anderson can achieve. But I believe I was aware and appreciative of the tragic themes in The Royal Tenenbaums without ever being able to relate to them on a personal level until after my father's death.

I wonder if perhaps my dad didn’t laugh as much as I did at the movie because he recognized the sadness of the film, the melancholy of Royal Tenenbaum and his desperate efforts to make his family love him again before he dies. Neither my father nor I could possibly know that in four months, John Kyser would be dead. But only after my father died and my perception of the movie changed dramatically was I truly able to start wondering what he may have seen in the movie - as a father - that has taken years of repeated viewings for me to understand. My only regret is that in order to understand The Royal Tenenbaums on a deeper, more personal level, I had to lose my father.

So We Beat On, Boats Against The Current, Borne Back Ceaselessly Into The Past...

It's a tough thing attempting to explain the unbearably painful and heartbreaking past two weeks, during which I haven't written a single entry. My heart goes out to the Goode family, in memory of their loving and wonderful son and brother, James Lawrence Goode, 1995-2009.

He was my little film friend. I say that because, as an only child, I have for years imposed my taste for great and obscure cinema on friends and family who really could not have cared less. I first met Jamie Goode nearly two and a half years ago, but I don’t believe I really knew him until the beginning of this past summer, when I was able to spend nearly every day with him and his wonderful sister, Anne. I noticed we had something unusual in common when one day Anne and I picked him up from a friend’s house, and he displayed to us his list of the one hundred finest movies ever made.

This occurrence made me very excited. I studied his list endlessly, compared it to my own, and wrote him a list of film recommendations that I believed to be ‘essential viewing.’ Jamie and I, it seems, both shared the obsession of making lists – top ten movies of the year, top ten favorite actors, twenty-five worst movies of the past five years, you name it.

I remember when Jamie, Anne and I stayed up late one night at her house and watched the great movie Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese). Did I ever believe in my mind that it might not be a wise idea for a thirteen year-old boy to watch such a brutal movie? Jamie answered that question for me almost immediately. He would not watch films such as Raging Bull or Goodfellas (1990, Martin Scorsese) and comment on the awesomeness of the violence and rough language; instead, he would talk about the movie in the way a seasoned film critic might talk about the movie – elegantly, with careful attention to everything that made it great and enjoyable.

His comments were not the words of a typical adolescent craving to see an R-rated movie. These were the words of an incredibly mature young man who understood film as literary geniuses might understand literature and poetry.

I cannot emphasize enough Jamie’s ability to unassumingly enter a room of young adults six and seven years his senior, and carry on an intelligent, informed conversation on topics as varied as politics, film and religion for hours. Never once did anyone find it odd that a fourteen year-old boy just out of junior high was hanging in the company of college students.

How do you surmise the entire life of such a human being in a mere obituary? How can the impact and beauty of the life of Jamie Goode be trimmed down to a small article? The truth of the matter is, you could write five hundred textbooks on Jamie Goode, and it still wouldn’t be enough. There could be five hundred textbooks written on my late father, John Kyser, too, and it still wouldn’t even begin to hint at what it was like to know him, to love him.

I wish there had been some sort of foreshadowing that would have prevented Jamie’s death from happening. I went to sleep peacefully last Sunday night, and I remember saying to my roommate in the dark that I was going to sleep very well that night. The next time I opened my eyes, it was to see that I had missed eleven calls on my cell phone. Sometimes death waves a warning flag before he strikes. Not this time.

If I ever have a son, I hope he is one-fourth of the man Jamie Goode was. Is. It is a testament to his indescribable character that I only knew him for such a brief period of time, and yet he feels like the younger brother I never had.

No, we can never resurrect Jamie by writing endlessly about him, because it will never be enough, it will never fully measure the weight of his impact. But Jamie Goode will be remembered. Sixty years from now, his friends will meet at a restaurant and laugh about Jamie’s sense of humor, his indelible intellect, and his endless love and kindness toward his friends and his family. It’s never been the same ever since we lost Jamie Goode, they’ll say, and indeed, it will never be the same. But make no mistake, Jamie will influence the future just as much as he has influenced the past. Nobody will ever forget.

Why did Jamie Goode have to be taken from us? Nobody will ever know. In the words of The Band, “I swear by the mud below my feet, you can’t raise a Cain back up when he’s in defeat.”