Every Viper Hisses His Own Note

what am i – chopped liver?

Mike Gerber's wife is entering a graduate program for film and television at the University of Southern California, which sent her a list of films she's expected to have seen by the time she begins. As all lists are inherently problematic — and thus inherently worth compiling and talking about — this one is worth a gander. I'm not a film buff at all, so half of them (at least) were completely unrecognizable (Shock Corridor? Written on the Wind? OK, sure. Beats the fuck out of me...) I do, however, wonder if this is a quality-based list or a E.D. Hirsch-type list premised on the demands of cultural literacy. Otherwise, I have no way to explain why Clueless is on the list, to the exclusion of everything by Sergei Eisenstein.