Klavan and Shapiro: Top 5 Movies and Books

you know you and i love talking movies and books it's really what we do in our off hours basically this conversation is essentially what we do in our off hours and then we talk about art so what are your top five movies in your top five books if you had to pick them uh well first of all there's no greater movie than casablanca and every time somebody puts citizen kane above casablanca i just think they're a fraud [Applause] i mean i think i think citizen king is great well shot and all this stuff but it's nothing like casablanca um a great uplifting movie bigger than life makes you feel that life isn't big enough you know i love the film uh the godfather i i cannot it's what it's like the black hole of life you know you're changing channels suddenly two hours have disappeared and i think the the godfather is actually the great story of america it's like that horrible it i always almost felt that film get out was a little bit of a footnote to the godfather the godfathers i want to i want to get out but they keep dragging me back in and get out is this black experience which i believe is a real experience of oh no i don't want to get out because if i leave this i'll lose my soul i'll lose my soul to i love westerns and i i'm not even sure uh you know among them i love john wayne movies uh stagecoach is probably one of my favorite movies of all time uh i i could watch a million john wayne movies um and i love hitchcock movies and i'm i'm a big vertigo fan you know vertigo is a tough movie it is yeah it's not it's not a perfect movie uh and yet it has a half hour of silent film in the middle of it which i just find awesome like what an awesome thing to do you know like because hitchcock never really believed in sound you know and uh and i just think he just said yeah let me show you what i can do and i just love that story of this ideal woman who you know that's a story that haunts me all the time that's four let me see if i can come up with a fifth i'd like to think of something more modern i almost believe that the godfather is the last great film you know and uh but but i do uh you know and and i i know you're not as big a fan of high noon as i am high noon is one minute no i do i no i listen i i really like high noon it wouldn't be on my top five but it's it but it's it's what am i missing top five i'm probably not uh let's see on the waterfront is it yeah it's a great film i love old musicals yeah so i i'd have a hard time not putting you know singing singing right let me put something right in there because that is that is one of the greatest in terms of modern movies i love the lord of the rings trilogy it's great so but yeah you are drew is famous around the office for hating superhero films he he gets angry at superhero films what's the deal with that well i know they must mean something because people love them so much so i accept that and i loved logan i thought logan was a really good film there's no sex and death in them to me to me like all of life is about sex and death we have to think about sex and death deeply so the women are all superheroes so they're not really women you know because they can fly and beat up anybody and do it don't worry she's got help and and the men never die so like you don't have you don't have to deal with the potential facts of life you know okay so that's those are your top five movies top five books well certainly the most important book in my life has been crime and punishment i mean that book yeah we're doing fictional books okay uh that that has really uh that really uh changed my life and when i say that i mean it literally changed everything that uh um i i love shakespeare and i have to you can't you can't pick a shakespeare play but i have to say if i have to pick the trilogy of king lear hamlet macbeth i think almost everything really yeah i think everything in life is in those is in those places you have to pick one of those three though well right now i'm torturing you i think i think that king lear is the sistine chapel of literature yeah it's unbelievable yeah and so when i was a young man i would have said hamlet as an older man i say king lear what i l what i love about macbeth though is i love you know woody allen has this thesis that there's no moral universe because some people don't see it so he makes these pictures like match point and uh crimes and misdemeanors and which a guy does evil things but has no conscience about it so everything's fine he doesn't realize you know they're people who can't see colors either but they're such colors and what i love about macbeth is basically shakespeare says yeah you can do all this stuff because god's not going to stop you from doing all this stuff but at the end your life will be meaningless and that's and that's such a powerful like you know uh thing to see acted out that i i just love watching that that play as as grim as it is they've never done a good movie of it i throw the blood is pretty good um what else i love um gosh now now i freeze up but i oh oh one of my favorite novels i'm a big henry james fan a lot of people have gone you've recommended it to me and yeah i'm trying it i'm working it yeah uh the ambassadors i know yeah it's it's a really hard book it's not it's it's hard it's hard i i've it's been on my nightstand for at least a year yeah and at some point have you read portrait of a lady i don't think so if you read portrait of a lady and and maybe a couple of other things like his short stuff like the turn of the screw the greatest ghost story ever and you get used to his prose because his prose is like reading german you know it just goes on and on and you finally get to the last sentence the last word and you think oh i get that sentence now yeah but the ambassador is a very very subtle the ambassador very subtle book and also changed uh the way i i look at life certainly worn pieces as entertaining i i don't know you know you could you maybe you think you are in peace over anna karenina i would my wife takes annika reno so i trust her that they may be just as good as each other but i loved war and peace you kind of have to skim over the philosophy like why are you bothering me in the middle yes in the middle of this and oh i can't leave out uh dickens dickens is to me just a master among masters and david copperfield this is just a great great book or um christmas carol's still the best thing the christmas carol you know you know you almost can't attribute that to dickens it's like it was like written by god he got hit by lightning it's so great it is so great well it just shows what would have happened if you'd had an editor the whole time you ate the long book but but i i love long books i just dickens like really leak houses yeah bleak house is just too much for me no that was that's my second favorite really you also you're the kind of guy who likes to read british books and you actually laugh out loud at books yes it's very difficult for me to read a book and laugh out loud at it it's it's like i'm reading like oh that's role yeah that's wrong you lived in london too long so for your role you know you know we also we have to mention jane austen because her movies are so girly yeah and her books are so good and uh i always feel like you know like she's harsh on women in a way no man can get away with so when you read you read emma and she's like women are just the worst how did she get away with it she's she's a woman she's like and she's a great genius she was maybe one of the last there's you read that uh although twain's review of her bookses but there's so many great novels novels have made meant so much to me in my life that it's really hard to uh we'll have to make you do a list of them for the site at some point yeah and i love all those hard uh tough guy mysteries that raymond chandler shaped my life by the maltese falcon uh unbelievably great well we could do this for an entire year but we both have to leave let's not do that [Music]

Channel: Andrew Klavan

Views: 165,090

Keywords: Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Movies, Film, Cinema, Books, Novels, Entertainment, Review, Classics, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Get Out, Westerns, John Wayne, Stagecoach, Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo, High Noon, On The Waterfront, Singin' In The Rain, The Lord of the Rings, Superhero Movies, Logan, Crime and Punishment, Fiction, Non-Fiction, William Shakespeare, King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Woody Allen, Match Point, Religion, God, Jane Austen, Emma, Raymond Chandler, The Maltese Falcon

Id: lPw1IGtRNs8

Length: 7min 33sec (453 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022