Here we are at the last year I was in Arkansas. This was arguably the best year but it was largely because I was working overnights at Alltel and maintained that schedule when I wasn’t working so I was getting more sleep on a natural schedule and I had more time to myself. Most nights when I was off included me playing World of Warcraft listening to Depeche Mode or Bloodhound Gang while everyone else was asleep.
I was still working on the band with Bob, although that was a little bit rough because we had a turnover on guitar players after we thought we had finally found a drummer. So, it was just Bob, our bass player Hester, and me still trying to make it work. The band was a refuge but also a source of frustration. It was not a frustration with Bob or Hester or what we were doing but just that things fell apart with other people we tried to work with.
When I was at work, at a tech support call center, I would get maybe three or four calls an hour and the rest of the time was spent talking to friends at work, reading, drawing, or just surfing the internet. I was largely liked at Alltel and was on track to go into management. This would have been a pretty great thing as we were struggling pretty hard for money and that would have led to a much more comfortable position.
I had found some small amount of equilibrium there but I was still fairly unhappy. Creatively, things weren’t really working out. I was writing a bit and drawing, and trying with music but I never seemed to be able to find any particular momentum with any of that. Todd McFarlane’s words rang in my ears. When my ex-wife forwarded me a solicitation for regional ghost books from Schiffer Publishing, my first thought was ‘that is a nice idea but I would never be able to get that.’ So, I forwarded it to Katie who I had just done an investigation with on a trip back to Tucson. After the satire website had ended, we had talked about doing paranormal investigation for real. We had named our investigation team Wailing Bansidhe after member’s character from the Psychical Explorers (we couldn’t have used mine because I was cribbing it from Joel from MST3K). So I sent her the email knowing that she would want to run with it and wouldn’t let me give up.
We talked about it and decided to pitch a travel guide to haunted locations in Arizona. We would do investigations and write the sections in such a way that readers could go and do their own investigations and compare notes with ours. We sent it off and I forgot about it, secure in the knowledge that nothing good like that worked out for me.
Months went by and I had assumed that our proposal had been denied. Then, one morning when I was sleeping from having just gotten off work, my phone rang. I missed it and somehow, I had forgotten to plug it in for the morning. So, when I listened to the voicemail from Katie, my phone died and I missed the end of the message. But it sounded a lot like it had something to do with the book proposal. I called her back and she told me that Schiffer had called and apologized because they had thought they had called us to let us know that they had accepted the proposal a couple of months ago. The good news was that we had a book deal. The marginally less good news was that the book would be due in April, 2007 and it was now December, 2006. I would need to go back to Tucson to do the investigations and write the book. This would mean quitting my job where I was finally making real progress and moving to Tucson.
My ex and I had talked about it, that it wouldn’t make sense for us all to go especially when my step-son had school. It would just be for six months or so while writing the book. I had to make a decision. It was probably most clear cut decision of my life. On one hand, I could stay, continue to rise at Alltel and probably make a fair amount of money, especially when they were eventually bought by Verizon. But it would mean shutting the door on my dream of being a published author. Maybe not forever, but when would that kind of opportunity happen again? On the other hand, I could choose to leave and write the book, to choose art and personal fulfillment but probably not much money. It was a much harder decision than it sounds like. What it really broke down to was safety vs uncertainty. Financial success vs personal success. Wish fulfillment vs responsibility.
I chose art.
Runners up in general order of release: Pink Panther, Final Destination 3, Running Scared, Thank You for Smoking, V for Vendetta, Hard Candy, Mission: Impossible III, Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Superman Returns, the Devil Wears Prada, a Scanner Darkly, the Descent, Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Beerfest, Idiocracy, Crank, Hollywoodland, Fearless, Jackass Number 2, Little Children, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Harsh Times, Stranger Than Fiction, Déjà vu, Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny, Rocky Balboa, Night at the Museum, Children of Men, and Pan’s Labrynth.
If you have not read the introduction to this exercise, I recommend you do so for context regarding what this all is. In short, be nice, these are my favorites based on how I encountered them in my life and what they mean for mean to me. This is not a list of objective best movies in their respective years and if a movie that you love or is considered great does not appear, it does not mean that I think it is shit or that I don’t love it. These are just my favorites for particular personal reasons. Feel free to let everyone know your favorite five for 2006 and why as well. It is also worth mentioning that there will be spoilers here for what are now 20-year-old movies. Let’s dig in!
1.Clerks II-Kevin Smith
After a brief retirement of the Askewniverse with Jersey Girl, Kevin Smith returned to deliver a sequel to his first feature that catches up with Dante and Randall a bit older and in a different phase of their lives.
After the Quick Stop burns down due to Randall (Jeff Anderson) leaving the coffee pot on, he and Dante (Brian Ohalloran) get jobs at Mooby’s, the fast food burger chain established in Dogma. A time jump puts us with them after they have been established for a bit and they have had plenty of time to settle in. Randall has befriended/torments a younger funployee, Elias (Trevor Ferhman), who is a fairly innocent Christian kid super into Lord of the Rings and Transformers. Dante has started a relationship with Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach Smith) to whom he is engaged and they play to move to Florida to get married and Dante will run one of her Dad’s carwashes. This puts him at odds with Randall who does not want to lose his best friend and sees such a move as the death of Dante’s ambition and sovereignty. Also, it turns out that Dante has gotten his boss Becky (Rosario Dawson) pregnant after a late night trist on the make table. Meanwhile, Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) have set up shop outside Mooby’s to deal despite being clean themselves following a jail stint for ‘suspicion of mischief’ for driving with a deployed air bag.
This sets the stage for all manner of shenanigans and cameo laden goodness as the pair get up to hijinks, drama, and a midlife crisis for Randall as he confronts his own position in the world against the loss of his best friend. Dante has to decide where his true feelings lie and if he should go to a financially certain but potentially unfulfilling future or if he should take a risk on someone for whom he really loves (hmmmmmmmm).
There is a fair amount of disagreement in the fandom about Clerks II (Not nearly as much as with Clerks III, though). There is a manic silliness that permeates the movie and some people feel that the writing is not as sharp as the first with diminished craft in how the jokes play out. I disagree with all of that.
Clerks II is a different animal than the first movie but to me it is a fairly perfect progression in the lives of the characters and I found their particular struggles to be very, very relatable. When I say that I mean the existential crisis that Randall is dealing with and the decision Dante needs to make about what he wants his future to look like, not so much getting a girl pregnant while I am engaged to someone else.
Clerks II offers us the best performances from O’Halloran and Anderson yet and the scene between them in jail is fucking fantastic. The writing of the scene and the performances from both of them, and from Mewes, is nothing short of amazing and remains one of my favorite scenes from any Kevin Smith movie. Their decision to choose themselves and follow their own dreams instead of what they are ‘expected’ to do made a massive impression on me and it was not insignificant in my own future decision making not just in the short term but in the long term.
Elias and Becky are awesome additions to the cast. Trevor Ferhman is ridiculously good as Elias, especially in contrast to the actor himself. Rosario Dawson is amazing in pretty much everything and always adds value there. She is a perfect fit into this world and I really wish she got to hang out in it longer.
I am sure that it has become a tiresome refrain by now but Clerks II was immediately important to me because I got to hang out with old friends. Seeing Dante and Randall back felt like a soothing balm that I needed more than I could put words on. I went to the theater in Randall’s costume from the movie as a friend had given me a Mooby’s smock for my birthday. Just being back with these characters meant the world to me, especially since I never thought I would see them again. Then the themes of the movie hit me and it took on a whole different level of significance. I didn’t realize just how much at the time, but it was mingling with McFarlane’s words in my head “Why are you still doing this?” I still didn’t know how not to but I was getting closer and closer to finding an answer.
Clerks II kind of depressed me and made me feel somewhat desperate. I needed for something to change in my life and this movie was like the dot under an exclamation point. The jokes were funny, even if a couple of them were pretty close to things I had written in Searching for Fun and Trim (which really shows the power of inspiration I guess), and I loved the movie as a entry in the Askewniverse but there was a pit in my stomach when I rewatched it as the last scene haunted me. When was I going to make that opportunity for myself? When was I going to realize my own dreams and fulfill my own potential? In less than a year as it turned out but I didn’t know that yet. I definitely didn’t know that I would take similar steps almost 20 years later.
I love this movie and there is so much I am fond of from it. Jay’s replication of the ‘I’d fuck me’ scene from Silence of the Lambs, Jason Lee’s cameo, Pillow Pants and Listerfiend, Kinky Kelly and the Sexy Stud, Randall’s take down of Lord of the Rings (even if I don’t agree), and dancing on the rooftop to ABC. The soundtrack is also amazing and I can never think of ‘Nothing but Flowers’ without thinking of this movie. But the movie means so much more to me than just the bits I think are funny and I am grateful for that above all.
2.The Departed-Martin Scorsese
A remake of Hong Kong crime movie Infernal Affairs, the Departed the fantastic crime move movie about an undercover agent in the mob trying to smoke out an undercover agent in the Massachusetts State Police that finally got Martin Scorsese a directing Oscar.
With an insane cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson, James Badge Dale, Kevin Corrigan, and Ray Winstone the Departed is as epic a crime story as you could hope for. The performances are amazing across the board with sharp writing and dialogue throughout.
A lot of people feel like this is make up or consolation Oscar for Scorsese because he should have won for Goodfellas or Casino or any number of other, better movies. This is a thing that happens a lot. Denzel’s best actor for Training Day was really for the Hurricane or Al Pacino’s Scent of a Woman for several previous projects he had been snubbed on. I don’t feel this way at all. The Departed fucking rocks and given all of the moving pieces this movie deals with and all the balls it has to juggle, the achievement is definitely deserving.
If the argument is ‘Goodfellas is a better movie than the Departed,’ then that is a different conversation altogether. Scorsese deserving an Oscar for previous films does not take away from the movie that won and I feel like it is just disrespectful to the Departed to write it off this way. There is often backlash and reconsideration that goes on after something wins an Oscar in which beloved movies become hated because people say things like ‘okay it was good but not worth best picture’ and I think that is a ridiculous argument to have because Oscars are a made up award that don’t matter that much. I think it is fun to track the Oscars and make predictions and I am happy when movies I love win the recognition but at the end of the day it should not change the value of a film in the negative if it wins best picture. There are a lot of best picture winners that I did not like and do not think deserved it and if that is your position on the Departed then fair enough. But if the argument is ‘I liked it before it won Best Picture and now I think it is overhyped and shitty’ then I think that is ridiculous.
Oscar conversation aside, the Departed is a tremendous amount of fun. While it is adapted from another film, the Departed weaves in influences from American true crime history with a riff on Whitey Bulger, a Boston crime boss who was secretly an FBI informant and eventually went on the run when his FBI handler tipped him off that RICO charges were about to be brought against him. Bulger was caught in 2012 and went to prison where he was beaten to death by other inmates in 2018. The Frank Costello character in the Departed was loosely based on Bulger, although the character’s fate, like many others in the movie, culminates at the wrong end of a gun.
The Departed is a standard crime movie until it isn’t with an ending that is absolutely shocking. The first time I saw the movie in the theater, the audience screamed like a horror movie as the ending events started to unfold and it is a rug pull that leaves only two main characters alive at the end and neither are the film’s two leads. This was enormously destabilizing the first time around and packed a real punch. The orchestration of all this was absolutely masterful and further points to Scorsese deserving the Oscar. If he had won an Oscar for all of this films before this I would still think he deserved it for this.
I saw the Departed opening weekend and I loved it immediately. I love crime movies, which should be clear by now, and this one really hit the spot. The cast is chock full of actors I love and the twists and turns were amazing. I loved the writing and dialogue. It is a movie I quote with fair regularity and think about all the time. The ‘I’m Irish, I can live with something being wrong forever’ line is one that has stuck with me ever since. I am in therapy now, though so I am trying to break out of that particular pattern. At the time, though, it felt like the life I was living at the moment.
After I had moved to Tucson to write the book, the Departed came out on DVD and I was watching it one night. I went to the bathroom at the end and just let the credits roll. When it was done, it restarted because I was still in the bathroom. When I came out I watched the whole thing again. This is how much I love the Departed. Is it my favorite Scorsese? It is hard to say. Despite their lack of inclusion on this list, I love Goodfellas and Casino in particular. I love a lot of his movies. As I sit her now, maybe the Departed is my favorite but that might change on another day. When someone has as many amazing films as he does, it is hard to decide. But one thing is always true: I love the Departed.
3.Casino Royale-Martin Campbell
The debut film of Daniel Craig’s stint as James Bond, Casino Royale is a return to formula for the franchise offering a much grittier take on the character that is at once grounded and modern without giving up the core tenants of the character.
Based on the very first James Bond novel by Ian Flemming, Casino Royale finds a newly appointed 007 tracking down Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelson), a banker who backs terrorists. Le Chiffre hosts a poker tournament in Montenegro and Bond is sent with agent Vesper Lind (Eva Green) to keep Le Chiffre from winning. Bond is assisted by CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) in order to win but is ultimately double crossed by Vesper who is being forced to work against him as her husband is being held by the terrorists against whom they are fighting.
Casino Royale was a reset of the franchise after Pierce Brosnan’s tenure devolved into enormously silly farce so it is fitting that it is directed by the same man who directed Brosnan’s first Bond outing, Goldeneye, which was something of the pinnacle of the modern Bond films to that point. This was a fairly hard reset and Bond leaned much more into the ‘blunt instrument’ category in which he was a rough and tumble, no nonsense version of Bond that would be more likely to crash through a wall than flip over it. To a degree it seemed like it was an answer to the Bourne series which offered more grounded and realistic action than silly gimmick and gadget driven action found in previous Bond movies while also offering more practical stunts found in the Mission: Impossible series.
Bond has always been a reactionary series that reflects the movie trends of the time. Moonraker was influenced by Star Wars while the character Jaws was a reflection of the popularity of that movie (add in sharks in several Bond movies for this one). So it is no surprise that Casino Royale continued this trend by reflecting back the action conventions of the time. That is all well and good, but it would be meaningless if the movie fumbled these elements. It does not.
Daniel Craig has maybe the most sturdy run on Bond since Connery but Casino Royale might be the best of them. It feels fresh, exciting, and cool. Craig’s take on Bond is a breath of fresh air and the action set pieces are insanely good. I have probably watched this one more times than any other Bond movie aside from maybe Goldeneye. And if you watch Quantum of Solace immediately following this one, it sucks much, much less.
This was one of the last movies I saw in Arkansas before my move back to Tucson and I remember the feeling I had walking out of the theater that afternoon. There was an element of sadness for not seeing many more movies in that theater as it had become a safe place for me over the years I spent there. But also, it made me feel excited and energized. I really wanted to do martial arts fights and stunts in movies and this movie really stirred that in me quite a bit.
This movie led me to read the book, the first and only Ian Flemming book I have ever read. The movie is a good adaptation of the source material but I found the book’s attitudes on women and race appalling. Bond’s reflection that Vesper’s hesitation to sleep with him because of the loss of her husband gave sex with her ‘the sweet tang of rape’ is absolutely abhorrent and I don’t know why more has not been written or said about this. As much as I love Bond movies, it is frankly horrifying that the books were ever adapted given this kind of shit. I like the Bond movies but I am not going to read any more of the books.
Casino Royale, the film, is the gold standard for Bond movies for me. It joins the ranks amongst my favorites and I think is in the same conversation as From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Goldeneye, and You Only Die Twice. Mileage varies amongst Bond fans but I love this one. The book can fuck right off, though.
4.Slither-James Gunn
A horror comedy about alien slugs that owes a debt to Night of the Creeps, Slither is cheesy, gross, hilarious, and unabashedly James Gunn.
Telling the story of a small town being overrun by alien slugs that turn people into zombies and mutated monsters, Slither has a decidedly B-movie feel that is absolutely note perfect. Nathan Fillion stars as Sherriff Bill Pardy with a supporting cast featuring Elizabeth Banks, Gregg Henry, and Michael Rooker all of whom fire on all cylinders here. The movie is the best kind of throwback to creature features of the past and it relishes in all of its cheesy glory.
I saw this kind of later in my James Gunn fandom. I saw it at a Scream-o-rama, a horror film festival put on by the Loft Cinemas here in Tucson. I had seen Super, which Gunn wrote and directed, and had been a fan of movies he had written like the Dawn of the Dead remake and the Scooby-Doo movies so he was not an unknown quantity but this movie really solidified how much I loved him because it felt pretty much perfect to me for what it was. I love the sort of movies it was emulating and I loved the way he did it. It would be a real taste of things to come that Gunn hits my sweet spot pretty much spot on. The consistency with which I love things he does is remarkable and carries me straight through today. There will be a lot more about Gunn on this list in years to come, this was just my first real ah-ha moment with him and how much he compliments my sensibilities.
5.Lucky Number Slevin-Paul McGuigan
Another crime movie that hits my sweet spot, Lucky Number Slevin is a tightly plotted neo-noir film full of twists, turns, and rug pulls all the way through.
Slevin Kalevra (Josh Hartnett) is caught in a case of mistaken identity as he is mistaken for a friend of his by two rival mob bosses, ‘The Boss (Morgan Freeman)’ and ‘The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley)’ both of whom believe he is a man named Nick who owes them money. The Boss offers him the chance to get out of his debt by killing the Rabbi’s son in retaliation for the murder of his own son, while the Rabbi just wants his money back. Slevin is aided by the real Nick’s neighbor Lindsey (Lucy Lui) who is a coroner who loves solving mysteries and seems to be tailed by an apparent hitman, Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis), who is an outside specialist the two bosses want to use to rub out the other.
Lucky Number Slevin is slickly written with fantastic back and forth dialogue and a playful tone until it gets serious. The story being told is kind of horrifying when you really look at it but is a fantastic revenge tale that is full of surprises.
One of the things that it really nails is the self-importance of the bosses and their penchant for theatrics. This seems somewhat cliché at first blush until everything is turned on its head and the movie reveals what is really going on. It is a gut punch that rivals the one dealt to Slevin any time he mouths off to the wrong person (which is often). There is a crazy supporting cast here as well featuring Stanley Tucci, Robert Forrester, Cory Stoll, Mykelti Williams, and Danny Aeillo.
I am not really sure why Lucky Number Slevin didn’t do better than it did but it is definitely a hidden gem that I have shared with people over the years. It is rare that I have heard back that they hated it. It is really great and it got me into wearing argyle sweaters for a time. It also really solidified my Josh Hartnett fandom. It is definitely one to check out if you haven’t seen it.