Movie Playlist: Jay Baruchel
Welcome to another edition of Movie Playlist, where we talk to the writers, directors, and stars about their favorite films. I've always found the celebrity playlists on iTunes to be interesting. Most everyone in the film business moved to Hollywood after discovering their love of films. And I've always love talking to people about their favorite films. So talking to the people who make the movies about their favorite films just seemed like a natural idea.
Jay Baruchel was relatively new to American audiences before his debut as the star of the critically acclaimed FOX-TV series Undeclared. The Canadian-born actor has since appeared in a number of feature films, including The Rules of Attraction, Almost Famous, Million Dollar Baby,and Fanboys. Baruchel reunited with Undeclared creator Judd Apatow last summer in Universal Pictures' smash hit Knocked Up. You can see him in theaters now as Kevin Sandusky in Tropic Thunder. /Film's David Chen conducted this interview.
Jay Baruchel: "There is sort of a repertoire that I will — once a year I will have to watch each one of them. I'll say that Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I can watch that movie anytime. It's pretty much the prefect comedy and it's kind of an amazing movie plot wise because it doesn't follow the sort of usual quintessential Joseph Campbell story. It's not about a guy that learns anything over a journey and becomes a different person. Ferris is the same son of a bitch the whole movie, he just effects change wherever he is and really the stakes are really never all that high and he's happy the whole time. And the fact that they pulled that off and it is as funny as it is and as cool as it is, it just amazing."
"A Japanese film called Battle Royale is one of my favorites and that's like a John Hughes movie on crystal meth. Like to me Battle Royale there is not greater meditation on Teen X than that movie. That is the greatest coming of age movie I've ever seen."
"I quite like a movie called The Wrong Guy with Dave Foley. It's a little Canadian movie that not many people have seen but it's just possibly one of the funniest movies ever made."
"Another movie that I really, really love that I constantly get into arguments about it Irreversible. That's probably my favorite film of all time. To me that's like the single greatest work of cinema that I've ever seen and another thing is that in an era such as this where everything is made by committee, it's very rare to see one artist unfiltered vision. And Gaspar Noé wrote, directed, produced, and literally operated the camera on Irreversible, so this is his movie, you know?"
"And then Carlito's Way, Man Hunter, JFK, that's the playlist. I watch each of those movies once a year."
See Jay in Tropic Thunder, in theaters now!