I am a structured, organized thrill seeker. I love to let loose in controlled environments. I want the excitement without the fear, and I search for the same paradoxical feeling in movies and entertainment. Maybe this is the reason why David Fincher is one of my favorite directors—films like Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo keep me on the edge of my seat without completely pushing me off. In Fincher’s hands, ‘thrill’ is a delicate tool—the acting, cinematography, and scoring in his work makes suspense a constant, almost comforting state instead of a traumatic event.
When I’m looking to give my beating heart some rest I indulge in the ever-quirky “mockumentary” genre. Parks and Recreation, Arrested Development, and The Office are undoubtedly the funniest shows on television (does Keeping Up with the Kardashians count?). The mundane interests me greatly and these shows’ ability to expose the humor in the banal helps me find and embrace the ridiculousness in my day-to-day life.
I believe art most effectively engages audiences by finding the balance between simplicity and risk. What do films as different as Into the Wild, Wreck-It-Ralph, and The Dark Knight Rises all have in common? They pull you in by emphasizing both the importance of solitude and the excitement of chaos. I am both extreme and extremely boring, and I love media that straddles these opposing states. The beauty of entertainment, whether it is film, television, or theater, is that it allows us to exist in a heightened state if only for a moment, before safely returning us to our regularly scheduled programming.