Mark Malkoff is a comedian and film maker out of New York. He’s done some super-creative work since I had the fortune to discover him. He’s gotten 6-pack abs in 30 days. He’s lived five days in his bathroom, with no internet. He’s had New Yorkers carry him across town. He’s lived at Ikea. He stopped by my hometown of St. Mary’s, Georgia to accept the key to the city. And one of my favorite gags: Celebrity Sleepovers where he literally slept over at as many celebrity homes as he could. Funny (and creative) stuff.
Right now he’s in the midst of filming a whole new project where he’s trying to watch over 400 hours of Netflix. That’s 250 full-length movies, credits included, on Netflix Instant in a month’s time. As of this post’s writing he has just completed day 5. Five 15+ hour days just watching movies. Sounds like a dream… but I’m sure it got old say around day 1, 3rd movie.
It got me thinking. Mark does this for a living. It’s his job to create, film and release wild and creative comedy stunts… so he can take 400 hours out of a month and spend it on a marathon movie stunt. But how about me? How long would it take a father of two, with a full-time (plus) job, and several podcasts, who could only use his free time to do the same thing? I’m going to find out.
I’ll be watching (mostly) the same films as Mark is, starting with day one. I actually started this morning. Mark is committing 15 to 16 hours every day to his project. I can only use the time I have to myself… which is most Fridays and evenings after 9:00pm. There are a few films that Mark has on his list that I’ve already seen so I will be replacing them with movies of similar length. On May 3rd I’ll be at the Marvel Marathon leading up to the Avengers movie. I’ll be counting them as replacement films as well. It’s going to be fun to see how long this takes me.
Today I watched:
- The Graduate
- Chinatown
- and almost half of Bonnie and Clyde
- The Graduate
- Chinatown
- Bonnie and Clyde
- A Clockwork Orange
- Paper Moon
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Harold and Maude
- Marathon Man
So far the movies are wonderful… and disturbing. I had never seen The Graduate or Chinatown. I was amazing at how current they looked. Visually they could have been filmed this year. Where they showed their age was in the cinematography and storytelling. Apparently The Graduate is referred to as a comedy-drama… a genre I was not aware existed until today. I showed my age by recognizing the church scene at the end from what I think is a Wayne’s World sequel rather than the other way around as Wayne’s World had parodied The Graduate.
Both the Graduate and Chinatown dealt with some pretty heavy subject matter. Stuff filmmakers don’t mess with much these days. We like our movies light hearted and with a happy ending. But I’ll tell you, Chinatown got me angry. As was intended I’m sure. So much left undone. So much happened wrong… but it was so real in that way.
Bonnie and Clyde has me wondering how historically accurate it is. The way the two met and just jumped into a life of crime together seems like a movie making shortcut… unless it really happened that way. Though I’m almost halfway through, this seems like someone went back in time and made Natural Born Killers. Which I’m sure is actually a remake of Bonnie and Clyde… or at least heavily influenced by it.
After Bonnie and Clyde tomorrow I’ll be replacing A Clockwork Orange (seen it long ago and it just wasn’t my thing at all… can’t stand milk) with Shutter Island which is actually 3 minutes longer… but who cares.