Alternate Sides

James and Sam have been friends and collaborators for over 20 years. They’ve worked on films and TV shows and commercials together and have written numerous scripts that lie unproduced in their shared Dropbox folder.

But James has a secret: he hasn’t actually seen that many movies. And Sam, who’s a bit of a film snob, has been giving him a hard time about it for years. As James enters undeniable middle age, he has finally promised to catch up on some of the films he’s missed.

Every week or so, while Sam has to move his Subaru from one side of a Brooklyn street to the other (to appease the street-cleaning gods), they chat about a classic movie that James has somehow managed to avoid until now.

One film from each year of James’s life so far: 1973 to 2023…