Between his stand-up comedy, astute writing on pop culture and wonderfully odd performances in movie and TV roles, Patton Oswalt is a something of a modern media renaissance man. He’s voiced a rat for Pixar, terrorized a football franchise in the excellent Big Fan, and earned well-deserved praise for his part in last year’s Young Adult; and this week, Oswalt appears in director Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, in a small but funny role as an enthusiastic party-goer who’s succumbed to his most wanton desires as the apocalypse approaches. In the spirit of impending doom we chatted with Oswalt earlier this week, and asked him to pick five films he’d want to watch if the world was about to end.
Right off the top of my head, it’d be John Ford’s The Searchers…
…The Road Warrior…
…The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp…
…The Taking of Pelham One Two Three — the original…
…and then a Japanese film called After Life.
I mean, they’re just movies that I watch when I’m feeling kind of blue and just wanna take more emotional leave of my brain — so it would just be all about creating a head space where I’m really happy, and enjoying myself. And being really happy that people can put together movies that good. It’s all the same thing. It’s the idea that mankind can get together and make something that good — I know how hard it is, how collaborative it is to make a movie, so the idea that all those movies exist is what makes me happy.
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is in theaters this week.
