Josh Duhamel’s Five Favorite Films

I love it. I love the characters. I love the crazy psych ward. Jack Nicholson! I remember hearing about it when I was young and I was becoming more interested in film. Jack Nicholson had a run there in the ‘70s and ‘80s that was just unrivaled in my opinion. I’m a huge fan of his.

I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen Dumb and Dumber. It’s got to be at least 50. I remember in college, I watched this movie with my buddies and we just thought it was the funniest f—ing thing we’ve ever seen. I still watch it and I still quote it all the time. In fact, I [went] on Ellen as Lloyd Christmas for Halloween… You know what it is about it? There are so many moments in this movie that are ridiculous; they’re dumb — that’s why the movie is called Dumb and Dumber — but I’ve thought about this. Why is it that I love this movie so much? I think it’s because Lloyd and Harry really cared about each other. There was real heart to that movie…  and if you don’t have that in these movies and it’s just pure broad comedy, it’s missing something that you can connect to.

I love The Shining. I love Stanley Kubrick. I love the tone of his movies. It was super-scary, and, again, I love Nicholson in it. I love the ominous nature of that giant hotel in the mountains.

That was in 1994. That was right around the time I was finishing college and moving to California, in that period of my life, and I was secretly interested in the entertainment business but didn’t tell anybody. There was something about the writing and the music and John Travolta’s resurgence. Sam Jackson was just a badass motherf—er. I love Tarantino’s writing.

It made a huge impression on me as a kid and I still have all my little action figures. In fact, my mom was too cheap to buy me the actual Star Wars case to hold them all in, so I have a case, but it’s called “Star World” and it has all these knock-off characters — like, there’s a Darth Vader who’s all in black, but just not quite the same. And there’s a hairy character who’s sort of like Chewbacca, but not — which is probably a collectors’ item when I think about it because they would never get away with that now. There’d be copyright infringements.

Rotten Tomatoes: You’re going to be really geeked-out about the new Star Wars, huh?

Oh, man. I already am. I’m super-pumped about it. I just showed my two-year-old son my collection of Star Wars figures the other day and he doesn’t know. They have zero regard for the preciousness of anything and the first thing he does is pick up my Lando Calrissian — and there are these little plastic capes that are in mint condition –and the first thing he does is pull it right off and tear it. And I’m like, “Nooooo! That thing’s been in tact since ‘77!”