I am participating in the Get Rec’d: A Movie/TV/Book List Challenge and this is the nineteenth week’s entry.  I have decided to be bold and list a response for all three categories; a movie, a television show, and a book.

Week 19: Always Makes Me Laugh

Movie: In & Out (1997)

From IMDB: A midwestern teacher questions his sexuality after a former student makes a comment about him at the Academy Awards.  Kevin Kline, Joan Cusack, Tom Selleck

In & Out was the first movie I watched in the theater when I moved to Los Angeles. I find the jokes as funny today as I did then. Everyone is hilarious, and the cast is perfect. How often do you have legends like Bob Newhart and Debbie Reynolds in the same film anymore? The Steven Seagal joke will ALWAYS be funny. I’m a huge fan of the screenwriter, Paul Rudnick, who also wrote Jeffry, Addams Family Values, and the reboot of The Stepford Wives (although, the ending was not his fault).

Television: Spaced (1999)

From IMDB: Friends Tim and Daisy, 20-something North Londoners with uncertain futures, must pretend to be a couple to live in the only apartment they can afford.  Jessica Hynes, Simon Pegg, Julia Deakin

I may have mentioned that I’m an Edgar Wright fan once or twice before. Spaced launched his career-long relationship with Simon Pegg leading to Shaun of the Dead. The show packs in pop culture references and humor while maintaining character and plot. I couldn’t find a decent trailer, so I used a clip that works out of context.

Book: Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams

From Goodreads: Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.

Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide (“A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have”) and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox–the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod’s girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years.

The sheer quotability of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy alone makes the book enjoyable. The fact that it contains a good plot and characters almost seems secondary. Stephen Fry narrates the audiobook and deadpans the lines as Adams intended. One of my favorite lines in all of literature comes from this book, “the ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”

Coming Up Next

Next week will be “Favorite World Building”

What are your picks? Let us know in the comments.