It was a Helluva Lot of Fun: Reflections on Teaching Students From All Over the World

That was fun. Three weeks ago today I retired after 40 years of teaching. The last sixteen of which I spent at international language schools teaching the English language. 

During my ESL (technically I was an EFL teacher — English as a foreign language, ESL is for people who have moved to the country Itteaching career I had students from over sixty different countries. I had lots and lots and lots from France, Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy. Colombia, Brazil. I had a fair number from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Spain and Turkey. The most unusual was Canada (French Canadians). I had one each from Luxembourg, Palestine, Mongolia, Bhutan, Uzbekistan and Iceland. Usually my classes were a plurality of French or Chinese or Japanese but once it was Vietnamese. I had three in that class from Vietnam and no more than two from any other country.

I did not have too many from countries such as Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands because in those countries English is taught in public schools from an early age. Students from those countries tended to be in the advanced or university prep classes which I did not teach. When I did have a student from a Northern European country it was when I was teaching upper intermediates. 

I worked with a lot of teachers who didn’t like French students. I had a  word for these kinds of teachers: bigots. The truth is that the French do not always have the same level of respect for teachers as people from other countries do. Many students from France were arrogant and could be uncooperative. Because they often came in groups they could be quite clannish and you’d often have to deal with them speaking to each other in French in class. 

The number one problem I had as an ESL teacher was students staring at their goddamned phones. The second biggest problem was students speaking their native language and the French were the number one offenders. But I was taught to judge people based on their best qualities and the best of their groups. I had one helluva lot of terrific students from France. I often wondered how my colleagues who complained of the French would have dealt with my earlier job as a public school teacher where — in great part due to socio-economic issues and cultural differences — many of their disciplinary issues would have been with students of color. The obvious conclusion is ….well, I’ll let you put two and two together.

The best classes had a good mix of students and in fact I’d often have a class of, let’s say, fourteen, with ten different countries represented. That was pretty cool.

I really liked Japanese students but you wouldn’t want them to comprise half your class. Once our school had a special group from Japan and I had all nine of them comprise an entire class. Tumbleweeds. Any questions? I’d asked. None. Once I prepared them for a vocabulary test going over each word carefully. No questions. They insisted that they understood. The next day they collectively did terribly on the test and no individual got better than seven of ten. I read them the riot act and did entire activities centered around asking questions. They also retook the test after I grilled them on each word and practically forced them ask me for clarification. They did brilliantly. You take four Japanese students and sprinkle them in a class with Europeans and South Americans and they’ll be great. Japanese students were diligent, hard-working and polite. But they were reluctant to ask questions. This was — to a lesser degree — a problem among ESL students in general. There was a great reluctance to say: “I don’t understand.” I had cases of students who wrote on their departing evaluations of me that I didn’t explain grammar well enough. I always, always thoroughly reviewed grammar points and practically begged for questions. Their failure to ask for clarification was their goddamned fault. 

Who were the best students? Germans. They had all the wonderful qualities of Japanese students, plus they asked questions and were always eager participants in class discussions. I was told that in Germany today it is a point of pride to be a good student. 

There was no nationality that I didn’t like to have in class. However I should add that Saudis could be…let’s say a challenge. They were prone to cheating which is a really silly thing to do when you’re trying to learn or improve on a language. I once saw a Saudi student cheating on a practice test. No kidding. The Saudis we got were always rolling in dough. They expected special favors. I’d constantly be asked to excuse an absence because…you know, nod, wink. At the same time they were among the nicest people in any classroom and if a Saudi student saw you on line in a cafe your coffee was paid for. 

Chinese were all over the map. Lots of them were quiet and shy, much like the stereotype of the Asian student. Others were loud, brash and maybe great company, maybe obnoxious. Some were pixilated. I think the great diversity of types reflects how massive the country is.

I liked Vietnamese, Thai and Laotian students a lot. They were particularly gracious and charming.

Some of my funniest and most fun students were from Italy. Italians seem to really enjoy life.

I got to where I learned accents. I could tell where many students were from before they told me. I was able to recognize the difference between South Americans and Spanish, between French and Belgians — usually. The people you could never pick out based on accent, appearance or anything else were the Swiss. You had Swiss German, Swiss French and Swiss Italians. Their names didn’t help either.

The weirdest accents were the Brazilians, which made them easy to pick out. I had a lot of great students from Brazil and a few who were arrogant. Older South American men could be chauvinistic and try to dominate conversations. But they could also be terrific students and a lot of fun in class. 

Compared to your average citizen of the U.S. I found our students to be what we’d call over here, liberals. I only ever met two who expressed any admiration for Trumpy and most were quite open about their fear and/or hatred for the man. As best I could tell most of my students were progressive on social issues, whether it be climate change, LGBTQ rights, health care. However they weren’t always so liberal about immigrants coming to their countries. The only trouble I had was a few instances when Saudi students expressed disdain for homosexuals. When I was teaching the word phobia and mentioned different kinds of phobias one Saudi student said proudly: “this is me, homophobia.” I explained that this was not considered something to boast about and such opinions are best not expressed in classrooms.

Speaking of trouble, I had next to none. Especially if you put aside cell  phones abuse and students speaking their native languages. Those two issues represented about ninety-five percent of the trouble I ever had with students. Students would occasionally chat while I was talking but it never took much more than a clearing of the throat to get them to stop. I had one student once who refused to spit out his gum. He stormed out of the class rather than get rid of it. Another student followed him out and calmed him down. Clearly the young man had something else going on in his life. Anyway he never got out gum again.

About a month ago — just weeks before retiring — I had a student get all hot and bothered because I asked him not to use Google Translate for a vocabulary term that I was at the very moment explaining. He got quite angry at me, accused me of being “aggressive” and stormed out of class. He went to the school director to complain about me. This was clearly a case of the student in question being a complete and total jerk. Such people made up less than one percent of all students I taught.

Most of my students were between seventeen and twenty-five years old. However I had plenty of students in their later twenties, thirties, some in their forties and even older. A lot of them were university students taking a semester off or delaying starting school. Many had graduated and were getting ready for graduate school. Of course students were working to improve their English for their studies and/or for their future careers. A lot of students were already working and needed to improve their English for their work. Many students wanted to improve their English for travel, English being the lingua franca in most of the world. 

I had doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, professors, lots and lots of people in one form of business or another. I had students who ran companies. I had one newscaster. I had a few models. (I had two fashion models who resembled mannequins and one sportswear model from Switzerland who was vivacious and lovely.) I had an actor and a Belgian footballer recovering from a serious knee injury. I had a violinist in the Vienna Symphony. She was born and raised in Austria but was of Japanese parents. I had shop owners, ski instructors, med students, taxi drivers, I had Saudi Arabia’s minister of finance. I had bankers, accountants, chefs, chemists, software designers and nurses. 

My favorite students were the aforementioned Japanese and Germans as well as South Koreans and Spanish women and Italian men.

I loved being warmly greeted by students in the morning. I also appreciated that they thanked me constantly and gave me nice goodbyes and have a nice weekends. 

Teaching students from all over the world was a life-affirming experience and it was a privilege and an joy.

Hey Cal Football Fans! Here Are Some Golden Bear Football Fun Facts To Whet your Appetite For The Coming Season

The Bears celebrating after beating U$C in 1975

In the first 24 years after California’s permanent switch to football (1915) the Golden Bears had 20 winning seasons, two losing seasons and two seasons at .500. (I believe that would be called the “good old days.”)

In 1939 Cal opened the season by beating UC Davis by the unusual score of 32-14. They ended that season by winning the Big Game by the unusual score of 32-14. They had never before won a game by that score, nor have they since.

The Golden Bears 1958 Rose Bowl squad sticks out like a sore thumb among the seasons preceding and following it. The Bears won a combined six games in the three years before the ’58 season. They won just six in the four years after. They were thus a combined 12-46-3 in the seven seasons surrounding their January 1, 1959 trip to Pasadena. In fact, in the fifteen years from 1953-1967, 1958 represented California’s only winning season.

In his first eight seasons as head coach (2002-2009), Jeff Tedford’s Bears boasted winning conference records five times, a losing record only once (2007) while twice finishing at .500 (2002 and 2005). The Bears have not had a winning conference record since 2009.

Brick Morse — aka The Eternal Sophomore — played for California in the early 1890s. He was a founder of the Cal Glee Club and composed both “Sons of California” and “Hail to California.” As a sportswriter he coined the term Wonder Team for Andy Smith’s great sides of the early 1920s. Brick founded the Big City society and wrote the first history of Cal football which was published in 1938. 

The 1975 California team led the nation in total offense with exactly 2,522 rushing and 2,522 passing. Joe Roth, Wesley Walker, Steve Rivera and Chuck Muncie led the attack as the Bears shared the Pac-8 title that year, finishing 8-3. Muncie finished second in the voting for the Heisman trophy that year that was won by Archie Griffin. 

Nibs Price’s five-year tenure as California football’s head coach (1925-1930) finished and ended with losing seasons. But in the three years in between Cal went a combined 20-6-3 and earned a Rose Bowl berth in 1928. Pete Elliot (1957-1959) had a smilier tenure, starting and finishing with losing records but going to Rose Bowl in between. Price was later head men's basketball coach at Cal from 1924 to 1954, tallying a mark of 453–294. He led the 1946 basketball team to the Final Four. Elliot is one of three coaches to lead teams to the Rose Bowl AFTER leaving Berkeley (the other two are Mike White and Bruce Snyder).

In California’s 21-6 victory over Washington State in Pullman on September 17, 1966, the Golden Bears scored on a 71-yard interception return by Wayne Stewart, a 106-yard return of missed field goal (partially blocked) by Don Guest and a 73-yard punt return by Jerry Bradley. The Bears totaled 142 yards in total offense that day and completed zero passes in three attempts.

In Pappy Waldorf’s first six years as head coach at California (1947-1952), the Bears went 53-6-1 in regular season play boasting winning records over every opponent except U$C against whom they were 3-3. They were unbeaten in Big Games. (The regular season records, in order, were: 9-1, 10-0, 10-0, 9-0-1, 8-2 and 7-3. Sadly, they went 0-3 in Rose Bowls.)

California’s greatest comeback victory was against Oregon on October 2, 1993. The Golden Bears trailed 30-0 before storming back to win 42-41. The winning score came on a  26-yard pass from quarterback Dave Barr to Iheanyi Uwaezuoke with 1:17 remaining. Barr hit Mike Caldwell for the two-point conversation to provide the winning points. An Artis Houston interception with 29 seconds remaining sealed the victory. On the day Barr completed 21 of 31 passes for 368 yards and three touchdowns. At the time it was the second biggest comeback in college football history.

Between 1920-1923 Andy Smith’s Wonder Teams yielded a combined total of 88 points. They scored that much in one game alone (versus Mare Island in 1920) and 35 points more than that in a 127-0 victory over St. Mary’s that same season. The Bears outscored opponents that season 510-14. Between 1920 and 1924 Smith’s teams outscored opponents 1,564 to 139. That’s an average score of roughly 33-3, with an average margin of victory of 30 points. The Bears won-loss record in those five seasons was 44-0-4. Golden Bear historical fun fact is brought to you by Power Bar.

Ken Wiedemann (1967-69) is the California’s all-time leader in career interceptions with sixteen despite playing only three years (freshmen were not eligible at the time) and missing most of his senior campaign through injury. Playing on the freshmen team in 1966, Ken had five interceptions. He was all conference three times and was inducted into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017.

1941 is the only year in which California beat Stanfurd U$C and UCLA in the same season but didn’t go to the Rose Bowl. In fact they only won one other game that season, versus St. Mary’s on the day Oski made his debut (September 27). Despite the sub .500 record the Bears outscored their opponents. Their 16-6 win over Furd is considered one of the Big Game’s biggest upsets. This surely ranks as the greatest losing season in Golden Bear history, indeed I’d rank it ahead of many of Cals’ winning seasons.

This year California plays on Halloween. The Bears have had fourteen previous contests on October 31st, compiling a record of 9-5. In Memorial Stadium the Bears are 4-4 on Halloween and are an impressive 5 -1 on the road. One of those road wins was 27-0 against Cal Poly Pomona in 1925, the last of four games Cal played against the Mustangs, all Bear wins. The Sturdy Golden Ones also had a rare win at U$C on Halloween 1970, 13-10. The Trojans had gone into the game ranked 18th in the nation while California was sporting a 3-4 record. Randy Wersching’s 46-yard field goal with 4:36 left in the game providing the winning margin. It was the Bears’ first victory over SC since 1958.The Sturdy Golden Ones notched their first ever road win under Bruce Snyder on Halloween in 1987, 20-6 in Oregon.  Jeff Tedford’s 2009 team won a thriller on Halloween at ASU, 23-21 with Giorgio Tavecchio converting a game-wining field goal twenty-one seconds before the final gun.This year’s Halloween contest is at NC State. Boo!

.

In his first seven years as Cal head coach (1935-1941), Stub Allison went 15-6 against the Bears’ rivals (Furd, U$C and UCLA). Remarkably he had identical 5-2 records against all three. During that spell Allison had two one-loss teams (’35 and ’38) and one undefeated Rose Bowl champ (’37).

Jerry Drew’s 283 rushing yards against Oregon State on November 13, 1954 rank as the second-highest single-game total in California history. Drew, a backup who carried the ball only four times in the first half, needed just eleven carries to amass those 283 yards, an astonishing average of 25.7 yards per attempt. After halftime, he broke runs of 67, 59 and 55 yards as the Golden Bears routed OSU, 46-7. Drew surpassed the previous school record of 269 yards, set by Johnny Olszewski four years earlier, and finished just thirteen yards short of the conference record. His Cal record stood for more than half a century, until Jahvid Best broke it with 311 yards against Washington on December 6, 2008.

Ray Willsey (1964-1971) who was 40-42-1 and Justin Wilcox (1917-1925) who was 48-55, are the only two California head coaches to stay on the job for over five years but end their tenure with overall losing records. Both were masters of mediocrity. Wilsey led three teams to 5-5 records and, after college football added an eleventh game, had a pair of 6-5 marks. Wilcox finished with between five and seven wins in six of his eight non-Covid seasons in charge. Of the two, Wilsey had the best single season when the Golden Bears went 7-3-1 in 1968 and were ranked in the top twenty for several weeks. Wilcox’s best year was 2019 when the Bears finished 8-5 with their only bowl victory during his time in charge.

On October 30, 1965 the Golden Bears defeated Penn State, 21–17 in a thriller. Quarterback Jim Hunt connected on a 46-yard Hail Mary to wide receiver Jerry Bradley on the last play of the game for the winning score. The visitors had gone ahead 32 seconds earlier on a 13-yard touchdown pass. But Hunt, who had starred as a safety and back up to Craig Morton the previous season, led the Bears to the Lion 41. After a sack pushed Cal back five yards, only one second remained. Hunt scrambled around before flinging the pigskin toward the north end zone. The deflected pass found Bradley, the Bears leading receiver despite his 154-pound frame, who dove for the catch. Penn State was coached by Rip Engle, the following year he would be replaced by Joe Paterno who served as head man there for 47 years. (On a personal note I was in the first row of the north end zone about twenty yards from the catch. It was the first miracle finish I’d ever witnessed and Jerry Bradley went from hero to god for me.)

Here’s how many winning seasons versus losing or .500 seasons California has had in each decade. ‘20s: 9-1-0, ‘30s: 7-2-1, ‘40s: 3-6-1 ‘50s: 4-4-2, ‘60s: 1-6-3, ‘70s: 7-3-0, ‘80s: 1-7-2, ‘90s: 3-6-1, ‘00s: 8-2-0 ‘10s: 4-6 and so far in the 2020s 1-5. As you can see two of our best decades were before WWII and the three of the top four were over 46 years ago. Better times ahead. Am I right?

Son Kai-Kee (aka Sam), the son of Chinese immigrants, was California’s first Asian American football player. He played quarterback on the freshman team in 1915 and was a backup running back for the varsity for three years, though he didn’t see the field as either a sophomore or junior. Sam finally saw action in his senior year (1918) in games against St. Mary's, U$C & Stanfurd. The diminutive Kai-Kee made up for his lack of bulk with great speed. Among his teammates in 1918 was Walter Gordon, the first African-American to play for the Bears. That year Kai-Kee and Gordon were members of the first Cal team to win a Pacific Coast Conference championship. In the 1940s, another Asian-American back played for Cal, George Fong. George played for three different coaches, Buck Shaw, Frank Wickhorst and Pappy Waldorf. The first play from scrimmage in Pappy’s first game as a head coach was a 39-yard touchdown run by Fong at Memorial Stadium. Fong, a San Francisco native, started every game of the 1947 season, his senior year.

Prior to joining the ACC, California’s football relationship with Pittsburg consisted of five games played between 1955 and 1966 (the Bears winning two) but is most notable for a year in which they did not meet on the football field, 1937. The Golden Bears went unbeaten that season with only a tie against Washington marring their perfect record. Pitt also finished 9-0-1. However while Cal put their record on the line in the Rose Bowl against an undefeated Alabama team. The Panthers played it safe and stayed home that bowl season. The Bears made their case for voters with a resounding not-as-close-as-the-score-indicates 13-0 thumping of the Crimson Tide. Nonetheless East Coast bias reared its ugly head as Pitt finished number one in the final polls with the Bears in second. California’s Thunder Team had five All-Americans and six players who earned All-Pacific Coast honors. They outscored opponents 214-33.

On November 6, 1948 in Memorial Stadium California defeated UCLA 28-13 before 68,000 fans. The win raised the Golden Bear’s record to 8-0. They would finish the regular season as undefeated conference champions and play in their first Rose Bowl in eleven years. (Imagine having to wait eleven years between Rose Bowls!) The heavily-favored Bears were out-gained by their southern cousins, but an 85-yard pick six by Will Potter and a blocked punt were enough to make the hosts comfortable winners. Among the spectators that day was California Governor Earl Warren who would later be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Warren was an Old Blue and former member of the California marching band.

The first meeting between the Bears and UCLA was not until 1933 when the series began with a scoreless tie in Pasadena on November 4. The following year in Berkeley the “cousins” engaged in another low-scoring affair with the Golden Bears emerging victorious, 3-0. Cal kept the Bruins out of the end zone again in their third encounter in 1935, winning 14-2. The UCLANs finally hit pay dirt claiming a 17-6 win in 1936. Stub Allison (1935-1944) was a rare California head coach who had a winning record against the Southern California rivals, going 8-5 (the schools met twice a season during World War II). Jeff Tedford (2002-2012) also had a winning record in the rivalry, 7-4. Pappy Waldorf only managed four wins in ten tries against the Powder Blues. The last meeting between the two schools in November 2023 marked the end of Pac-12 regular season play. California won that game, 33-7.

Since 1915 and the permanent switch to football, no California team has failed to win a game. Only the 1957, 1961, 1962, 2001, 2013 and 2020 (in a pandemic-shortened season) teams have notched but one win. The ’61 squad managed a tie to go along with their lone victory. The first Bear team to win as few as two games did not come along until 1946 when Frank Wickhorst’s team went 2-7. Subsequently there have been five other two-win teams: ’55,’59, ’81, ’84 and ’86. The latter two under Joe Kapp. Both the ’59 and ’86 teams redeemed themselves by winning the Big Game, the only one or two-win Cal teams to do so.

St. Mary’s used to be a regular football opponent for California, the schools met 43 times from 1898 through 1950. The Bears won 33 of those contests and lost eight with two games ending in ties. The Bears outscored the Gaels over the course of the series, 945-265. California’s last defeat to St. Mary’s was in the opening game of the 1945 campaign. One notable Bear victory was on September 27, 1941 the day that Oski made his debut. Cal won 31-0. The Bears’ last game against St. Mary’s was a 40-25 victory on October 28, 1950. The game was never in doubt as the hosts raced out to a 28-0 halftime lead. California back Pete Schabarum rushed for the game’s first three TDs. According to the next day’s San Francisco Examiner, “perhaps the brightest thing about the game, from the Cal standpoint was the fact that the Bears finally made some yardage in the air.” California connected on ten passes in twenty-four attempts for 167 yards.

Nick Harris (’97-2000) is probably the most notable punter who has booted the ball for California. Part of the desultory Holmoe teams, the punter even inspired a tongue-in-cheek “Harris for Heisman” campaign for which tee-shirts were made. He averaged 42.3 yards per punt in his three years with the Bears. His 13,621 total yards is an NCAA record as are his 322 career punts. As a junior in 1999, he had a 44.7 yard average. As a senior in 2000, he earned consensus first-team All-American honors. In his senior year versus UCLA he punted seven times for 371 yards a 53.1 yard average. For his career Nick placed 56 punts inside the opponents’ 20 yard line. The longest punt of his career went for 70 yards. Harris went on to enjoy a twelve-year pro career, punting for five different teams, mostly the Detroit Lions who he was with for nine seasons.

Hey Look Everybody! It's Time Again For....Films I've Watched Lately Some of Which I Loved Greatly

Paul Robeson in Show Boat (1936)

Show Boat (1936) Whale. I liked this movie a lot. I would have loved it a lot had it not been for one thing: Alan Jones. Yes, the blandest most uninteresting actor/singer of his or any other generation. He did similar damage to the great Marx’s Brother film, A Night at the Opera. Fortunately the cast also includes the great Paul Robeson, though if we could have switched Jones and Robeson’s screen time, well what a picture. It’s actually Charlies Winninger who steals every scene he’s in. Winninger was a fantastic performer who came up in vaudeville (boy does it show) and was in the original production of Show Boat. Directed by James Whale, better known for some classics of the horror genre, particularly Bride of Frankenstein as well as The Old Dark House, Invisible Man and the original Frankenstein. The insipid Jones aside (and oh yes, and that awful blackface scene with Irene Dunne) this is a terrific film. 

Tony (2026) Johnson. In theaters now. The story of the nineteen-year old Anthony Bourdain and how he got his start in the culinary world. It stars Dominic Sessa who made such a memorable debut a few years ago in The Holdovers. Sessa again shines along with his veteran co-star, Antonio Banderas. It’s a fun film about a lying, cheating (albeit talented) young man learning lessons at the school of hard knocks. I related to a lot of it — I was young and arrogant in 1975 too. But it’s not a film with staying power. Perfectly entertaining and worth the price of admission but nothing that you will be pondering for long after.

Hamnet (2025) Zhao. I decided to watch this for the second time in twelve months because I had recently bought the novel upon which it is based. (Have since started reading the book by Maggie O’Farrell and it’s bloody brilliant.) I was amazed after the film to see that I had given the movie a six on IMDb last year. I changed that to an eight. Who was the version of me that couldn’t appreciate this amazing film? I was particularly enamored of the last part of the picture in which Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes (an Oscar winning role for Jessie Buckley) goes to see Hamlet performed. No, I wasn’t enamored, I was mesmerized. That’s cinema right there. 

Radio Days (1987) Allen. I believe it impossible for me to overstate my love for this film. It's amazing how much Allen packed into under ninety minutes. I love everything about the film. It's masterful at telling you so much about a group of people, a time and a place, much of it through or supplemented by music. Meet an extended Brooklyn family during the early 1940s, their lives touched by a foreign war. Meet the world of radio back when it reigned supreme. Meet radio personalities and hear some of their unique stories. In particular meet a kid growing up amid the wonders of family and radio. Among Woody Allen’s greatest works. I could watch it again tonight.

No Down Payment (1957) Ritt. God love ‘em they were making an effort to develop a social conscience in Hollywood back in the fifties and early sixties. There were brave attempts at social message films. Pictures like Separate Tables, The Defiant Ones, Days of Wine and Roses. Important issues of the day honestly examined in cinema. Today these efforts seem quaint and though well-intended are terribly dated. To their credit you can draw a direct line from these films to the stronger offerings of the late Sixties and the Seventies. One such film — which I watched for the first time — was No Down Payment. Look here folks, we got your racism, alcoholism, infidelity, the dark side of the American dream and right smack in the middle of suburbia. This is not a terribly good film but it’s an honest effort and a mirror into how Hollywood was changing. Interesting here is seeing the great comic actor Tony Randall in a serious role. Does he pull it off? Of course. Comedy is easier.

The Long Goodbye (1973) Altman. I’ve seen this a bunch of times (technical term) and always go in wide-eyed thinking, “goodness me, Robert Altman putting Phillip Marlowe into the Seventies with Elliot Gould as the great detective. Can it really work?” It does — every time. Gould is as different a Marlow as you can get considering he’d previously been played by Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum. Former baseball player and author Jim Bouton was an odd choice to play Terry Lennox. Fact is, the man couldn’t act but he pulled off his small, but vital, role all the same. Sterling Hayden as Roger Wade certainly can act but here he chews the scenery. He and the constantly barking dog (why?) are the only blights on the film. The director Mark Rydell — who only recently died — plays gangster Marty Augustine and is excellent. But it is Gould as a mumbling Marlowe who stars and makes this one of the best cinematic versions of a Raymond Chandler novel.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Gondry. A film that deserves an A+++ for originality alone. But more than that it is one of cinema’s greatest love stories. You heard me right (or should I say, read me right?). It is at heart a love story, a really honest one that portrays love as something that is inherently flawed and difficult. It also shows that romances turn into long-term marriage when couples manage to outlast finding out about each other's imperfections and what a struggle it can be to really mesh with another human being. The best thing I can say about the film is that it makes me appreciate the love I share with my own wife. Most romantic movies seem foreign to the real experience of being in love with someone for decades. This film gets it.

She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949) Ford. Okay the portrayal of the Native Americans (hostiles) is problematic to say the least, but my god what a gorgeous picture to look at. Monument Valley’s variously reddish brown or burnt orange soil, the mountains, the buttes, the sunsets all rendered in loving technicolor. John Wayne gives one of his few really strong performances as the retiring cavalry officer. Many more of director John Ford’s regular actors are on board, highlighted by a wonderful turn from Victor McLaglen. There are about eight Ford films that are absolute classics. This is in the tier just below them. One more complaint: There is one line that Wayne’s character repeats that is beyond stupid: “don’t apologize, it’s a sign of weakness.” Bullshit, for a grown up to offer a sincere apology after doing wrong is a sign of strength. Anyway, SWAYR is a fun watch — assuming you can get past the stereotypes.

My Favorite Television Dramas of All Time (In Order!)

Breaking Bad. The gold standard of TV dramas. Nothing on TV had been as good or has been as good since. Yes Bryan Cranston was a huge part of the success but the brilliance of the cast ran deep and the writing was unparalleled. All hail Vince Gilligan. So many unforgettable moment and scenes.

Barry. Labeled a comedy but if you watched it, particularly the last few seasons, you know that’s a misnomer. It stablished that Bill Hader is a genius.

Mad Men. Novelistic in scope and how deeply it explores characters. Captured an era and our imaginations. I finally watched it this year and over the four months there was nary a yawn induced.

The Wire. So often I felt like I was watching a documentary. Each season was different, each was excellent.

Ozark. Like Breaking Bad it provided a lot of “wow!” Moments. Highlighted by brilliant performances from Jason Bateman and Laura Linney.

Succession. Best TV theme song ever. An absolutely delicious cast of really rotten people.

The Americans. For years I resisted the idea of show about Russian spies embedded in the US. Big mistake. Great stuff from first episode to last.

Northern Exposure. Would have been much higher were it not for the fact that CBS ruined the last season-and-a-half. The words quirky and off-beat were made for this show. Also charming.

The Sopranos. The trend setter for the modern TV dramas. Outside of The Godfather and Goodfellas, the best fictional look at mobsters.

The Pitt. Another show I resisted. Utterly compelling despite the fact that you don’t know half the medical jargon they’re using.

Better Call Saul. It was a long meandering trip to get where it was going but my goodness it was worth the ride.

The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling was a genius and while there were many imitators nothing like it that was any good has come along since. It was the only great non comedy on TV for decades.

Orange is the New Black. It started out as the true story of a privileged white girl going to the slammer and morphed into so much more with a fascinating array of characters.

Foyle’s War. Quite different than the rest on this list. An excellent “cop show” set in England during World War II. Engaging characters in engaging stories in an engaging setting.