What kind of collection could possibly find common ground among The Son of Kong, Platoon, and Pink Flamingos? What kind of fevered minds could conceive of such a list? What are the unheard-of qualities that tie them all together?
Once the B movie was the Hollywood stepchild, the underbelly of the double feature, the scrambling lab rat of cinematic innovation; today it is a more inclusive category, embracing films that fall outside the mainstream by dint of their budgets, their visions, their grit, and occasionally - sometimes essentially - their lack of what the culture cops call 'good taste'.This is precisely where "The B List" takes a stand. Taste, at least in the sense of decency, decorum, and propriety, is subjective, transitory, and evolving. With that in mind, this book throws caution to the proverbial wind, zooming in on movies that demand attention despite their lowly births, squalid upbringings, and dubious character traits. What admirable qualities the pictures have - and they have such qualities galore - are cheerfully irrelevant to the properties that define Oscar movies, although some of our selections are, in fact, Oscar movies.
The essence and importance of the films in "The B List" lie precisely in their being offbeat, unpredictable, and decidedly idiosyncratic. And that's why we love them.
Author Biography
David Sterritt is chairman of the National Society of Film Critics, film professor at Columbia University and the Maryland Institute College of Art, past chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, and contributing writer at Moviemaker. Before taking early retirement in 2005 he was film critic of The Christian Science Monitor for almost forty years. John Anderson's reviews and features appear regularly in Variety, The New York Times, Newsday, The Guardian and Screen International. He has also contributed to The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Nation, Film Comment, LA Weekly, Schizophrenia Digest, and The Washington Post.
