Follow Friday: Meet the Staff- Ries

So the end of the year is much sooner than you'd expect and will mark the end of the first part of my journey.  However, The Cinematic Katzenjammer is going to change into a much larger site and hopefully the place you come to for all of your movie reviews, trailers, news, and needs. I will be joined by a group of other writers that will help me along the way and in the weeks building up to the end of the year, I will focus on a new writer each week, letting you get to know each of them with a series of questions. 

Ries has become an almost-regular of the site and he's written a handful of reviews, a couple of Pick Six features, and has a lot more in the works. Here are his answers to my questions:

1. What are your Top 3 movies of all time? 

My top three movies. That’s like asking me what my favorite sense is. I suppose if pressed I’d have to land on Casablanca, The Motorcycle Diaries and Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Nearly made the cut – Once. It got edged by Indy. Sorry, Glen and Marketa.)

2. What's one movie you hate that a lot of people love? 

This is an honest-to-God tie between The Princess Bride and Slumdog Millionaire. One I find unbearably cheesy, and the other I find...absurd. On multiple levels.

3. What's your history with writing? 

I've been involved in actively pursuing creative writing since I was about eight. Technically speaking, I published my first piece when I was twelve. My junior high school had a paper we put out called The Wildcat Roar, and in an effort to expand the readership of the paper the teacher in charge of the publication called on me to write a narrative to increase student enthusiasm. The deal worked out, and I wrote the then-longest thing I’d ever written (forty two pages), a horror story called My Name is Justice.

Fortunately for everyone involved, the plan went swimmingly – My Name is Justice was well received by the students, the Wildcat Roar expanded from a single page paper to a pretty hefty manuscript on newsprint, and I felt the rush that comes with finishing a store and putting it out there for people to read. After my senior year at Carmel High School, I won the 2007 Carmel Art Council Award for fiction and went on to study Creative Writing at Knox College and then at DePauw University. I graduated from DePauw with a B.A. in English Writing in the spring of 2011, and am now putting that degree to work...in the Marine Corps. Right.

4. Where do you see yourself in 11 years? 

Oh, I have no idea. If you had asked me at the beginning of my junior year of college where I saw myself after college ended, I quite literally wouldn't have picked the military if I could give nineteen possibilities. The only thing I can say with any conviction is – I will not be in the military. I’d like to be back home in New York. Hopefully in either Manhattan or Brooklyn. And employed.

5. Do you have any movie-watching rituals or habits? 

I’m really picky about sound. I drive theaters crazy when I go, because if their speakers aren't at 100% I’m that asshole who will leave the theater to complain to the management. I don’t eat anything at movie theaters (unless I’m in New York, in which case I guess some part of my brain figures sixteen dollars isn't enough to spend at the theater) but I like to sit as close to the center as possible. When at home, on the other hand, I must have snacks nearby and my Turtle Beach headphones securely on my head and the lights off. Phone tends to go off too. I’m quite serious about film watching.

6. What's THE movie that turned you into a true film fan?

I have no idea. I've loved film passionately for literally as long as I can remember. I used to hope for rainy days because when it was raining outside I was allowed to stay inside and watch movies. The first movie I ever saw was Born on the Fourth of July, but the first movie I ever saw and actually watched was 101 Dalmatians.

7. Who's your favorite actor? 

Humphrey Bogart and Daniel Day-Lewis. (My favorite actresses are Emma Thompson and Cate Blanchett.)

8. Who's your favorite director?

Christopher Nolan. The man is a genius.

9. Would you rather make a movie or star in one?

I’d love to be involved in the writing of a film. And I ever wrote a book that was later made into a film, I’d demand a cameo. Where does that land me?

10. What's one thing you want future readers to know about you? 

Not much. I’m rather private. OH! Oh! Pick me. That I love Walt Disney. As in I love the man, and his identity as an American visionary. I can’t comment on the company as much, unfortunately, but I do love Walt Disney World.

11. Borrowed from Inside the Actor's Studio, If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? 

That’ll do, Ries. That’ll do.

Follow Ries on Twitter @Minuteman2589