Letterboxd – the app that can be used for tracking, reviewing and rating the movies you’ve watched – has taken to torturing Hollywood stars on the red carpet by asking them the extremely hard question; “what are your 4 favorite movies?” At the premiere of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Bryan Cranston was asked this head-scratcher by Letterboxd, and he had a very personal reason for choosing a particular comedy movie twist on the western.
“There’s a little movie called Cat Ballou. When I was 11 years old, I saw that movie maybe 35 times because the movie theater at that time was a babysitter to me when my parents were breaking up, and it was not comfortable or feeling safe at home. So, I would go to the movie theater, which was really close, and I would just go over and over and over again.”
“It was a wonderful distraction and I think was the basis of why I wanted to be in the movie business myself, because that took me away from my troubles. And it allowed me to use my own imagination of where I could go, using that film as a springboard of ‘what else is out there?'”
Cat Ballou is an extremely 60s version of the western – released in 1965 and starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin. It features songs by Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole. It was an early breakout role for Fonda, before she went onto star in Barefoot in the Park (1967), Barbarella (1968), and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). She won the Best Actress Oscar for Klute in 1971.
While Bryan Cranston is best-known for two long-running TV series; Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006) and Breaking Bad (2008-2013), he has also appeared in movies such as That Thing You Do!, Saving Private Ryan, Little Miss Sunshine, Drive, Contagion, Argo, and Godzilla. He was nominated for an Oscar for Trumbo (2015).
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