The ILTBTA Honeymoon Episodes
Volume 1
Dearest ILTBTA readers,
Happy New Year! We write to you from the future in New Zealand, but also sort of from the past since we pre-wrote this post and scheduled it to send while we’re on our honeymoon. In lieu of your regularly scheduled programming, we decided to have some fun with the format while we’re on the other side of the world. So this post will be an ILTBTA FAQ of sorts, where we tackle some of the questions we’ve received over the past year as we endeavor on this “creative homework” of ours. If you have a question that isn’t answered below, let us know! Feel free to comment on a random post, email us, text us, send us a postcard … really any form of communication1 will do. With further ado, enjoy!
Ask the Authors!
Your lovely writers answer your burning questions.
How long does it normally take to write a post? Those things are long!
E&T: This is probably the question we get asked the most. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer to it since we work on it piecemeal over the course of the two weeks between posts. Typically, after publishing a post on Tuesday we’ll prepare the initial draft for the next post so it’s ready by the weekend, which is when we usually watch our next movie. Then, over the course of the next week-and-a-half, we’ll chip away bit by bit as jokes come to us or we look to procrastinate working on other stuff. More often than not, we finish up the drafting process the Monday night or Tuesday of publishing, take a deep breath, and get ready to do it all again!
E: Plots & Feelings is by far the section that takes the longest, both due to the level of detail and the fact that I’m a world-class procrastinator. If I work on it straight through, that section alone is about 2 hours on average.
How do you pick which movie to cover?
E: Allow me to introduce you to the transformative power of “Pick Three, Choose One.” A concept we coopted from our friends Clara and Alex (and also Lisa), Pick Three Choose One involves one of us poring through The Spreadsheet to pick three movies they’d like to watch, after which the other picks from just those three options. It helps narrow down the entire population of options to a more manageable size, which is important when you’re looking at hundreds of movie options. We use this for everything from ILTBTA to takeout and it no lie has been a complete game-changer.
T: We try to consider watchability in our Pick Three options, as well, trying our best to skew towards movies that live on a streaming service that people (read: we) might have. (We’ve been saving for a wedding and a honeymoon, that $3.99 plus tax adds up!) We also try to vary the decades we pick and choose from, so if you notice we haven’t hit your favorite decade in a while (shout out to those fans of the movies from the 1920s) know that we’ll likely get to it soon.
I meant to read this but forgot … am I a terrible friend/family member?
T: Yes, next question.
E: We typically get around 70% of people opening their emails, so don’t feel (too) bad! Substack provides us a slightly creepy level of insight into who opens the email2, which surely comes in handy for those who use it as their livelihood.
What’s the collaboration process like? Do you each write every section or do one of you typically handle certain ones?
E&T: The Google suite of collaboration tools (e.g., Docs, Sheets, Keep) have low-key been the organizational foundation of our relationship, so it should surprise no one that we use Google Docs to work on the drafts before copy-pasting everything into Substack.
T: As far as who writes what, Ellen tackles Plots and Feelings, which leaves me in charge of Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat? and Oscar NomNomNomz. Some ILTBTA history for you: Oscar NomNomNomz was one of my original ideas for the newsletter, in which we’d review a movie and then provide a recipe for a food/drink item that best represented the movie. Ellen … wasn’t a fan (to her credit, she came up with the ultimate name/idea, which is admittedly much better), but I badgered her enough that she agreed to keep it in as a standalone section. Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat? is possibly my favorite section to write, since I typically do a deep dive through a movie’s Wikipedia page anyway, so now I get to share that useless knowledge with you all!
E: Is it a coincidence that we took charge of the sections we came up with the names for? Who can say. We also collaborate on the intros, subtitles, and Intermissions, oftentimes with one of us writing down a half-baked idea for some jokes and the other punching it up.
What have been your favorite movies you’ve written about so far? Least favorite?
E: I really enjoyed Gaslight, The Thin Man, and Top Hat. These are all older movies I would have never seen otherwise, and they’re generally low-stakes, which is a welcome reprieve from some of the other more “serious” movies (looking at you, The Crying Game). I don’t necessarily think they’re badly made movies, but a lot of the tropes and choices in Jezebel and Foreign Correspondent frustrated me in a big way. Stop falling in love after two seconds. STOP IT!
T: It’s really no surprise that a couple who started dating two years after they first met would take umbrage with such quick love stories. It’s also extra annoying that it’s usually clearly just for plot purposes! Alright, before I get even more side-tracked, my favorites so far have been Wings, The Sixth Sense, and The Thin Man. Wings in particular was when I realized how much fun this endeavor could be: I otherwise probably would never have watched a movie from the 1920s, but now I’m so glad that I did. My least favorites so far have been film classics such as High Noon, West Side Story, and A Room With A View. Sometimes I hear that terrible theme from High Noon in my nightmares.
Do you ever watch anything … fun?
E&T: We do! Shortly after beginning our Best Picture journey, we realized that a lot of these movies are straight-up bummers. So we sought out some cinematic palate cleansers in the form of various movie franchises to balance out some of the more serious movies we watched for The Spreadsheet. Currently, we’ve watched the following movie sagas: Fast & The Furious (the ultimate palate cleanser), Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit, Jurassic Park/World, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Ocean’s 11-13/8, various James Bond flicks (we’ve watched through Roger Moore so far; we’re taking breaks between Bonds), Austin Powers, and Mission: Impossible. If you have any suggestions for future franchises to watch, let us know!
Are you really gonna watch every Best Picture nominee? Isn’t that like hundreds of movies …?
E: 581 to be exact … until this year's nominees come out!
T: Between life events and the availability of some movies, who knows if we’ll get to watch all of them, but I think it’s a fun long-term goal. Maybe someday we’ll start including guest ILTBTA contributions from our children.
How many have you each watched so far?
E: As of the end of 2022, I have seen 200 of the 581 total movies (34%).
T: And I’ve seen 209 (36%), though Ellen does a much better job of remembering them than I do.
What are some of your favorite ILTBTA jokes you’ve written?
E&T: We’re so glad you asked.
E: Among my favorite jokes of my own are "a fight, a fire, and a firefight" from our very first post, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the “conversion” of 1961 hours to 2022 hours from The Hustler post as a play off of the dollar conversions we normally do. My favorite joke of Tyler's was Agatha Whiskey from The Thin Man. I'm pretty sure I spat out my drink.
T: Half the fun of the writing process is trying to make the other laugh, so I always love watching you read a joke and snort. Coming up with a funny subtitle is also low-key one of my favorite parts about writing ILTBTA, especially since it essentially becomes a joke competition between us to see who can make the other laugh more. While I’m proud of many of the ones I’ve written (High Noon’s “A fictional story about a train being on time”; The Conversation’s “Better Call Caul”; and Brooklyn’s “The Bachelorette: Ireland'' come to mind), I think my favorite is actually the one you wrote for A Room With A View (“Spouse Hunters: International”). Mostly because I wish I thought of it myself.
I want to watch a newer movie that won’t make me fall asleep but doesn’t have any superheroes. Any suggestions?
E&T: Great news! Our next post will be our respective lists of our ten favorite movies that we watched in theatres in 2022.
T: New enough for ya?
E: And because we love to challenge ourselves creatively (as if ILTBTA’s mere existence wasn’t evidence enough of that), we’ll be reviewing each movie in ten words or less.
T: Short enough for ya?
See you in two weeks!
--Ellen & Tyler
Post-Credits Scene
Get an update on #honeymonth.
Did you think you weren’t gonna get any honeymoon pictures?
Just like our relationship, things started off with a long-distance thanks to Southwest. Our flight to LA got caught up in their now-infamous chaos (get ‘em Mayor Pete!), causing us to frantically rent a car and drive out to the West Coast ourselves.
After flying into the future and celebrating New Years before the rest of the world in Auckland, we enjoyed a well-deserved wine tour on Waiheke Island and a trip to Hobbiton!!
We’ve also visited some glow-worm caves (which do not show up well in pictures) and the adorably Art Deco-inspired coastal town of Napier. Feel free to follow our adventures on your weirdo-owned social media platform of choice: the ILT-Twitta or Ellen's Instagram Stories.
Cheers!
Tyler: Except carrier pigeons! No birds!
Ellen: Unless it’s the Eagles, right?
Tyler: Yes, in which case: Go Birds!
Sounds like my ex-wife!
I love the behind-the-scenes! I had no idea that you could see who opens their email! I feel violated! I need to validate myself if I don't open them now! I thought I was pretty sharp and witty but the writing of you two is impressively clever and funny. Looking forward to what you have for us in 2023. Hope you two are staying safe and having fun on #Honeymonth.