“Never trust a survivor,” my father used to warn me, “until you find out what he did to stay alive.”

My dad used to always watch movies with me. I wouldn’t notice edits when I was a kid, but he would say, “Look at that. No cuts.” Or he would say, if something was being cut, he would snap his fingers and go, “Good cut. Good cut.” It’s so funny: The other morning, my daughter and I were at my mom’s house. Turner Classic Movies was on and they were playing “That’s Entertainment.” There was a long shot, and my mom just said, “No cuts!” My daughter realized, in that moment, that we sound exactly the same. I’ve watched things with my daughter, and I’m like, “Look at that, no cuts.” It’s like a fucking disease in our family. I don’t know what it is or where we got this from, but it’s like, what the fuck? What a weird family. We sit around and talk about “no cuts.”

paul-gillis: