I was sitting there eavesdropping on my wife’s book club meeting — and wondering how dropping from eaves ever worked as a stealthy surveillance technique — when a curious question crossed my mind. Why are there so few men in book clubs? My wife, over time, has been a member of every book club within a 50-mile radius of our house. None had a guy. I needed to learn why.
I started by asking her club members after their meeting was finished. The consensus was that “men just have fewer actual friends and prefer to spend more of their free time online.” Irritated by their impertinent response, I put the question to my good buddies Chat, DeepSeek, Meta, Gemini, Claude, and Grok.
Meta, Grok: “Men might feel they don’t have the time to dedicate to reading and discussing books.”
There may be some sense in this. I do read slow.
DeepSeek: “Men might tend to avoid explorations of the common topics of book discussions, like emotional resonance, literary style, or personal connections to the story, and might instead prefer debates about ideas, plot structure, and technique.”
Useful insight.
Gemini, DeepSeek: “There is a stigma against reading within male social groups, a stigma that such activities are not masculine.”
Hmm. Okay, good to know.
Claude: “When men’s groups do form, they sometimes take on different characteristics, like the Books and Brews model.”
Claude is my guy.
Grok, Chat, DeepSeek: “There are men’s groups, but they’re often focused on topics like nonfiction and history.”
My group is gonna be sufficiently masculine.
As an aside, I’m not a fan of the word “history” as meaning the study of past events. People’s eyes glaze over on hearing it. Plus, it’s pejorative. If someone tells you you’re “history,” it means you’re a has-been, washed up, obsolete. The word “history” is just not worthy of the vital idea for which it stands. It comes from the ancient Greek “histor,” meaning wise person, which begat the Greek “historia,” meaning learned knowledge. Some 17th-century wannabe historians pressed the word into service to imbue their field of study with some gravitas. So, it’s not just boring and derogatory, it’s a bit of an impostor too.
A far better term for the study of the past is “what happened.” Simple, clear, captures the imagination. Few people care about history. But everyone wants to know what happened.
Back to starting a men’s club. I had in mind to bring up the topic with the guys when we’re walking our dogs. At Wiborg’s Beach in the mornings and Springs Park in the afternoons, I walk with a bunch of other dog owners and we chitchat along the way. But I couldn’t find the right time to raise the idea because we were forever busy saying what movies we’d seen recently and recommending or panning them.
That’s when it hit me: What about a men’s book club, but for films?
The idea ticked a lot of boxes: manageable time commitment for a perfectly masculine activity in which plot structure and technique were front and center. I tossed it out there at the park and at the beach. I was worried I’d be politely ignored by the other dog owners, so I was all set to explain its virtues. It’s the art of arts, I was ready to tell them, fusing virtually all the legacy art forms in as grand a collaborative project as the arts has ever seen.
But I never got to that because the idea garnered instant enthusiasm. Quick as a dog can lick a dish, I went from being a lone wolf to leader of a pack. We made an acronym of Guys Own Dogs And Watch Films Until Late and became the GODAWFUL Film Society.
Founded in 2023, the GODAWFUL Film Society has among its members East Hampton filmmakers, visual artists, and writers. Each month, a different member chooses two films with some connection between them, however ethereal. We watch them separately or in little groups and meet at a local spot for dinner, drinks, and discussion. We take a summer hiatus, because: house guests. But come Tumbleweed Tuesday, we try to get two meetings in before the Hamptons International Film Festival kicks off. (By the way, if anyone from HIFF wants to join . . .)
I’m told that in some book groups, the book itself takes a backseat to other topics of conversation. Not so in our meetings. The films dominate the bulk of the discussion, with the guys doing some pretty dogged research, and some bringing written notes. For sure, there’s talk about questions of local interest, like just how many “Cross Highways” there are or, more important, what are Stephen’s Hands doing so close to Daniel’s Hole? And there are some months where talk of politics is unavoidable. But even when Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, most of the chatter was around his mother’s filmography.
Now I don’t want anyone to think GODAWFUL is highbrow just because we are a “society,” not a “club,” or because we say “film,” not “movie.” The Ladies Village Improvement “Society” is decidedly not haughtier than the Garden “Club.” And the terms “movie” and “film” are each “history”; the art form is light-years past “moving pictures,” for which “movie” is short, and most cinematographers stopped shooting “film” decades ago.
But to prove the point that the GODAWFUL Film Society is equally comfortable at any brow height, and also for the reader’s use and enjoyment at home, here is a near-complete list of our monthly film pairings since our founding:
“Four Lions” and “The Reluctant Fundamentalist.”
“The Death of Stalin” and “The Last Station.”
“The Killing” and “Mean Streets.”
“Tropic Thunder” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“American Symphony” and “Salt of the Earth.”
“Trainspotting” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”
“Ed Wood” and “The Disaster Artist.”
“Murina” and “Leave No Trace.”
“Capote” and “The End of the Tour.”
“A Face in the Crowd” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
“Parasite” and “Burning.”
“The Big Chill” and “Return of the Secaucus 7.”
“Galaxy Quest” and “Top Secret!”
“What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?” and “Good Bye, Lenin!”
“Locke” and “The Guilty.”
“Sinners” and “Anora.”
“Gloria” and “The Pledge.”
“Psycho” and “Presence.”
“Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” and “Sound of Metal.”
“Memories of Murder” and “Zodiac.”
“Michael Clayton” and “The Sentence.”