On Nepalese Chilly Momo & Kill Bill

There’s a condition, or sexual fetish, rather, called Narratophilia, in which a person finds words and stories sexually arousing. Most predictably, the fetish presents when the subject is told explicit or dirty stories by their partner.

Less predictable is the version of Narratophilia in which the subject is aroused by any writing or words. That is, arousal resulting from the reading of or listening to writing or words NOT profane or explicit by any means.

I reckon this is a spiritual cousin kink to the one George Costanza unintentionally develops in the Seinfeld episode where he can only climax during sex while eating a pastrami sandwich.

If you are reading this and feel as though you could be described as a Narratophiliac, specifically the type aroused by writing that is categorically inexplicit, I beg you to get in touch because I’m sincerely interested in learning about you.

Although, I suspect that anyone who’s made it to the end of this introduction is likely not this sort of Narratophiliac, as there are enough words in it that I presume one would have had to stop reading in favor of a cold shower.

I’m not what one might describe as a Narratophiliac, but I insist on writing about movies every single week for other reasons that ought to be considered hedonistic.

The most romantic reason for this compulsion is that I love to write, and there’s a notion of self-actualization at work when I do it. When I write, I feel as though I’m doing something that I’m meant to be doing.

The only-a-little-bit-concerning reason behind my weekly writing ritual is that I derive a meaningful portion of self-worth from the social validation I get from it. The idea that people read what I write every week and, on occasion, tell me I’m a good writer or that I’ve made a poignant observation — this provides me a reliable source of psychological and intellectual arousal.

I submit that many writers (Narratophiliacs included) depend on some quantity of this social feedback (e.g. “Your writing has such a distinct voice”, “that piece on Narratophiliacs was quite funny”, etc.) as a source of motivation. This dependence on social feedback is likely most imbalanced towards the start of their writing careers.

Growing up, my mother always told me to ignore what other people think, i.e. social validation in the positive or negative direction. I’m not sure she modeled the behavior all that well, but it's hard to imagine many people that do. When I came home from school, down because my friends had a knack for (very effectively) lowering each other’s self-esteem, she'd always say “ignore it — be the happy-go-lucky Blake!”

Now I’m well into my thirty-somethings and I care much less about what other people think of me. But as I’ve already mentioned, I still care a little bit insofar that my self-satisfaction still depends on how my writing is received, and I often wonder if it’ll ever go away. I also wonder if I really want it to go away or if it is a necessary evil.

It's studied that aging reduces one’s reliance on and concern for this kind of social validation. This eventual disregard for what one might consider useful social feedback is presumably linked to the fact that executive functioning and managing one’s cognitive “filter” declines with age.

In 2005, a study was conducted in order to observe the differences in brain activity between younger and older adults. Each participant was given a visual memory test in which they were shown sequences of images, told to remember a specific category, and then asked to identify an image from that category only 9 seconds later. The results of this study were reported in that year’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The administrators of the study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), concluded that the neurons of the older participants responded excessively to images they should have ignored as compared to the younger adults. In other words, they were unable to ignore distracting details.

In 2008, the same study was repeated and the results confirmed again using electroencephalography (EEG).

While neither study could formally make the link, one might consider it only a short leap to assume this inability to process and ignore distracting details is emblematic of the loss of one’s filter, i.e. their conversational inhibitions. The cognitive drop-off that was confirmed in the studies is increasingly apparent starting between ages sixty and seventy-two.

To those of our readers that are over sixty years of age (or those that are Narratophiliacs), I mean no offense in stating these perfectly healthy realities. Rather, I’m aiming to provide sufficient context for what I’m about to share with you.

The idea of losing one’s filter has always interested me because aging into saying some garbled, socially unacceptable nonsense is another thing entirely if you, frequently as I do, choose to write, publish, and distribute your thinking instead of merely bothering your family with it over the holidays. That is, the implications of losing one’s filter are arguably different for aging writers as compared to, say, aging accountants (or any career less focused on publishing one’s thoughts).

As of the writing of this essay (December 17, 2025), Quentin Tarantino is sixty-two years old — just over the suggested age threshold in the already-referenced studies.

His ninth movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, was released on July 26, 2019. At the time, he’d have been fifty-six years old. The work was hailed for its rich characterization of the Golden Age of Hollywood and specificity of tone.

Tarantino has famously exclaimed on several occasions that he will make ten total films throughout his career. His tenth film has yet to be written or released, its title and story the subject of much speculation expectedly given it will be his final film.

A few years back, Tarantino was working on a project called The Movie Critic, which was said to be his final work. The production never began, as Tarantino soured on the concept before the wheels started turning.

The good fortune of this I did not realize until the penning of this essay. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was written and realized prior to the cognitive shift suggested by the aforementioned study (age fifty-six). His next film will inevitably be written and realized after most would exhibit the most pronounced effects of the perfectly-healthy cognitive transformation outlined in the study (he'll be meaningfully over age sixty).

As they say, biology is undefeated, and Tarantino — like the rest of us — will suffer from the same benefits and drawbacks of this age-related cognitive shift.

Will his tenth movie be as compelling, cohesive, and striking as the rest of his catalogue? Or will it introduce us to some new, unhinged version of a man whose baseline is willing-to-defend-child-rapist-on-the-record? This, to me, resembles a very unscientific opportunity to better understand, or at least illustrate, how filter degradation affects writers in particular. The quality of their work, yes — but also the social consequences of publishing said work likely to be increasingly and further devoid of “filter”.

It's worth noting that almost all of his films, starting with Pulp Fiction, were cultural touchstones almost immediately after their debuts. The fact is that his material resonates with a very large, exceedingly passionate audience. And in order to be so culturally pervasive, the writer of the films himself must have some animalistic understanding of or intuitive relation to humanity as a whole.

The only people more excited about Quentin Tarantino's filmography than his fans (other than Tarantino himself, who, perhaps is a special sort of Narratophiliac who primarily gets off on his own work) are the (very good) actors in Hollywood who sign on to work with him at any moment's notice despite the fact that he reads so evidently as the guy who won’t stop talking about himself and his own interests at a party despite never being asked.

The results of his tenth and final film resembles, to me at least, an unscientific test on the impact of age-related filter degradation on writing and the consequences therein.

Drew and I grew up loving Tarantino films. We still do. This year, we attended the re-release of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair to see it on the big screen projected on 70 millimeter film. The screening was held at the American Film Institute (AFI).

We journeyed to the theater in the heat of rush hour and sped through dinner to make a 6:45pm showing. Dinner was Nepalese Chilly Momo (i.e. Nepalese dumplings) — a piping hot, comically spicy food to be frantically shoveled down by two smallish Jewish men in under five minutes.

The theater inside AFI is a tribute to classic cinema. Grand, ornate decor adorns the walls and commands almost as much attention as the silver screen, the full size of which is only revealed behind widening curtains a few moments prior to showtime (for dramatic effect). The room itself could just as easily function as a formal events ballroom if it wasn't for the sloped flooring and built in seating.

At the back of the very large theater is a projection window and several 70 millimeter film projectors.

For the uninitiated, the vast majority of us have been watching films through digital projection methods since roughly 2010. In other words, these days movies are often either recorded onto film and converted to digital for distribution, or recorded digitally to begin with.

Digital media has many advantages, the most obvious of which is the fact that digital media weighs zero lbs. Actual film, conversely, is heavy as hell (e.g. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer full roll of 70mm film was nearly 11 miles long and weighed nearly 600 pounds).

The projectionist working the Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair was so kind as to come down during the intermission (both films combined ran about four hours and thirty minutes) to field questions about her work. She was a nose-ringed, curly-haired former graduate student in a pale orange sweater who studied in film archives and happened into a very niche world of freelance projector operation. Honestly, sort of exactly what I might have imagined if I took a second to remember there was a human being running the projector behind the window instead of focusing on my indigestion from the aforementioned Nepalese momos.

Digital projectors border on being operable by the same teenagers who work the rides at a carnival or a county fair. Press the big green button to play. Blow some cherry-flavored vape smoke while you wait. Then press the big red button to stop. This is a fair statement at least when comparing them to the projectors required to screen 70mm films. As our guide detailed, these projectors require a well-trained attendant to physically lift film reels up, feed film through the projector, and care for the equipment. The operation is technically demanding enough so as to warrant a name for those who are capable of executing it: the already-mentioned “projectionist”.

A full feature-length film, especially one as long as Kill Bill, cannot fit entirely on one reel of film. In fact, The Whole Bloody Affair was nine reels in total. So, every thirty or so minutes, the projectionist needs to be prepared to "switch over" to the next reel.

At the end of each reel, a large white dot appears in the top right corner of the silver screen for a blink of an eye, indicating to the projectionist that they need to prepare to move to the next reel. If done properly, the projectionist can switch over to the new reel without viewers noticing. After switching over, the projectionist proceeds to clean the empty projector to prevent dust accumulation and prepare to load the following reel onto the dock while the current reel is playing.

Effectively, the two consecutive reels have a small amount of overlapping frames. The goal of the projectionist is to try to line up and project the two reels on top of each other during the changeover, so as to avoid any confusion for viewers.

If the projectionist, say, is lulled into a stupor because they've watched Oppenheimer sixty times over the course of six weeks (imagine that) — it can become a problem.

In this case, the projectionist fails to switch over the film because they've more or less fallen asleep with their eyes open and the film runs out of frames. The audience is unceremoniously treated to those old-fashioned gray numbers counting down in the middle of the screen along with a very audible beeping sound intended to remind the projectionist of their sworn duty to keep the film moving. When the countdown reaches zero, the screen goes dark.

Our projectionist had no such issues during Kill Bill, but she told us this exact story when someone (totally not me) asked her how many times she had to watch Oppenheimer and whether she still likes the film.

Perhaps by now you can appreciate the art form behind operating large projectors for a live audience. But the point is less how complicated an endeavor this operation is, and more the tremendous value it offers.

Watching Kill Bill on 70mm film was an indelible experience. I'd be a world-class stuntman if I could avoid sounding like the most pretentious man on earth while writing this — but moving images presented on film feels astonishingly more alive than you're used to seeing at your local theater chain. There's a charming little flicker between every frame in the film and something about it all adds unfathomable depth to the experience. Like the difference between watching a magician on television and seeing one at a live show.

Further, the negative area on a 70mm film strip is nearly 3.5 times as large as the standard 35mm film format. In other words, on the screen, you literally see a much larger, more detailed image.

So as not to overstate it: seeing a movie on film, especially 70mm, is an actual experience. Seeing a movie in standard theaters is also an actual experience, but perhaps one I didn't realize had already been commoditized and cheapened through the use of digital media and the lack of pomp and circumstance about the theater room itself (there really was something about the AFI theater, architecturally, that was breathtaking).

Of course, digital media is a useful and perhaps necessary downgrade when you consider the amount of movie theaters that have been able to maintain deep catalogs of available films without the associated distribution, storage, maintenance, and operational costs of film. Digital media is likely one of the reasons so many of us have been able to see a movie in theaters without driving multiple hours from our homes when we want to do it.

No matter because either way (digital or film), being in the same room with a bunch of other people dumbfounded by Quentin Tarantino's abrasive style of dialogue and bloody hyperbolic filmmaking style — it is a better way to watch movies and that's a fact.

With streaming services and on-demand content and social media, these sorts of real human experiences as it pertains to film remain under threat. So, if you can, go see a movie at your local theater chain this year. Even better, catch one at an independent theater or a film institute dedicated to preserving the medium.

More with each passing day, at the center of efforts to preserve this sort of media — whether it be film, art, writing, music, or something else — lies a big, frankly annoying question: What do we want humanity to be like in the future? To better characterize the choice: Do we want to be a bunch of friendly, hip, community-oriented projectionists with stories to share? Or a bunch of walking, talking vape clouds utterly disinterested in each other?

Social media has eroded our startlingly fragile attention spans to mere pebbles. General-purpose artificial intelligence when used for media creation and consumption is clearly another step in that direction, especially when you consider a company like Disney — who recently declared its plans to license intellectual property to generative models at OpenAI.

I promise you: deals like this are going to lead to very uninteresting, very uninspired places. And while the big technology companies promise cancer-curing artificial intelligence from one side of their mouths and, through the other, deliver generative video tools that allow you to type in "bad doctor throws fat man through a wall" without feeling weird about it — I'd suggest we train ourselves in the art of ignoring.

Not unlike the advice my mother gave me all those years ago to assist me in dealing with my prepubescent high school self-esteem.

What if we ignore these power-hungry corporate traps masquerading in open-concept offices as humanity-saving business ventures and instead pay attention to the people and organizations that make the real things?

I'm not suggesting that the film industry is an innocent place. Rather, that we should keep alive any meaningful art forms that bring communities together. And by any measure, if you are not actively supporting these things — say, by going to see a movie outside of your house in a local theater — you are effectively smothering them out of existence.