The Movies that Made Men

After I published The Movies that Made Me, I started to wonder about other people.

I shared how the films I watched on repeat as a kid, Stand By Me, Rocky, Rambo, Karate Kid, Footloose, Can’t Buy Me Love, Adventures in Babysitting, Savannah Smiles, Dazed and Confused, became teachers. They gave me a script for manhood, messy and contradictory as it was.

That sparked a thought. Movies shape us in different ways.

So, I built something for us to explore together.

It is a custom GPT that takes the movies you grew up watching and reflects back what they might have been teaching you about being a man. You type in a list of your childhood favorites, and it gives you an analysis of the main male characters:

• The surface traits we all saw.

• The deeper layers that made them human.

• Their love-based moments of connection, care, or integrity.

• Their fear-based moments of control, dominance, or withdrawal.

• A short summary of the overall themes those stories may have planted in you.

This is not about a single definition of masculinity. I believe there is no one masculinity. There are masculinities, plural, as varied and complex as people themselves. And this reflection is not just for men. People of all gender identities grew up on films and absorbed lessons about gender, leadership, and belonging.

What this tool does is hold up a mirror. It might help you notice the narratives that shaped you and maybe see them in a new light.

Think of it as playful cultural archaeology. Digging into the VHS tapes, DVDs, or Netflix queues that left fingerprints on us when we were young.

I would love for you to try it. Put in the films you watched on repeat. See what comes back. And if something surprises you, or stirs something, share it in the comments.

Because if there is one thing I have learned, it is that the films we watch do not just make us. They keep remaking us. And noticing that is where change can begin.