HANDOUT: While at Knox, my friends and I in Seymour Hall (inappropriately nicknamed "The Ghetto") lived a blissfully communist lifestyle. Ours was a communal existence. As a rule, doors remained unlocked. Food was meant to be shared. And like Flounder's brother's 1964 black Lincoln Sedan, anything owned by one meant ownership by all. Practically, that made Vogel and Mother's dorm The Screening Room, where anyone could watch any movie, at any time, for any reason. Our first cinema du université was Spielberg’s blockbuster film, Jaws.

And more than any other, the line we echoed throughout and down the hallway of our college lives was as follows:

Jaws Movie Clip -The crew gets their first face-to-face look at the massive shark. TM & © Universal (2012) Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw Director: Steven Spielberg

As a metaphor, "We're gonna need a bigger boat," never failed to apply. Massive econ project due in twelve hours? "We're gonna need a bigger boat." Cafeteria not serving pucks and rings this Thursday? "We're gonna need a bigger boat." The Berlin Wall is coming down, brick by brick? Politically speaking--"We're gonna need a bigger boat."

What I love about film is the visual, universal appeal of a visceral life. Here, Chief Brody's experience is our experience. It's not, "I'm going to go get a bigger boat." It's "WE [my emhasis] are gonna need a bigger boat." Also, in America, bigger is always better. Such a statement eschews technological advancement, innovation. Like It's a Wonderful Life's George Bailey buying a steamer trunk for globe travelling, "I want a big one! One I can float home on!" was the metaphor of our youth.

I believe that film can be a transformative, collective experience for students. For my sophomore advisory boys, we watch Paul Newman's stunning Cool Hand Luke, a performance ripe for adolescent boys trapped in communal, educational isolation. Of course, prison as a metaphor for high school education is not new. The boarding school orphan is the tried and true archetype for the isolated teenager trope.

But Cool Hand Luke embodies more than rebellion. He embraces self-destruction. And while doing so, his brothers-in-arms nurture his life's mythos. Cool Hand is an idyll. Luke dies apocryphally in the end. So for me, the film is more about standing by what you believe in, and acting on that principle. Luke seemingly dies because no ethic or person can intervene compassionately, stop his relentless destruction. So what should his hapless "friends" have done to save Cool Hand Luke? How could Luke's story come to a kinder, more compassioniate conclusion?

This is the question the film raises (for me), and it's what I hope to push my guys to discussing. If they can't go beyond the jubilant camaraderie of the hard-boiled egg eating contest...so be it. But I hope they can discuss moments like these, clips that Randy Zamin's advisery worked with: