Holes is, without a doubt, my favorite movie of all time. It was one of my favorite books as a kid, and when the movie came out in theatres several years ago (okay, almost a decade ago), I saw it on opening day and fell head over heels in love with it. It then became the movie I used to watch all the time with my little brother (seven years younger than I, who just turned 16) when I lived at home. We still consider it “our movie” and can recite almost the entire thing. I’ve probably watched it more than 100 times… and that is not an exaggeration.

As I was working on Electric Desert the other day, I was thinking a lot about Holes because the setting of the story is very important. My favorite books are ones where the environment is just as important of a character as the people. And I’m just a sucker for good adventure stories. This movie is like a western, a romance, and a bildungsroman all in one.