Josh Ritter picks 4 movies to pair with ‘I Believe in You, My Honeydew’

In Pairings, artists and creators pick the movies that complement their latest work.


Josh Ritter is a folk musician and singer-songwriter—a personal favorite of the Cinema Sugar team—whose albums include The Animal Years, So Runs the World Away, The Beast In Its Tracks, and Sermon on the Rocks. His newest album I Believe in You, My Honeydew is out now wherever you get your music!

We asked Josh to pick a few movies that pair well with the new album.


Fargo (1996)

The Coen Brothers are consistently coming up with new ways to shine, but Fargo will always have a special ice-fishing shack in my heart. Many of these songs are written in the palette they’ve perfected and I’ll never pass a giant Paul Bunyan statue without thinking of them.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Oftentimes, making art, I feel like Richard Dreyfuss sculpting a mound of mashed potatoes with a fork. I can’t say why what I’m doing is important, only that it is, desperately, to me.

Arrival (2016)

This record is primarily an opportunity for my artistic/invisible muse and I to share a common language. Developing that language between ourselves has taken decades, so I can tell you I appreciate a movie about learning an alien language, and all the beauty and potential that it explores.

Contact (1997)

The story of a woman listening to the Universe resonating is one that I can truly resonate with! I am a little tiny human organism in the wide universe. My place is to listen. But in listening, in looking, I am given brief glimpses of other worlds. Sometimes I feel that I am transported to them just as Ellie Arroway was.

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