By Dan Brown

I think the world of my friends. 

So it won’t surprise you to learn there are many pop-culture friendships I love.

Harry and Sally.

R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Holmes and Watson.

Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy.

Falstaff and Prince Hal.

What can I say? I get so excited seeing friendship expressed on the screen or page. I love hearing the merits of a friendship vocalized with sincerity in a pop song.

There’s something so beautiful about friendship – two or more people who aren’t related, coming together out of common interests or shared circumstances. 

Whether it’s the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, the Golden Girls, or Rick Blaine and piano player Sam, I take an unreasonable amount of joy from depictions of friends enjoying each other’s company.

Maybe that’s why my favourite movie of all time is Dazed and Confused, which follows a bunch of different friend groups on the last day of school in 1976 in small-town Texas.

It was about a million years ago (long before streaming) that director Quentin Tarantino revealed in an interview whenever he was in an unfamiliar city, he would find a video store and rent Dazed and Confused. It made him feel less lonely, he explained.

Me, too.

Whenever I read old Peanuts collections and I find a cartoon in which Snoopy calls Woodstock “little friend,” I end up crying. Snoopy doesn’t even understand his bird buddy most of the time but loves him just the same! As I’m often telling my wife, they have one of the most beautiful friendships in human history.

And the friends don’t necessarily have to be unrelated. Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter Rory are best friends in spite of their shared blood. There are generations of women who dig their closer-than-close relationship, watching and re-watching The Gilmore Girls even years after the series went off network TV.

Like every other dude, I have a special appreciation for male friendships. Probably the gold standard in that regard is the film version of M*A*S*H, which revolves around a bond forged in a nightmare situation – the Korean War. Hawkeye and Trapper John are kindred spirits who help each other stay sane under the most trying circumstances humans can experience.

Nor will it surprise you to know some of my favourite tunes celebrate friendships, like You’ve Got a Friend, Thank You For Being a Friend (a soundalike became the theme to Golden Girls!), She’s My Best Friend, and Waiting on a Friend. I must have written the lyrics to Lou Reed’s My Friend George in every classmate’s yearbook at the end of Grade 13.

Naturally, one of my favourite Bible verses comes from the Book of John: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” I loved how the supposedly blasphemous motion picture The Last Temptation of Christ showed Harvey Keitel’s Judas didn’t want to betray Christ, his close friend, but was almost forced to do his part to fulfill God’s plan.

All these examples sustain me. They inspire me. And they make me love and appreciate my small circle all the more.

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.