TCM's March 2010 Guest Programmer

I think I've mentioned before that I like the "Guest Programmer" as a way for TCM to introduce to classic movies people who might otherwise not realize how good classic cinema can be. This month's guest programmer is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a co-pilot who tends to get mistaken for a basketball player. He appears with Robert Osborne tonight, and his four selections are:

The Big Sleep at 8:00 PM ET, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall;
The Maltese Falcon at 10:00 PM, in which Bogart talks about "the stuff that dreams are made of";
The Shootist, John Wayne's final film, at midnight; and
Stagecoach, the movie that made Wayne a star, at 2:00 AM.

To be honest, I think I would have scheduled The Maltese Falcon before The Big Sleep. It's a better-known story, but more importantly, as a movie it's easier to follow than what's going on in The Big Sleep. Also, I'm very curious to see why somebody like Abdul-Jabbar would select a pair of John Wayne movies.