Nick Offerman

"Taking a slight turn, I love the John Wayne film The Quiet Man. It’s quite something. It’s a John Ford movie, it’s John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. It’s kind of like John Wayne’s Brigadoon. He plays this boxer who killed a man in the ring in the States, and so, to escape his past, he moves to his ancestral little home in Ireland. It’s this quaint little village, and I believe it’s called Innisfree — I know Innisfree is from a Yeats poem, and it sort of represents the small Irish town of heaven; it’s sort of a fantastical place — but the town in The Quiet Man is Innisfree, which makes sense. So he goes there to escape his past, falls in love, of course, with Maureen O’Hara — who wouldn’t? — and her brother turns out to be the enormous, pugilistic, evil, Bluto-like landlord. So the movie cannot be resolved, nor can their love, without one final fistfight. It’s funny; just the other day, I sent a message to my agent, “Remake idea: The Quiet Man?” I have two fists. I can swagger."

"If I had to pick just one movie, I’d say, “Give me The Big Lebowski,” because I can watch that thing 20 times in a row. I’m such a fan, and really, no one’s busted me on it yet, but all I really want to do is be John Goodman when I grow up. He’s so incredibly intelligent and full of pathos and hilarity, while at the same time, being this crazy linebacker of a man. His work in that and Raising Arizona, which I’ll put in a subset under The Big Lebowski, when he eats that fucking bowl of cereal while smoking a cigarette in Raising Arizona, I’m like, “Alright, there is room for me in the pantheon of actors.”

"[Akira] Kurosawa’s Rashomon. I mean, any Kurosawa blows my mind out my ass. We did a production of Rashomon that was actually a play. We did that at my college. We had this amazing sword teacher named Robin McFarquhar, and that was one of his big triumphs, was this production of Rashomon. It’s such a cool play, because you do it four times in a row, and you get everybody’s perspective. You know, one time the samurai is brave, one time he’s a coward. It’s really delicious for the actors."

"I’ll start with Midnight Run. Just one of the finest Goddamn movies I’ve ever seen. Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro. If there’s a better buddy comedy, show it to me, and I’ll shake your hand. It’s so funny. It’s also where I learned what chorizo is. Being from Illinois, not a lot of truck stops serve chorizo and eggs. It was part of my “goin’ out west” legend, like, “One day, I will go to California, and on the way there, I will experience chorizo and eggs.”"

"As a kid in the middle of Illinois, it was really a culture vacuum. I mean, we had the Eagles on the radio and John Denver, which are fine in their own right, but you want a little more variety, especially if you’re going to end up being an underground hedonist like myself. When Mel Brooks movies came my way, it was just like, “Holy shit. These were made in heaven and sent straight to my VCR.” You know, come on, just Mongo. If you’re 12, all you care about is Mongo farting and punching out a horse. Literature does not become any more refined than that of the great Mel Brooks."