"A coming-of-age story of two young Catholic girls in Ireland. This is a writer who is a woman, a lover, a daughter, a mother and she tries to bring all that together in her work. So few women writers were doing that in the 1960s. Instead, they were writing through a male persona, because they knew that otherwise they wouldn't be taken seriously. But as O'Brien says, 'I am the mother of sons; my sons have given me joy. I am a lover of men, and men have broken my heart -- but they've also given me joy."

"Before Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy there was the bleaker, 1960s John le Carré, who wrote the novel upon which this film is based when the cold war was at its coolest. This meditation on spy-craft by Martin Ritt is Brit-noir at its finest. Richard Burton as the alcoholic Alec Leamas oozes arrogance and desperation in equal measure, and with wonderful performances by Claire Bloom and the always interesting Oskar Werner, this is a spy movie Bergman could have made. An unusual saxophone-driven score of terrific atmosphere—I once chased all over London to find it, returning home to find the album disappointingly did not feature the best cues."

"We are indeed amusing ourselves to death. This started when Marshall McLuhan stated that the medium was the message. I said right away that the message was the medium. But, alas, my voice was maybe not loud enough, and/or the medium without a serious message is much more amusing to people. So the entertainers became the gods of the people, who screamed: “Keep entertaining us! We want to die being entertained!” The kings of the world wished the same, and they let their countries fall while they were entertained. This is the only book in this list that was published way back in the 1960s. I hope you can get it."

"She's a later discovery. She's still alive – an amazing, iconic Italian pop singer from the late 1960s through the 70s and 80s, whom I discovered when I was dating a very handsome Italian man in Rome, driving around on the back of a scooter and listening to her recordings. I always identify her as the Bette Midler of Italy, she had a very similar fashion and look, this crazy curly red hair and amazing make-up. She also had this wild voice, and there's this glamorous European quality to her that she brings me right to when I need to get there, especially living in the United States. Mina, take me away!"

"I’m going to cite probably a really odd one: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Catherine Deneuve – it’s a musical in the 1960s, and I think that’s the best example of utilizing color and production design in a film that’s been done in the history of cinema. Basically it’s stunning and it’s a really delightful, buoyant film about love and friends. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful movie and probably not what your readers would have thought I might have picked. I use The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as an example of how color can inform a character’s internal head space. I’ve used that many, many, many times in my projects — I’ve pointed production designers, writers, and cinematographers to that film as an [example of how to use] color. It’s a cool movie."