"Requiem for a Dream is a really interesting film. It changed my idea of what people really wanted to see. Because I came from the UK, as a European film director, it was interesting to see how American studios or financiers were really into European cinema. They would always quote certain movies that I made that nobody else had seen — like Gangster No. 1. I was amazed, like, ‘Wow, you’ve actually seen that movie?’ And it dawned on me that people in America aren’t that dumb after all, you know? They’re kind of smart — much smarter than I was about movies. And when I saw Requiem for a Dream, I understood it. This guy got cash, he got money, to make this movie. It’s quite a hard movie to actually sell — can you imagine trying to sell that movie? And for that alone I think Aronofsky is a genius. I like what he does. I even liked The Fountain. The Wrestler is a great movie; I think Pi is a genius piece of work. I think he deserves a lot of praise. For people like me, who come from Europe and go to America and think nobody’s going to know what I’ve done, I’m a struggling filmmaker, and then suddenly you go into a studio and the head exec is like, ‘Gangster No. 1, I loved that film, it had this and that person in it…’ They see everything. I was quite cheered by that."

"Watched a lot of this on my phone on the RER B because I kept seeing the cover or poster or something. Watched it in sections on my phone, which must be blasphemy. I watched it while I was in postproduction for An Oversimplification of Her Beauty and briefly became insecure about finishing the movie because I felt that, as a person making a movie about making a movie about all the women in my life, I was accidentally plagiarizing 8½"

"The Blueprint deserves its own shit. I still remember where I was at and where I bought the album from. I remember driving around in my mom’s car, because she had a little mini-system in her car. I remember playing this album to death, front to back. I only skipped one song, which was ‘Jigga That Nigga,’ but even that I used to play. So even the song I skipped I still know the lyrics to. It’s just a classic, hands down."