"This is a portrait of a city I love as well as a self-portrait of a woman who changed my life profoundly, and who I miss every day. Through the oral history tradition she helped found with her groundbreaking book, “Edie,” Stein chronicled the histories of prominent Los Angeles families, including her own, through edited interviews with a huge cast of characters, a masterwork by the most intuitive conversationalist I ever knew."

"Once Upon a Time in the West would come on the million-dollar movie. We had that once a week, I think, when everything was deployed on television. I had a [inaudible] television and I watched Once Upon a Time in the West, and I was blown away by the power in the stillness and silence of Charles Bronson as Harmonica, and I just thought the culmination of Morricone’s score with Leone’s gorgeous style, and then the showdown between Henry Fonda, who is outstanding as a bad guy, and Bronson was one of the most powerful moments I’ve ever experienced in cinema, and it really made a big impact."

"It could be 8½. I mean, 8 ½ to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act if filmmaking and creativity. And you can probably link it with Stardust Memories, because I love the way that Woody [Allen] did a take on it as well. I mean, it’s a little bit of a self examination of the act of making a film. [Reels off another long list of films] Apu. That’d be my fifth, if I didn’t get a fifth one. Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy — I just love those films; the way he uses scenery to create close-ups and wides, and just the emotion of it."