"No list would be complete without Lawrence of Arabia. Again, I’m constantly looking at that film for its sheer bravado, magnificence, scale, scope, and having just shot [The Hurt Locker] in Jordan in the summer of 2007, I visited Wadi Rum, which is the desert in which they shot Lawrence of Arabia, just about two hours outside of Amman. And it’s in the middle of the desert, to which David Lean brought — and this is in the ’60s — arc lights, and a whole production. If you see this desert, first of all, it’s gorgeous, it’s beautiful. But it’s a very forbidding landscape, not one you would imagine would be very film friendly; these beautiful, magnificent, extraordinary kind of red rock buttes that rise out of this red sand… I think Lawrence of Arabia brought us to Jordan and made that the location of choice for The Hurt Locker."

"This is one of the most beautiful movies ever made. Even with the atrocities and torture, it has real texture and an aesthetic aspect to it. Even the shit looks special. Pasolini is a very dear person for me. You have people who are Christian filmmakers or left-wing filmmakers or liberal filmmakers, but then you have a person like him, just a gay leftist who made the best Bible movie ever. I think that says something about how he could catapult himself into these big political discussions in a way that not everyone can do. If Paul Greengrass made this movie, you would get something that would be interesting politically, but you wouldn’t get any kind of texture or beauty. So that’s what I really admire about Pasolini, that in the midst of all this torture and sadism the movie is still very beautiful and very unique."

"The movie that I always watch before doing just about any project — and certainly before doing this one — is called Nothing But A Man. It’s a classic film. Ivan Dixon played the lead character and it’s just about this black man trying to make his way through the world. But it’s a beautiful, beautiful film, and it breaks my heart every time I watch it. It’s just one of the most extraordinary movies I’ve ever seen. I was introduced to it by a friend of mine; I was doing a play — probably eight or nine years ago — and my friend, Aunjanue Ellis, who is an actress, put me on to it and I had not seen it before. Now I watch it all the time. It’s great – I think it was in the 1960s. Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln -– it just was super. An incredible film."