"For me, the most devastating childhood remembrance film—if that’s what it is. The story is too remarkable and strange to be fiction. Six-year-old Brigitte Fossey—trying to make sense of her just-witnessed parents’ deaths by urgently assembling a beautiful little animal graveyard—might just nudge out Dean Stockwell as my all-time favorite child star, and she makes me cry a lot more! Comedy mixed in with such sadness, sadness, sadness!!! This is early childhood distilled and put in a very dangerous bottle!"

"Well, let’s go one, La Strada, which is Federico Fellini’s movie with Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina. When was the first time I saw it? Oh, my God, I was in high school. To me, it felt like a fable, and it was beautiful and so moving, and I cry every time I see it. I’m almost crying thinking about it. How both broadly drawn and subtle the characters are, and how much sympathy Fellini has for the people in the movie. Have you ever seen it?"

"If I had to choose my number 1 favorite book of all time, it would be this. (And as this is widely considered one of the great American novels, I’m clearly not the only person who’s been hugely affected by it.) White Noise uses the story of a college professor and his family in small Midwestern town to explore American paranoia, consumerism, and novelty academic intellectualism. I love this book for its ability to to be dark, beautiful, smart, and hysterically funny, all at the same time."

"My favorite film is a Fred Astaire film called A Damsel in Distress. It’s without Ginger Rogers, but it’s based on a P.G. Woodhouse book, who is my favorite author of all time, and he wrote the script. And it’s hilarious, and it’s wonderful. Astaire is amazing in it. Joan Fontaine is 22 years old. It’s beautiful, and it’s based on this wonderful Woodhouse book. I watch that at least once a year. And it’s got Burns and Allen, and they’re hilarious. It’s a great film."

"To start with, a unique film from Scorsese’s career, rediscovered recently, and a feminist melodrama with constant emotion. The humanity that transpires within the slightest exchange, the slightest look between actors (a beautiful group led by Ellen Burstyn) can almost be seen as vestiges from another time – contemporary cinema having lost (momentarily?) this sort of innate grace, the pleasure of acting, of crying and living in front of a camera. Today’s “naturalism” seems quite faded when one sees a film of this moral fiber."

"I love Roland Kirk's stuff, it's always got these mad quirky bits in it, a bit like Mingus or like Monk, but very unique to him. It's a really sweet record, really beautiful, and again it has a link to nature and spirituality. It's deep but it has a lot of humour. Charming arrangements and melodies and a real lightness of touch. I love all those things where you hear him growl on the flute or shout or let off one of his conches."

"I’m about to sound like such a nerd. There’s a film I saw in college called Gabbeh. It’s about a Gabbeh — and I didn’t know this until I saw the film — it’s a kind of a carpet. It’s the story of this nomadic family that makes them, and it’s beautiful with all these amazing images — it’s very visual. I loved it and made my boyfriend at the time watch it — it was only like 10 minutes in. I did marry him anyway. [laughs] It’s amazing."