"I think the fifth greatest movie I ever saw was The Last Emperor. Again, it really happened. I mean he [director Bernardo Bertolucci] also could make a movie. The thing I’m leaving you with is this: I’m a runner. When you run, it’s about your training, and it’s the same way with filmmaking. If you miss a day as a runner, only you know it. If you miss two days, your opponent knows it. And if you’ve missed three days, the crowd knows it. All the movies I mentioned, you had, I don’t know, 60 to 150 shooting days. And every single day, everybody on the set brought it to work – everybody."

"I would start with Last Tango in Paris by Bernardo Bertolucci, which I think is amazing. Marlon Brando’s performance is just out of this world. It’s funny; today, I don’t think it would get the same kind of debate because of the sexual nature of some of the scenes, but for me, what was shocking was more the emotional intensity that he brought to the role. There’s a scene he has where he’s sitting at the bedside of his dead wife, and it’s just the most amazing scene of grief. And later, there’s a scene at the end where he’s in this dance hall, and he’s drunk. It’s just a beautiful performance. I think it was just unbelievable.And, of course, there’s also the romantic idea of Last Tango in Paris. I think everyone loves the idea of just him having an affair with a stranger and insisting on staying strangers. It’s a very simple idea, and the beauty of it is that they swap. She wants to know his name in the beginning; he refuses. And then slowly he needs her, he falls for her, and they change roles, and now she doesn’t need him any more."

"Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 is one of my favorites. It’s epic — when I saw it at a film festival, they literally had an intermission where they served pasta and red wine. It was wonderful. It’s a thin, handsome Gérard Depardieu in the prime of his youth, and Robert De Niro doing a great aging character, the rich boy. Depardieu [as] the poor boy. Probably one of the greatest entrances in the history of cinema for the beautiful actress Dominique Sanda. And Bertolucci uses this town, this little village — and you see it go from the turn of the century to WWII, and it changes with the seasons, and the time. And one of the best villains ever, Donald Sutherland, as this sort of grand guignol, a fascista, brown shirt — you know, black shirt — that is corrupted by the Mussolini movement in Italy. And he just completely surprises you with his performance. It’s really wonderful and kinky, and strange and beautiful. And the music is extraordinary. Yeah, it’s really a great film — a long movie, but a great movie — and it really left an indelible stamp on my brain. All these movies in my top five are what I call “desert island” movies. These are films that I can see again and again, and they have sequences or images in them, or they’ve left such a film memory in my imagination — such a stamp on my memory and imagination — that I can see them again and again."