"""It’s just amazing. I’ve been watching all of the Maysles Brothers‘ films and I’m really into their approach, which they called “direct cinema”, and the whole school that came out of DA Pennebaker, Robert Drew and so on. I love the whole idea that life can be as dramatic as fiction. It’s very different than reality television, because that’s very manipulated. The Maysles’ approach is minimal interaction and being as observational as possible. Gimme Shelter has such drama, and it’s so well-done. As are all of their films. I also love Salesman, which also proves that their philosophy can really work, because it just has these real Bible salesmen. But to me it has as much drama and tension as Arthur Miller or Eugene O’Neill – it’s like the Death of a Salesman and The Iceman Cometh all rolled together – but it’s real! I just can’t get enough of it."""

"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."