"An underappreciated masterwork of nuance and dread, this Bob Rafelson gem is a film I visit and revisit. We see Jack Nicholson at his most fearsomely restrained, Bruce Dern at his most dangerous, and Ellen Burstyn at her most complicated and weary."

"Walter Hill is a master who’s been copied by every Hollywood filmmaker since his first films and Ryan O’Neal turns in one of the coolest characters in The Driver. Bruce Dern plays a cocky cop who you can’t wait to see lose and Adjani plays a cool-as-a-cucumber damsel. Also check out Claude Lelouch’s C'était un rendez-vous, which acts like a weird French cousin to this film."

"Once again, we see sex and death wed like chocolate and peanut butter. Jane Fonda looks like the angel of bitter, angry suicide girls before such girls were ever born. Bruce Dern plays the psycho hillbilly we loved him playing in ‘The Big Valley’ on television. Gig Young claws his way to the bottom of the bottom-feeders, winning the Oscar just before his own real-life suicide. Here’s my favorite “date movie” of all time."

"I’m very proud of my movie, Nebraska. I don’t really know what a great film is. I don’t know what the ingredients should be. But I certainly think Nebraska is a credit to the industry of filmmaking and it’s done very, very well. And both he [director Alexander Payne] and Quentin [Tarantino, with whom Dern has worked three times] can make a f–king movie, trust me. Alexander said to me the first morning, “Do you see anything here, you’ve never seen before?” I went looking around – we were in Nebraska in some little town in the middle of October, cold, freezing – and I said, “Yes I do.” I said, “It seems like everybody here is putting their oar in before 8am.” And he said, “Well hopefully, that’s because we have 91 crew members here and 78 have worked every day on every film I’ve ever made.” He put his hand on my shoulder and he said, “So you, sir, can go take a risk.” And he said, “This is Phedon Papamichael; he’s your cameraman.” I met him the day before. And he said, “I wonder if you’d do something for Phedon and I, that we’re not sure you ever did in your career.” I said, “Well what’s that?” And he said, “Never show us anything. Let us find it.” And I knew for the first time in my life I had a partner. Al Pacino came up to me — I’d never met him — at a party and said, “You know, I’ve not seen your movie yet, Nebraska. But everybody back at the Actors Studio – ’cause we’re both members – is talking about your performance.” So Brad Grey is at the party, and he ran Paramount then, and I said, “You know, Al Pacino has not got a screener,” ’cause it was Christmas time. So he said, “Tell him he’ll have one tomorrow morning with his newspaper.” At noon the next day my phone rings and I pick it up and he says, “Bruce, Al Pacino.” I said, “Oh wow.” He said nothing for about 10 seconds, and then he said, “How did you do that?” I told him what Alexander told me about “let us find it.” And he said, “I have tears in my eyes, because you knew you had a partner. I’ve never had a partner.” He said, “Bruce, I never ever saw the work. You were just the character.” And that’s the greatest compliment to me I ever had."