"I love L.A. Confidential. If it’s on for even a second, I just watch it to the end. I almost want to call my cable service provider and ask them not to show it any more, because it has overwhelmed my life. It’s because I’m from California, from Los Angeles, because the idea of police corruption, of political ambition, of logic and defying expectations. Really, Bud White is Rudy, in the thug cop questing for detective greatness. [laughs] There’s something about that. Also, the way that it commingles all of the ideas of pornography and politics and financial development and mob power and drugs. You know, I studied history and English at UCLA, and one of the big themes in a bunch of our history classes had to do with, “How is it that Los Angeles and Hollywood and California present themselves to the world as both this destination place of palm trees and glitter and gold and your future, and also corruption and deceit?” There’s this duality to it, and I just think that Curtis Hanson’s way of delivering that… And the performances! I mean, David Strathairn and Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger and Kevin Spacey and James Cromwell… Police corruption, and justice, vigilante justice, and it’s just got everything. It’s just a perfect movie."

"The two supreme works of childhood/horror. Lamentations of worlds lost and the innocents trapped in them. Sublime fairy tales of despair that depict the adult world as a toxic environment for kids to exist in. Secret treasures kept in the hearts of children must be safeguarded from the corruption of an adult world full of certainty and arrogance. Both films are so beautiful and so dark—they truly make me weep in awe."

"The two supreme works of childhood/horror. Lamentations of worlds lost and the innocents trapped in them. Sublime fairy tales of despair that depict the adult world as a toxic environment for kids to exist in. Secret treasures kept in the hearts of children must be safeguarded from the corruption of an adult world full of certainty and arrogance. Both films are so beautiful and so dark—they truly make me weep in awe."

"Kurosawa’s High and Low is one of the greatest and most contained crime thrillers ever made, with the first half largely confined to one location, and the second half venturing out into a real and deeply divided world. Brian De Palma’s Blow Out is a nihilistic portrait of political corruption, featuring John Travolta at his most blazingly charismatic. These are without a doubt two of the films that made me want to make films. They’re that inspiring."

"Kurosawa’s High and Low is one of the greatest and most contained crime thrillers ever made, with the first half largely confined to one location, and the second half venturing out into a real and deeply divided world. Brian De Palma’s Blow Out is a nihilistic portrait of political corruption, featuring John Travolta at his most blazingly charismatic. These are without a doubt two of the films that made me want to make films. They’re that inspiring."