"King Kong was a musical from South Africa that had an all-black cast. It was a fusion of South African traditional music, soul and jazz. It was so powerful when I listened to it for all those nights. I fell in love with that musical, which was a very big part of my life. I think [I was drawn to] the authenticity of the voice of what people call world music or ethnic music coming from the earth, of the people, the hope and their struggle. South Africans are so strong with their emotions and I think Africa itself is an amazing, inspirational place for music, because they live and breathe it. It was for me, a connection with the soul."

"Probably my favorite book of all time because of the truthful, raw language—it sounds so modern. To think that it was written almost seventy-five years ago at the end of World War II seems both astounding and inevitable. Plain, honest communication and wild, spontaneous beauty were all that was left after they’d cleared away the rubble. Enter Holden Caulfield, an off-kilter personality balancing an unlikely mix of cruelty, kindness, truth, acceptance and rebellion in one rather average noggin. Holden represents a new type of heartthrob, presaging the bored, hyper-vigilant James Dean types of later cinema—the romantic nihilists, capable of loving fiercely in the moment but standing equally aloof from and critiquing their own emotions. The dawning of the age of emo."

"When this came out, the hysteria over the clit-scissors scene was all I heard about, and when I watched the film, that was the least shocking thing for me. That scene with the crow in the foxhole and Dafoe beating on it trying to get it to die—that reminded me of an anxiety dream I've had, like a déjà vu from my own emotions. It's comforting when someone else’s darkness mirrors your own. Lars is brave with how intimate he is in his films. He goes off and says things that get him in trouble, and his bravery gets overshadowed. I see him as wonderfully vulnerable and brave. This is one of my top-five favorite films of all time."

"The seemingly precious whimsy of Wes Anderson’s style masks a sensibility that is at once delicate and magnificently imaginative. The Royal Tenenbaums has been described as an adaptation of a great novel that doesn’t exist, and it is set in an upper Upper West Side that also doesn’t exist. Anderson literally creates a world of his own to explore the most primal emotions and family dynamics. There is so much to savor—the sweat suits, the enchanting music, Gene Hackman on a tricycle—and the DVD is also a world of its own, as beautifully packaged as, well, a Wes Anderson film, with Kent Jones’s lucid manifesto defining Anderson’s particular brand of genius, and a great gallery of production design drawings."