"I emigrated to Canada with my mother the year Mon oncle Antoine debuted, the same time that the U.S. was doing nuclear testing on Amchitka Island, off the coast of British Columbia. The FLQ (Front de libération du Québec) was flourishing. Canadian radio was given a mandate to stop playing American bubblegum round the clock. In this era of radical identity building, along came a candle-lit holiday fable set in an undertaker’s home in rural Quebec. The nephew of Antoine is a young boy coming of age in a world that no one outside his cloistered family could imagine. Mon oncle Antoine is about the sexual, material, and death’s-end taboos in a small village—and the taboo against anyone outside of it ever learning of such things. Some people puzzle over why this film keeps being called Canada’s finest decades after its release, when so many other artists have surpassed its modest ambitions. It is because of this: It was the beginning of saying, “We are not the back forty of the U.S.; we are not a trinket of the queen’s; our land and generations have given us a purchase of our own.” It was the beginning of remarkable Canadian filmmaking."

"Forrest Gump. That is the longest movie ever, but I will watch it as Forrest is learning how to walk, when his braces fall off of him; when he’s like, going through the swampy puddles of Vietnam; when he’s like, ping-ponging through China. I could watch that movie on Netflix or throw on a DVD, but I’ll end up sitting eight hours, watching it through commercials. I’m sitting there, like, “This is a lot, but I can’t leave. Forrest Gump is on!” “Yeah, you can watch it any time that you want.” “I know, but I’m gonna sit here through these commercials and watch Forrest Gump.” It is like the longest movie ever and becomes the longest movie ever when you sit there through commercials, but I’ll sit there through every stage of Forrest’s life. I will be there. It kind of feels like it needs no explanation because it’s Forrest Gump. I mean, there are so many stories in one, and it’s just so beautiful. You have a man who lives his life with only love and loyalty, loyalty for the ones he loves, and that’s what drives him. It’s so beautiful to watch how that all unfolds. That part at the end when he goes and he sees Jenny after all that time, back there towards the end, and then he’s this little boy and he’s like, “Is he smart or is he…” She’s like, “No, he’s really smart.” Then he goes and sits down next to him — which is a little, tiny Haley Joel Osment — but then they’re both watching the cartoons, and then they both turn their head and tilt it, and it’s just… It’s such a beautiful story, because at the end, you know, Jenny’s finally kind of gone through a life and exorcised all of her demons. She goes through this whole thing in her life, where she has this little boy, and only through love and wanting to take care of her child does she get her life together and reach back out to Forrest. It’s so beautiful at the end. She finally is there, but they don’t get much time together because she’s sick. Then at the end he’s got his little boy with him, and it’s just such a beautiful… It’s such a beautiful movie, and story, and you really feel like you’re with him through all these different stages of his life. The one thing that never changes is his heart. He never gets jaded like the rest of us. The rest of us in the world, we get jaded, we get hardened. Not “we,” but there’s a lot of people who go through the world and feel like they’ve been hurt, they’ve been betrayed, they’ve been beaten down, and so they’re allowed to live life angry, and you just have to give them a big old pass on being upset and angry, but that’s just the story we tell ourselves. S— happens to everybody, and a lot of s— happened to Forrest, but his heart never changed. I think that’s a beautiful story and something we can all take with us."