"[It] would have to be up there for sheer enthusiasm. I love it for a million reasons. It’s just such a celebration. But I think I also — god not to sound like too much of a shrink — I grew up in a family with lots of divorces and things. Growing up, the first couple I knew that were really, truly like Disney movie in love and devoted to each other was a gay couple. And then one of them died — of AIDS — and I remember I was so young; I was in junior high when it happened. It was still at a time when gay culture was so judged and so reviled in so many places. The movie was such a celebration of song and dance, but also of a gay lifestyle, and it was a beautiful thing to see at that point in my life. For there to be something out there in pop culture that was celebrating and not apologizing [for] all of that — I just thought it was brilliant."

"Being swept up in British pop culture and its swinging sixties scene is something that I am not close to alone in and yet may be hard-pressed to explain. Well, the British are so beautiful, and you can’t understand a word they’re saying. Screaming girls and Beatle haircuts may provide some distraction, but A Hard Day’s Night captures the mood of a traumatized postwar culture just as effectively as other, starker films of the “new” British cinema. In Billy Liar, Tom Courtenay’s Billy could be a famous Beatle in the making except that comedy writing is his calling, and the more eccentric and imaginative he allows himself to become creatively, the clearer it is how stifled he is by his family, his lack of self, and his generally dismal surroundings. The bleakness and futurelessness are so embedded in this character’s outlook and ultimate outcome that even the sway of Julie Christie’s modern vivaciousness and beautiful smile can’t compete with his inability to rise out of his own sorry lot in life. Just a little bit heartbreaking."