"Have you ever had one of those moments when you just had to stop and go, ‘Wow’? That’s how I felt the first time I read this book in 1989 and how I feel each time I reread it. It helped cure me of the disease to please—and steered me in the direction of my own true north. My favorite insight? ‘When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment."

"I can’t leave out Kubrick. I think my favorite Kubrick movie is kind of tied between A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. The Shining meant a lot to me. It was the first movie that made me really want to act. I love Jack Nicholson in that movie. I didn’t know who Jack Nicholson was at the time — I was like 11 when I saw it, but something about what he was doing in that movie just fascinated me."

"This is many people’s least favorite Rohmer film. Yes, the main character is a bit charmless, but the film is astonishingly pure – the story of one man’s journey on foot through Paris, over the course of a few days. It’s also quite dark. We follow the main character's descent into vagrancy, and gradually – like him – start to see Paris from a perspective very unusual for 1950s movies: distant, cold, alienated. A brilliant anomaly among Rohmer’s films. "

"Now, my favorite films as a more mature person, when I was learning about what the director is and does, probably a lot of them were Howard Hawks movies, like Only Angels Have Wings and Rio Bravo. In Hawks’ world, Only Angels Have Wings and Rio Bravo are his visions of adventure stories with male groups, and men and women’s relationships, and life and death and danger. He’s developed that idea throughout his career. Those are just his beliefs."

"I’m also a big fan of Head and The King of Marvin Gardens, but this is my favorite of Bob Rafelson’s films. It is also one of the greatest ever about the solitude that comes from feeling adrift and morally alone in the world. I think Rafelson is oddly underappreciated, especially seeing as he made a succession of films that pretty much summed up the mood of seventies. I’m also determined to make a film with Karen Black."

"Before the Rain is one of my favorite movies of recent years. I think, in a very interesting way, there is a lot of spiritual thought hidden in the movie. When I saw it, the structure of the movie was very new, how it works with time. In my opinion, “time” will be one of the big topics in the future of telling stories, and how we approach it narratively will change in the next twenty to thirty years."

"Chaplin’s great satire on the American fantasy of infinite progress. For a movie about the plight of the dispossessed, it is overflowing with hilarity. Perhaps my favorite visual gag in any movie: a flag falls off the back of a passing truck. Chaplin picks it up and waves it exuberantly at the driver—just as a mob of protest marchers come up the street behind him, causing the police to mistake the Little Tramp for a radical leader."

"I think Princess Bride is my very favorite all time movie. It’s gotta be number one. There is no way that movie comes on without me watching it. It’s funny. It’s sweet. It’s adventurous. I can watch it with my kids. It’s just a delight. I just feel great watching the movie and afterwards. It might be the one movie I’ve seen more than any other movie. I don’t know if that kills my tough guy image."

"One of my all-time favorite Altman films, and clearly one of his strangest. I’ve seen it a bunch over the years, and I always see something new in it with each viewing. The idea for this came to Altman in a dream, and it’s fantastic that he took note and crafted this understated, surreal dark comedy from such a place. People just don’t make films like this anymore. Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall are perfect."

"For most of the movie, you’re laughing and wondering, How could Preston Sturges not be as famous a funny filmmaker as Billy Wilder or Woody Allen? And then a turn in the third act seriously raises the stakes and the movie becomes a harrowing drama. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin the end, but if you’ve ever tried to make anyone laugh, or found laughing your favorite sound in life, this is your movie."