"One of my all-time favorite novels is Crime And Punishment. I read it in high school, and for some terrifying reason, I really identified with Raskolnikov. It's so funny, because he sort of behaves amorally, but he has an incredible sense of right and wrong. Obviously, I couldn't identify with him as a killer, but I could understand what it means to know that something's wrong but do it anyway. I was 17 when I read it, and the feeling of having betrayed one's sense of right and wrong — and then living with the consequences — was something that I could completely identify with."

"This would have to be my favorite classic novel. It’s such a beautiful, tragic love story—a book that will just destroy you. And Faulkner’s language is so utterly descriptive. He can write an entire page that consists of only adjectives and two commas. Actually, he’s the reason I ended up passing high school English, because my punctuation was always kind of…eccentric. I would say to my teacher, ‘Well, you know, William Faulkner—he doesn’t use proper punctuation.’ And one of my teachers ended up devising a system with two grades, where you were graded on content and then on whether it was properly written."

"It’s like a weird musical. That is actually one of Christopher’s favorite movies that he did, unlike the last one. It was not a very successful movie when it came out but it’s really quite a hypnotic and amazing film I think. It’s like a weird dream. Some of these films I can’t kind of watch over, because they play in your mind like a dream. It reminds me of growing up in Burbank. Things are quite normal on the surface but underneath they’re not quite what they seem. I found this film to be such a strange mixture; the elements are very odd."

"I think the one film that I could watch over and over and over again –and I have — is Man on Fire. I feel like that’s a common dude answer. I feel like every dude loves that movie. Yes, the action is great, but I think that the biggest thing why I love that movie is the relationship between Denzel [Washington] and Dakota [Fanning]‘s characters. You just fall in love with that relationship and then it’s just so heartbreaking. Plus, I can watch anything Denzel. Yeah, he can do about anything and I will be there. I would say that’s probably my favorite of his."

"My favorite movie of all time is a film by Elia Kazan called A Face in the Crowd. I just love that movie. It’s one of those films that, any time it’s on, I’m stuck. I’m literally stuck in front of the TV, watching it until it’s over. I just think it’s just a brilliant commentary. It stars Patricia Neal, Andy Griffith, Walter Matthau, and it’s this amazing look at the impact and power of television. He made this film at the end of the ’50s, and even today, it’s as relevant and as powerful and as impactful as it was fifty years ago."

"One of the first ones I remember my jaw being on the floor. You know, that idea of who’s running the asylum [laughing]? And who’s really crazy and who isn’t? It was a spectacular film to me. Jack Nicholson — it was my first [time] being introduced to him in such an unbelievable way, and he didn’t seem like he was acting to me. He seemed like a crazy man. And he wasn’t acting, because I’ve subsequently met him and he is a crazy man! All the characters were — you know, I don’t need to say it. One of my favorite films. And I’ve always wanted to play Nurse Ratched."

"This is one of my favorite Ozu movies. On Ozu’s gravestone is the word mu, which in Japanese means “emptiness.” For me, emptiness and silence are very familiar, important family members, and I think the forms come out of emptiness. In the way Ozu makes movies, I feel deeply aware of emptiness. There is something very wise, quiet, and powerful in it. So Ozu for me is like a big brother who helps me remember from time to time the really important things about the form of moviemaking, which have nothing to do with manipulating the audience or being clever. Form can have something to do with truth."

"Another film I love is The Power of One, and that became one of my favorite films because I actually got the chance to work with Armin Mueller-Stahl, who is amazing, and I was also doing a film in South Africa at the time. I turned 14 in South Africa and had learned all about Apartheid and the country and the history of it, so watching that film in South Africa was wild, and I felt a definite connection to it. And it’s one of those films that not everyone knows about; you say The Power of One and a lot of people go, “What? I’ve never seen that.”"

"I’ll throw in my favorite documentary, which is Riding Giants. Any time it’s on, I stop what I’m doing and watch it because I’ve embraced the surfer lifestyle now. I’ve been in a 23 footer on Waimea and I was out there without a board. I had to and my wife thought I was crazy and my children were begging me not to go, but they were 23 feet that day on the North End. The Super Bowl was on and I didn’t care about the Super Bowl. I had to go out there when I got there just to do it. I’m an old frog man, you know?"

"One of the very few westerns, my favorite classical genre, in the Criterion Collection. How to make an almost huis clos in the immensity of Monument Valley? Only Ford had that secret. The apparition of the great John Wayne in the Ford family, as the Ringo Kid, in a beautiful tracking shot, made him a star. Later, Wayne said about Ford: “This made me a star, and I’ll be grateful to him forever. But I don’t think he ever really had any kind of respect for me as an actor until I made Red River for Howard Hawks, ten years later. Even then, I was never quite sure.”"