"The Blues Brothers was a big movie for me, because I was about 13 to 14 years old, and it was my first introduction to James Brown, my first introduction to Aretha Franklin. I knew about Murph and the Magic Tones, which was made up of Booker T and the MGs, essentially. Steve Cropper and “Duck” Dunn, the two guys in there, they were two members of Booker T and the MGs, and then the drummer, you know, he’s got one of my favorite lines in movie history; his name’s Willie Hall. There’s this great line where Willie Hall goes, “Jake, Elwood, you’re out of prison, things are lookin’ good for you. You got the money you owe us, mother f***er?” That’s Willie Hall. He actually plays at my kids’ birthday parties here in Memphis, Tennessee. But, it was a movie that just had the… I mean, my dad and I watched that, and the whole scene where the nun is just beating them up; I’ve never seen my dad laugh so hard. It’s an electrifying, fun movie, and Steven Spielberg makes a cameo at the end of it."

"Another all-time favorite would be Cuckoo’s Nest, which was particularly interesting from my perspective because a year or so before the film came out, I had seen the play. I was in college, and I was studying music. I wasn’t into acting or theater or any of that at the time, but a friend of mine was in the play, in a little black box production of the play at the theater department at the University of Montana where I studied music. And I went to see it, and it was, in many ways, an interestingly cast production, but it was brilliant. It was one of the first pieces of theater I saw that had that, you know, that real raw kind of Steppenwolf vibe that really blew me away. So when the movie came out, I kinda felt like, “You know, I don’t think I want to see this movie,” because the play was really so well done. But then I saw the movie, and obviously, [director Milos] Forman and the entire cast, down to people that didn’t even speak on camera, that movie was just so wonderfully done."

"There are certain movies that I always go back to, but before I make a movie, I always find myself watching The Last Detail, the Hal Ashby movie. There’s something about it that’s so alive. It’s one of the first movies to really have frank language. I think it was somewhat shocking at the time. It was the first movie where everyone aggressively cursed, but it was about people in the armed services. It’s also a small story that’s very intimate and you just fall in love with all these characters that are in this terrible situation. I always watch it because Hal Ashby shot it in such a way that it just feels real. It’s almost like a documentary. I like how he paces the scenes, the coverage, and I always go back to it because it reminds me that the most important thing I can do as a filmmaker is convince the audience that what they’re watching is really happening. I don’t want them to be aware of me. So that’s one movie. It’s both heartbreaking and hilarious, which is always my favorite combination."

"My father was a film buff. He instilled in me an appreciation of the art of movies. He felt that there was no cinema artist greater than Kurosawa. At a very young age he took me to see Throne of Blood and Seven Samurai. Since then I’ve seen Seven Samurai over fifty times, in theaters, on VHS, laserdisc, and DVD. The latest Criterion edition is my favorite version of my favorite action movie. I love all the extras, especially the history of the samurai, which really enhances the movie’s historical context. In the second season of Heroes, we did a story line set in seventeenth-century Japan. The Seven Samurai box set was an invaluable resource for the costume and art department. About half of our crew watched it and were really inspired by what they saw. It’s one of those movies that I can’t turn off. One minute of viewing and I’m hooked. I’ve heard many people say that about the first two Godfather films, but for me Seven Samurai is the one that lures me into watching multiple hours of a movie I know by heart."

"My second favorite film is probably even more intellectually challenging than Wong Kar-Wai; it’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I f***ing love that movie! I have two children; I’ve probably seen this movie, with each child, about 50 times each. And that’s no exaggeration. There’s nothing I don’t know about this movie. I once went to a meeting with an executive in Hollywood, and they asked me what I wanted to do. I said, ‘I’d love to do a remake of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang‘ — I was just making it up — ‘and I’d call it Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Boom,’ and he said that’s a great title! [Laughs] I was only kidding. But that’s a movie I really love. In the UK at Christmastime, the girls would get The Sound of Music and the boys would get Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It was that kind of thing, where every Christmas you would see it. So when I had kids, of course I put it on for my son and then he became obsessed with it. It’s the kind of movie where you never really get to the end; it’s so long, and the kids can only really wait so long. But the beginning of the film is like 20 minutes long, before anything even happens. It’s just the story of the car. It’s fantastic!"

"It’s a mad movie. It’s just insane. This was the first movie I remember having so many stars that I loved. My favorite scene is when the older woman realizes that her son-in-law lives close to the treasure, so she calls him up. I remember the phone ringing and ringing, and when they cut to her son, he’s with a girl in a bikini doing the twist to some song. And she has this disaffected look on her face, just staring into nothing. The son is in a ’50s-style bathing suit just jumping around her going, “Yeah. Go.” That moment is something I’ve put in theater pieces, and even when I go out and I’m on the dance floor, I think of that scene. So if that movie gave me anything, aside from the excitement of seeing all these awesome comedic actors, it was that moment. I love that old-style humor, you know, like Some Like It Hot, just over the top. I think comedy was done with a lot more class back then. And that was a crossover period. It’s hard to get that these days. Now it has to be cool. Back then it just had to be crazy and zany. That movie should be listed next to the definition of “zany” in the dictionary. “What is zany?” “Watch this movie.”"