"This was my grandfather’s first cinematic gift to me. He was a filmmaker who made commercials in Italy in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and he loved Visconti, who was always his favorite. So he would make me watch films regularly, and this was one of the few that could have felt like homework but didn’t. I love where the film comes from, in terms of the evolution of Visconti’s career. I like that he started off making this pretty dogmatic neorealism and then went on to make this operatic film. The difference between the two approaches is a really beautiful manifestation of his ability to grow as an artist and also to just do multiple things. His cinematic language changed based on the people who populated his frames, and this movie feels grand because it’s got cinema royalty in it, like Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale. The frame feels like it’s the right size and scope and weight for people of that stature."

"I guess I’d have to say This Is Spinal Tap. I don’t know that many movies made me laugh as hard as that did — the first few times I saw it, anyway. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I know that at some point I will watch it again and laugh anew at it. That movie is just so brilliant. It captures something from a period in rock and roll that, even though I wasn’t there, it just feels so right. It feels like, “Oh, yeah, this is based on something real.” That time in rock and roll, and these guys are not that far off from real rock and rollers of a certain band. And it’s just brilliant. I mean, it’s just so well done, and just so funny. I mean, they were such an amazing team: Michael McKean, and then Rob Reiner directing, and Christopher Guest. You know, it’s a masterpiece, a comedy masterpiece."