"Francis Ford Coppola; he’s one of my favorites, too."

"My all-time favorite, even before Francis Ford Coppola turned it into Apocalypse Now. The ultimate topic, the ultimate metaphor. What great book couldn’t have been called Heart of Darkness?"

"Francis Ford Coppola, man. Just the stories that happened on that set. And the soundtrack that they use in that film is so f**king cool. Great performances and a wonderful, entrancing movie — Brando and Dennis Hopper and Duvall. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” — what a great quote."

"I love the first Godfather movie, part one. And two. Another great director, Coppola. And then of course, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro. I had heard the stories about how they wanted a whole other cast, and Francis was under the gun and he rose to the occasion. He got great performances out of Pacino, and De Niro was unbelievable. All the secondary guys from Joe Spinell to Michael Gazzo. The casting was impeccable. He got a lot of great performances from people who were just getting into the business themselves. Duvall, everybody had so many layers. The performance he got out of Lee Strasberg, who never really did much acting in front of the camera. When I was in the Actor’s Studio, the only actor that Lee actually spoke to was Al, so [Coppola] used the relationship that the two had and that was quite interesting."

"I would cheat and say the two Godfather movies, The Godfather part I and II, edited in whatever order; I like the way they were sort of edited together in a single movie, but I also like them as they were released separately. And I think that that, for me, is the pinnacle of movies as a popular art form in America. It’s like a great novel, but it’s a super entertaining movie. It’s always funny to think that that was — you know, if you talk to Francis Ford Coppola, that was sort of his commercial movie that he got hired to make, and that was the one he did to make a lot of money. I have nothing original to say about it, but again, a movie that I cannot imagine ever getting tired of watching. When you come across it on TV, you stop and suddenly two hours have gone by, and you’re still with it. If you think about it, the performances in that… Everyone in that movie, just about, is as good as they ever were."

"The whole [Godfather] series was brilliant. I loved all three of them. But my favorite was number two. I thought it was extraordinarily shot. I think the way Francis Coppola puts these incredible stories together where he has the juxtaposition of having people be killed while this incredible symphonic music is playing and some opera is taking place — it’s all an opera. I think the whole Godfather series is like one magnificent opera. I just think it’s one of the great movies of the century — since film making. I think he is a genius. I think he just captured the passion and the anger and the ignorance of the whole world of the Mafia, and what that meant — the Black Hand. He glamorized them in a way that made us want to know them, be there, experience it — even though it speaks of great danger. But there was something so enticing about their world, that whole world. And the people were such rich studies of character. Robert De Niro was the greatest he’d ever been, and of course, Pacino. Those performances – every single performance was genius. I loved the films. I even like the third one."

"This is hard — to choose five — because there are a few in this genre that I really like, so I don’t know which one to pick. This is sort of going to be [from] an underworld, mobster kind of [genre]. So it’s either The Godfather II, even though I like all The Godfathers — I even like Godfather III; it’s just a different type of movie. But it’s between Godfather II and then also, there’s a movie that I did, and it’s not just because I’m in it — I love it — but it’s a movie called Paid in Full which happened to be a true story about these three drug dealers in the eighties who really made it big, and all this downfall happens. So I would have to put a couple of those in the fifth category. I would say Paid in Full, Godfather II — when Michael [Al Pacino] really grabbed the reins — and Goodfellas. And Casino — I was going to pick two of them, but I’m not. I would say Casino to me — I hated how Sam Rothstein got manipulated by Sharon Stone’s character in Casino. I mean, I just hate how he gets manipulated; that just gets ridiculous to me. I know it’s historic, but I hated that. So those are the three that I would put in as my fifth, in the genre of the underworld. The top of that list, I gotta go with Francis Coppola, Godfather II. Just for the epicness of it. And usually sometimes movies are long for no reason, but it was long for the right reasons, which is very rare. Usually, you’re like, “You could cut out twenty minutes of that,” but for me it was all story. To me, if I had to choose, I’d go with the classic Godfather II."