"I watched this 1947 stark, black and white, noirish prison drama as part of research for a film I directed called Animal Factory, written by novelist and ex-convict Eddie Bunker. For years I thought director Jules Dassin was a Frenchman working in the U.S. I was surprised to learn he was an American (Russian Jew) from Connecticut who fled the U.S. during the red scare of the fifties. He ended up in Paris and made the wonderful French film Rififi, which added to my confusion. The Naked City (1948) by Dassin is also a classic, shot on gloriously gritty locations in New York City."

"I also related to [Yojimbo] too because he’s a samurai who doesn’t really have to give a f— — forgive my French — but he doesn’t really care. He has [some of] the morals that I do in the sense that… Kurosawa is brilliant. He doesn’t really come out and let the audience know what Yojimbo’s doing. You almost wonder if he’s immoral because he’s killing all these folks and you’re not sure why until the end. At the end of the second act, you’ll see. You realize that both sides are evil, the whole town is evil. He wants to kind of annihilate all of them [laughing]."

"In my top three love stories. Narciso Yepes’s legendary score gives this juvenile romance its fame and contributes to its magic, but the movie is an entity of perfection. The artistic direction is meticulous and inspired; there’s a vanguard oneiric look to the film. Brigitte Fossey delivers an endearing and incredibly mature performance, and looks the epitome of femininity despite her—gulp—six years of age. Great opening sequence depicting the 1940s French exodus from Nazi occupation. Genuine and sensible study of youthful mores; creative representation of the children’s universe. Stunning grace and poetry. Heartbreaking departure scene. I love that film. It makes me want to be a pretentious critic."

"There’s this movie called Le Souffle. It was called Deep Breath. It’s a f—ing amazing movie. It’s about a teenage boy who is kind of expelled from school, and he has to live with his uncle, I think, in the French countryside. I remember watching it when I was maybe 18 or 19, and I just loved the performances in it so much, and I think it’s kind of like a kid who’s on the run from himself in a way. I think it’s kind of quite related to Good Time as well. It’s just incredibly, beautifully shot. Yeah, that’s one of them."

"Jules Dassin was an American filmmaker who moved to Paris to escape Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the rest of the HUAC thugs. In the City of Lights he managed to make the most French gangster film and best heist movie ever. The actual break-in and robbery scene (based on a real burglary in Marseille at the turn of the century) happens over an astoundingly tense twenty-six minutes of silence. It is unforgettable. Dassin himself plays the role of the Italian safecracker Cesar under the pseudonym Perlo Vita and showed himself to be as adept in front of the camera as he was behind it."