"I’m not in love with John Ford’s movies. They are staples, and it’s like saying you don’t like bread—Ford’s films are in all filmmakers’ foundations, somewhere, it’s inescapable. But when it comes to being in love with movies, I’m more of an Anthony Mann girl. Having said this, Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln is one of the most beautiful films ever made. The images early in the film of Henry Fonda in his thick, unruly, natural environment of rivers and briars and brambles strike my heart in ways so deep I can’t even explain. The majestic landscapes Ford would be later known for are much more grounded here, more personal. What he shot reminds me of a home so far ago lost. And there is a feeling of that, deeper than nostalgia, running all through this film. It’s like a grand American ache. Henry Fonda explains on the commentary how he initially turned the film down, then the screenwriters went to his house and READ HIM THE SCRIPT! Out loud! What balls! I can’t imagine anyone doing that these days. Then he said yes to the part, did the screen test with the fake nose and flipped out when he saw himself as Lincoln and felt he couldn’t do it—he couldn’t play someone with that weight that Lincoln had and still carries and holds. Well—I won’t spoil it for you—you MUST hear what very simple ingenious thing grumpy old Ford said to get Fonda to do the role. Supporting Fonda’s performance is an incredible cast—Alice Brady in her final performance before her early death, Ward Bond, and Richard Cromwell (whom I had a real sweet thing for)! The booklet is just as poetic as the movie, with essays by Geoffrey O’Brien and Sergei Eisenstein between the pages of lovely quiet stills of a very accessible yet long-gone American landscape."

"I begin and end with road-trip movies. Easy Rider was a cultural phenomenon. It depicted the rise of hippie culture, condemned the establishment, harkened back to a mythical America that was being shot in the head metaphorically, and many people, including my own father, so identified with the main characters, Captain America and Billy, that they sought to emulate the values not only of the film but of the filmmakers, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda. I wrote about the transformative power Easy Rider had in my life in my book, I Blame Dennis Hopper, and let me tell you, the first time I saw it on TV, all cut up, I thought: This is the movie that ruined our lives and turned us into dirty hippies? I just didn’t get it. The years went by; I became an actress, worked with Dennis Hopper, then Peter Fonda, deemed them both mystics, and thought: Yeah, I need to reinvestigate this film. So cue up the sixties soundtrack: Get your motor running . . . Easy Rider is mainly a road-trip movie about two alienated and rootless hippie bikers who travel on their choppers to make a drug deal, but somewhere along the broken road, Hopper and Fonda reveal themselves in an existential way. For instance, there’s a touching bit of autobiographical improv about the death of Fonda’s mother that Hopper apparently made him shoot. Watching Easy Rider, you never forget that Peter Fonda is the son of Henry Fonda—and that’s pretty existential too! It’s like he’s cinematically rebelling against the very American roles his father played—especially Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. Which, if you think about it, is also a road-trip movie about a broken America. Apparently, Henry Fonda came out of Easy Rider not understanding any of it. I’ve always loved the idea that while Peter was shooting Easy Rider and changing the world, Henry was shooting Yours, Mine and Ours, a Hollywood generation-gap movie, with Lucille Ball. Hopper had his finger on the pulse of the times when he made this film, and not just the peace movement. He came out of the studio system, acting in films like Giant and Rebel Without a Cause, and starred in countless television shows. His work as a director and an actor has been overshadowed by his wild lifestyle, and that’s a shame. Two films you should check out: Hoosiers, in which Hopper acted, and Colors, which he directed. Hopper literally began the independent film movement with this film. He probably also cursed us with hundreds of road-trip movies too—but here is the original. The tagline of Easy Rider was “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere . . .,” and that message still resonates, especially in the character of George Hanson, played so beautifully by Jack Nicholson. Let’s just say the casting of Nicholson as an alcoholic ACLU lawyer was a stroke of luck and genius. His performance opposite Hopper and Fonda, maybe because they were all buddies, is the heart of the film. Every road movie owes a debt to this scene, because every road movie since then seems to have a bonding scene like it, where all the characters reveal their inner hopes, fears, and dreams over a joint or two. They sit around the campfire smoking pot, and Hopper rationalizes that people hate him because he has long hair and is a hippie. Nicholson says, no, they hate you because you’re free. Cut to the thousands of folks who saw this film, quit their jobs, and became hippies! Easy Rider represented a time when freedom meant freedom from material things, freedom from driving in six lanes of traffic to work twelve hours a day at a job you hate. Freedom in 1969 was the land, the land of the free and the brave. Freedom was peace and love. The word freedom has been co-opted. Today, freedom means freedom to be selfish, freedom to carry guns. Freedom to hurt the land and its inhabitants for the sake of commerce. Easy Rider reminds us how far we have strayed from that journey."

"My first one is 12 Angry Men. I remember I watched it at school, I think I saw it at fourteen for the first time. And when you’re that age, you kind of want to watch big blockbuster movies and all that kind of stuff. And I just couldn’t get over the fact — basically it doesn’t leave the room for the whole movie. And it’s just these guys sitting around discussing this crime, and whether or not they’re going to find the guy guilty or not. I just found it so engaging and stuff. You know the cast and stuff was just incredible with Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb, and all these incredible actors. I just thought it was mind blowing, you know? I think it was based on a radio play — I don’t know. And then I figured it was a theatrical play, and then they made a movie. That’s the other thing, I was also just beginning to start to want to be an actor. Or join the theatre group in my hometown. It all sort of happened at the same time, and I was beginning to understand it a little bit more about how they’re engaging, and how you can hold people’s attention for that long just by the performance itself."

"I feel about The Lady Eve the same way I feel about A Hard Day’s Night. Both movies are on my all-time top ten list of favorites. The first time I saw them, I had the same impression of comic density. Enormous energy that I was running to keep up with. I felt like I had to see this movie again, if only to have another shot at laughing at the hundreds of jokes. I love movies that make you feel like you are not getting it all the first time, that there is much more to be had. Eve is my favorite Sturges. I love the chemistry between Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda—like when she takes him back to her stateroom, manipulates him into making a pass, and shuts him down with “Hopsie, you ought to be kept in a cage.” On a pure filmmaking level, the honeymoon night on the train when Eve confesses to all her premarital dalliances is a tour de force of writing, acting, and editing, and it’s one of the best musically scored comic sequences in any movie ever! Sturges’s mother was an adventuress, a confidante, and traveling companion of Isadora Duncan. I like to think there is more than a little of his mother in Eve."