"It's like Easy Rider/Raging Bull meets Being There. Hollywood in the ’70s and ’80s is explored through the eyes of a strange idiot savant named Vikar, a man who loves movies so much he has Elizabeth Taylor and Monty Clift tattooed on the back of his head. This is a journey into the movies as religious quest."

"I’d say Casablanca. I love that it was a combination of political… It had a great love story, and it was unpredictable. It didn’t have the classic Hollywood ending, and that was what was great about it. Also, I love Humphrey Bogart, because he had the great ability to be masculine, yet vulnerable, and that was the perfect role to display that."

"Charles Laughton’s brilliant introduction (and also swan song) as a film director, which is a terrible loss for all of us. He fearlessly plunges us into impressionism and surrealism, where few in Hollywood have ever ventured. One can only imagine where he would have gone if he’d continued to direct. With a never-better Robert Mitchum, and a drowned Shelley Winters, yet again."

"Sturges’s improbable, implausible, yet completely believable fairy tale about Hollywood, about filmmaking, in all of its nonsense and its life-changing glory. Sturges digs deep into farce, but on the way finds something deeply thoughtful and moving. It’s the film I turn to whenever I think my career is devoid of meaning. Joel McCrea transcends himself, and Veronica Lake was never better."

"Originally issued as Reign of Terror, Anthony Mann’s Classics-Illustrated-meets-film-noir treatment of the French revolution is one of the most striking low budget period pieces to come from Hollywood, abetted by graphic b/w imagery from the great d.p. John Alton and striking production design from the always reliable William Cameron Menzies. Plus it’s witty moves like lightning."

"A masterpiece and one of the key achievements of 1970s New Hollywood—maybe only behind the Godfather films. Its mix of loving classicism, European influences, and ’70s permissiveness is jolting and desperately real. American small-town life has never been rendered with such empathy, unapologetic frankness, sadness, and despair. Timothy Bottoms’s performance is the most wrenching portrayal of male adolescence ever."