"Quintessential Englishness and the quivering heart that beats beneath the stiff upper lip. This is a most wonderful story about love and friendship, and how duty can get in the way of both. Perfect performances by Anton Walbrook and Deborah Kerr, and Roger Livesey as the colonel. When Theo, played by Walbrook, the colonel’s adversary in wartime but now his friend, announces to him that Edith (Kerr) and he are to be married, both the colonel and Edith realize that his stiff upper lip has gotten in the way of their chance at real love. The directors capture this moment so tenderly and beautifully it is impossible not to cry. Set against the backdrop of forty years of twentieth-century war, it is a very sad film that is also both exciting and hilarious. Churchill decided it was negative propaganda and banned it. Michael Powell proposed marriage to Miss Kerr in Hyde Park, opposite the entrance to the Dorchester hotel. She declined. A movie about broken hearts."

"Another one I saw as a kid and have seen many times since. It’s etched itself into my mind, both the visuals and the story. First of all, this melancholy provincial town, this shabby hotel where the Victory Day is being celebrated. I adore these atmospheres in Poland. And this typically Polish situation, where the urge to live clashes with the sense of duty, where hope is mixed with cynical despair. The way that history gets in the way of love—that obviously stayed with me. Then there are the deep-focus compositions and the dramatic lighting. And it has so many memorable scenes, like the vodka glasses that are lit and sent sliding down the bar counter in a kind of All Souls ceremony. And the assassinated politician embracing his petrified killer. And Cybulski. I love films carried by a bravura performer, especially when it’s not posturing and the character is complicated and real."

"Well The Shining I thought a lot about, because we did Stephen King’s 1408, which was another movie set in a hotel room, and the madness of that. But I think just seeing it in theaters, you know — I think it’s when you saw it. My mom was from Boston, so we used to go to Nantucket, and it was the summer and I remember I snuck away in the afternoon to go see it, at around 4 or 6 o’clock or something, and when I came back out it was dark and I had to walk down this dark street alone. And I remember being really, I mean really scared coming out of that theater; like, I did not want to leave the street lights to walk home. The other experience I remember was I saw Apocalypse Now in the theaters and I remember coming out of that and I almost couldn’t speak. Stunned."

"In 1968 I came to England and stayed at the Inverness Court Hotel in Bayswater. I bought a little hifi - hifi? Lofi! - in an electronics store, and bought Beggars Banquet and The White Album, and listened to them on acid. American acid. Then we went to the Roundhouse and took the guy we bought the turntable from and we never saw him again. American drugs and British drugs were different. Like the difference between American weed and the stuff you had here, mixed with tobacco, Smoke American weed and it was "Cuckoo!" - you're on the frickin' moon. Our acid was LSD from Owsley, the real stuff, and we brought it over. We were eating it like candy. And that's what we gave the to the guy who sold us the turntable. The Stones were the greatest rock'n'roll band ever. They were smart rebels, and you can't make up the stories about Keith, they're too good. They're the blueprint for every band there is."