"What would Fellini do after La dolce vita? We all wondered. How would he top himself? Would he even want to top himself? Would he shift gears? Finally, he did something that no one could have anticipated at the time. He took his own artistic and life situation—that of a filmmaker who had eight and a half films to his name (episodes for two omnibus films and a shared credit with Alberto Lattuada on Variety Lights counted for him as one and a half films, plus seven), achieved international renown with his last feature and felt enormous pressure when the time came for a follow-up—and he built a movie around it. 8½ has always been a touchstone for me, in so many ways—the freedom, the sense of invention, the underlying rigor and the deep core of longing, the bewitching, physical pull of the camera movements and the compositions (another great black-and-white film: every image gleams like a pearl—again, shot by Gianni Di Venanzo). But it also offers an uncanny portrait of being the artist of the moment, trying to tune out all the pressure and the criticism and the adulation and the requests and the advice, and find the space and the calm to simply listen to oneself. The picture has inspired many movies over the years (including Alex in Wonderland, Stardust Memories, and All That Jazz), and we’ve seen the dilemma of Guido, the hero played by Marcello Mastroianni, repeated many times over in reality—look at the life of Bob Dylan during the period we covered in No Direction Home, to take just one example. Like with The Red Shoes, I look at it again every year or so, and it’s always a different experience."

"This is, by far, one of my all-time favorite films of all time bar none. I have seen the film well over one hundred times, and I am always trying to get people to watch it with me. Funny enough, as I type this, I am in Bordeaux, France, at the first ever Bordeaux International Independent Film Festival. I was asked to pick one film that I loved that I could talk about, and, of course, it was 3 Women. The screening is tonight, and I am seeing if for the first time on 35 mm. I had seen VHS copies of the film prior to the wonderful Criterion version coming out, and, of course, I now see and hear things in the film that I have never known before Criterion brought that all in. The film has a magical quality. I experience new things and information about the film every time I see it. It’s like a recurring dream that I don't mind redreaming over and over. It’s my favorite film in the world. I would love to do a one-off film festival somewhere called The Identity Crisis Film Festival . . . and show all films that I feel are similar to 3 Women, such as That Obscure Object of Desire, Persona, and Mulholland Drive."