"Number four would be a movie called The Piano Teacher by Michael Haneke. That’s a really interesting character study to me, and that is my other favorite on-screen performance, Isabelle Huppert. I just think it’s a really, really interesting character study; again, disturbing. I guess there’s a theme here. [laughs] And her last frame of acting in that movie — not actually the last frame; the last frame is her walking, but the one before that is the best piece of acting I’ve ever seen in my entire life. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you have to go watch it."

"If David Thewlis in Naked is my favorite male performance, then Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher must be my favorite female performance. I saw this with my mom at the theater when I was about fourteen or fifteen and we both loved it so much. I remember thinking, I want to make movies like that. I’ve always felt that the first films he made in Austria, especially the trilogy (The Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video, and 71 Fragments), were a little too academic. He really avoided performances. But when he moved over to France with Code Unknown and then The Piano Teacher, something happened where he started making very passionate filmmaking. The actors are giving great performances while still being very clinical and brutal in their rejection of sentimentality."

"It’s a very, very intense movie. Isabelle Huppert, I think, is the greatest living actress. She goes on such a crazy journey in this movie. It’s an incredible performance, and it’s just an impeccably made movie. It’s a perfect movie. You haven’t seen it? Oh, you need to watch it. It’s so intense and so disturbing. Nobody does that kind of glowing sense of dread like Michael Haneke, where you just feel it coming and you’re like, “Oh god, oh my god, what’s going to happen?” I think he’s such a master. I was at a party one time with a friend of mine and I said, “Oh my God, it’s Michael Haneke!” And she was like, “How do you know?” I was really starstruck to see him — like, “How do you know what he looks like?”"

"I used to go to see movies with my dad. He took me to see ’Round Midnight. Afterward, we bought the soundtrack and listened to it a lot; it was one of the few records I felt okay about putting on when he was in the house. It fascinated me that the music on the record was also the music we saw performed in the movie. This helped me to understand one of the things that I value most in movies: that the action captured by the camera is special and unique and crucial to the value of the movie. Which is to say that the writing is crucial, of course, the preproduction, scoring, and editing are crucial, of course . . . but my main thing is what the camera captured at the moment of its happening. I love to watch a performance that was not created by editing or cinematography or even writing, but rather a performance that is in and of itself, in the moment that it was captured, something of the highest value (because of the collaborative efforts of the major forces involved in making it happen in the first place). And so there are certain directors, “actor’s directors,” who give me more pleasure than most others. No actor is great by himself or herself. Tavernier was able, again and again, to present his players in measured, idiosyncratic, and complete ways. Coup de torchon was the first time I noticed this, and it remains a favorite. Also because Isabelle Huppert is so good and beautiful and Philippe Noiret is a hero’s hero. And because it took this resetting of Jim Thompson’s book (and James Foley’s After Dark, My Sweet) for me to understand what Thompson’s work has to offer."