"Let’s go with Unforgiven. Again, I believe that was an Academy Award winner. A number of things were so fantastic about that film. The Western genre had died — it had gone away by that time — and here comes Clint Eastwood, who was known for Spaghetti Westerns, which were of course Westerns often with Italian directors, or whatever the reason they call it that. And whether those were good or bad, they defined an era of filmmaking, a certain type of movie that came out three or four times a year, and then they vanished. And then in walks this guy who’d done that era and was a major star, a major, major star, and I believe he directed Unforgiven. How entirely different from any other Western we’ve ever seen. And you care for this guy who spends the entire film telling people he’s changed. He’s not the guy he once was. And then, just when you care about this character, you realize he’s the same guy he always was. When push comes to shove. It was a bit of a surprising ending. And yet, to me, resonates to the overall quality of the film. And it’s one that stays with me."

"What’s the name of that film? Was it Jimmy Kimmel that was involved in it? Windy City Heat? It’s this guy, oh God, what’s his name again? I can’t remember. [Editor’s note: Perry Caravello.] He’s Italian-American and, you know, he’s been in the game a long time, and you see footage of him going into auditions and things like that, and he literally thinks he’s, like, the next Marlon Brando. He really believes he’s gonna be the next Marlon Brando. And his friends create this whole film, this fake movie, that he lands the lead part in. They like shoot the film, there’s loads of things that go wrong. And he’s got an awful attitude, like, he’s really cocky and everything. Anyway, the film came out. They released it. They released, like, the making-of, and I think he kind of put two and two together. And he’s done interviews since then and says, “I was in on the joke the whole time! I knew what was going on! I knew what was going on!” And I don’t think he did. And it’s really heartbreaking then to go back to it then and realize that he didn’t know. He really heard that he had gotten this lead part in the film, you know. You should check it out. It’s funny. Jimmy Kimmel’s involved in that, I think."

"I kind of think Fitzcarraldo. Cinephiles know it, but the new generation don’t really know that picture. It’s a flawed film but if you watch that and the companion making-of [Burden of Dreams]… there’s a great Criterion of it; it’s the one with Mick Jagger in it, when he started the film and had to pull out. What I love about this film is that it represents what I love about film making: The film is about a person who has an insane passion for art, to the extent that they drag a boat over a small isthmus to make money, but he’s making money to bring Caruso, the great Italian Opera singer, to build an opera house. But the backstory, with Klaus [Kinski], and the relationship between Klaus and [director] Werner [Herzog], is so fantastic a backstory. I mean, they try and kill each other. And I think the intense passion between actor and director is in the film. To me it’s kind of a package deal, this film. You have to involve yourself in the movie, but it’s really worth going beneath the film, up the jungle and into the psyche of the drama itself. Its companion film is one of my favorites of all-time, Apocalypse Now — and you can go on the same journey with that film."

"One of my favorite filmmakers is an Italian director named Mario Bava. His most famous movies have titles like Black Sunday and Black Sabbath and all that, but the one that really was astonishing at the time was a picture called Blood and Black Lace, which is one of the most gorgeously lit Technicolor movies I’ve ever seen. And it’s a whodunit kind of thing — a murderer in a fashion house and models are being killed in various gruesome ways. This is the early ’60s when you could get away with a lot more in the way of explicitness than you had been able to before, and these movies still basically played grindhouses. But it’s such a beautiful movie to look at, and the juxtaposition of beauty and death is really perverse in it. It runs through all his works, but in this particular movie, which I think is one of Tarantino’s favorites, it really comes to the fore. It’s a very entertaining picture, and very violent. Bava was completely unknown when he was actually alive. Almost nobody except, you know, the most extreme film buffs ever saw those movies. But now, as often happens to people when it’s too late for them to enjoy it, he’s now revered, and people see his movies who didn’t even know they existed before."