"It’s basically my perfect movie. Character driven with phenomenal performances, so idiosyncratic, and funny as hell, as well as achingly sad. The ideal combination of comedy and tragedy. I adore Shirley [MacLaine] and Jack [Nicholson] together. I love them, full stop. It’s the most satisfying tearjerker ever made because the lows are so beautifully balanced with gorgeous, swelling highs."

"Why Five Easy Pieces? Also an anti-hero movie. Jack Nicholson is not necessarily a likeable character, but you can’t help wanting to root for the guy. Especially at the end when he goes to the bathroom and hops in a truck and just takes off. For some reason you still like this guy who leaves his girl sitting at a gas station."

"Jack Nicholson is extraordinary in it, but that is an ensemble movie where everyone carries the story. And it’s a movie about social injustice and inequity and the disenfranchised, and it will kill you. It will sway you with its sadness, but in a way that is appropriate, and there is a glimmer of hope at the end, I would say."

"One of the inspirational films for me, Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman. He’s just phenomenal. I mean, really. It’s the template for many films. You know, Jack Nicholson in [One Flew Over the] Cuckoo’s Nest, it’s the same kind of thing, the individual against the system. “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. Some men, you just can’t reach.” I love that film. Love it."

"Warren Beatty directed, about the life of John Reed. Jack Nicholson is Eugene O’Neill, one of his greatest performances. It combines everything I love about movies: great acting, unbelievable romance, and politics. Sondheim did the music, Elaine May helped write it. It’s kind of the bar. I just think of what cinema can accomplish. It’s like a great, great novel, only better. And with one of the great endings of all time. Just so beautiful."