"Some say Jay McInerney partied too much and it hurt his output, but the fact that the party produced this brilliant, hysterically funny description of the party makes the partying worth it in my book. That the novel’s narrator is based on a young woman who, I’ve heard lately, grew up to become John Edwards’ mistress of course only makes it better."

"TWO criminally underrated John Hurt movies in one list?!? This is about a stuffy, old English author with a distaste for the lowbrow who happens to step into the wrong movie, Hot Pants College 2. He becomes infatuated with its teen heart-throb star (Jason Priestley) and goes on to stalk and befriend him. Just a brilliantly written slow-burn character study."

"Stephen Frears’s The Hit is John Hurt (in a truly frightening performance) and a young, punked-out, Chinese-star-throwing Tim Roth (ditto) as two hit men transporting stool pigeon Terence Stamp (what a fucking cast!) from Spain to Paris to meet retribution from the crime boss he put away. Add seductive Laura del Sol and music by Roger Waters and Eric Clapton and you have one of my favorite British crime movies ever."

"A young John Hurt plays a bitter art school drop-out who forms his own fascist political movement, the Party of Dynamic Erection. It’s very proto-Withnail & I, and it’s not lost on me that George Harrison was involved in producing both Little Malcolm and Withnail. So it’s cool to think that my favorite Beatle helped make the best two movies about crazy assholes in trench coats screaming at each other in shitty apartments. Mike Leigh directed the original production of the play of Little Malcolm and I can also see how the Scrawdyke character may have informed him in creating Johnny from Naked, another misogynistic, visionary crackpot trying to assert his manhood."