"One of the very few westerns, my favorite classical genre, in the Criterion Collection. How to make an almost huis clos in the immensity of Monument Valley? Only Ford had that secret. The apparition of the great John Wayne in the Ford family, as the Ringo Kid, in a beautiful tracking shot, made him a star. Later, Wayne said about Ford: “This made me a star, and I’ll be grateful to him forever. But I don’t think he ever really had any kind of respect for me as an actor until I made Red River for Howard Hawks, ten years later. Even then, I was never quite sure.”"

"Owns a spot on the Mt. Rushmore of Foundational Westerns (with, oh, let’s say Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, and Shane). Everybody involved worked at the height of their powers: Borden Chase and Charles Schnee, two of the best screenwriters of their era, wrote challenging, complex characters; John Wayne was at his best when he played a son of a bitch (also, The Searchers); Montgomery Clift, taking the baton from John Garfield, was preparing to pass it to Brando and Dean; Dmitri Tiomkin composed an iconic score; Hawks synthesized all."

"This reminds me of the time I went through a big Miles Davis phase. Talk about going into different worlds with an artist – he did that every time, from Kind Of Blue and Porgy and Bess onwards, anyway. This album's still the one I return to, from 1969, and the band is phenomenal. You've got Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea on electric piano, Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone, John McLaughlin on guitar. This is truly cosmic music for me, or even music that feels like it's emerging from the cosmos. As it plays, you feel like you're coming up with the sunshine."

"When I was in college, first year, I saw it and I really hadn’t been exposed to a lot of European filmmakers. It’s such a ‘film’ film. It wasn’t required viewing, it was just a film playing on campus and I hadn’t been interested in film before then. Nowadays people are deciding to get into film at age five when they’re sitting, watching the Oscars. I really didn’t come out of that culture — I was pretty much a John Wayne fan and that was it. Zabriskie Point was a time when I was in a lot of change and flux and these incredible visuals hit me like they had rearranged the organs in my body. The ending and the free-floating debris and everything is an image that burned itself in my consciousness."