"I’m gonna say Psycho, because Tony Perkins, when you look back… He’s such a great actor, Tony Perkins. I miss him so much as an actor. He died not too old. I mean, he wasn’t that old. He died too young. And when you watch Psycho, God, what a great acting job that is to portray that. I mean, just indelible what he does. That famous scene when he was with her in the sitting room, and she’s like, “Why don’t you put your mother in a home?” and he kind of gets upset with her. I mean, Tony Perkins was one of the greatest actors. I loved Tony Perkins in the movies, so Psycho was my Hitchcock movie."

"It comes down to my specific brand of comedy – I really enjoy comedy that takes things to different places. Best in Show had already been out when I saw it, and it was the first improv sketch film I saw – it was my first mockumentary. And I noticed that the way that they do it is just so amazing. I was in love with Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, who are amazing in A Mighty Wind as well. But Best in Show is so good because it was so evocative of a time and a place, this dog show that goes on, and I’d never seen, like I said, a mockumentary, I’d never seen improv."

"I just watched, on New Year’s with a bunch of high school friends, The Breakfast Club, which I hadn’t seen in years. I remember being very affected by it but I couldn’t believe how well it held up, and I also couldn’t believe how well I actually knew the movie — like, I remembered every frame of that movie. It’s such good storytelling and it’s such a perfect blend of comedy and pathos. I kind of underestimated the effect that John Hughes had on my consciousness. He really taught, I think, a whole generation of people empathy. It’s kind of a marvel, that movie. So that’s certainly one of them; I have to put that up there."

"Okay the next one, and it’s a big one, is The Goonies. I think it’s almost self-explanatory. I remember seeing The Goonies as a kid and I think it’s that sense of — it is almost like a Scooby-Doo-esque adventure become real, and I think that’s what made it so appealing to me as a kid. It wasn’t that it was raucous and loud, it was that these kids were incredibly relatable. They were real kids. They came in all shapes and sizes, they were incredibly flawed, and very funny. They were rude, they bickered; they just felt so real, and they were a lot of fun because of that. So yeah, The Goonies — huge influence."

"This is another film my grandfather showed me at a very young age. It was one of the first times I ever saw reality unfold like that on-screen. The more I watch it, the more that different things pop out. When I was young, this was the first time I ever saw an interaction between an African American and a young Italian kid—and that was big for me, because when I was in Italy my mother was always the only African American around and I was this young Italian kid. So seeing both these cultures represented, and seeing the way they’re represented, made me realize cinema could reflect life—that it’s not just about entertainment, that it can be about something very real. When you really think about the postwar years, the image of Italy was very much constructed through Rossellini films. In the era of Fascism, people like Rossellini and the partisan movement were silenced, so it’s not that they didn’t exist—it’s just that they weren’t allowed to be as vocal because their lives were at stake. The fact that he gave a voice to this movement, showing that Italy did in fact have this fiercely anti-Fascist side that suffered as much as anyone, I think was very important for how Italy has been seen in the postwar years. It’s one of those rare moments when a director has this deeply personal film to make that also coincides with one of the biggest events in world history. I’m definitely drawn to this tradition of filmmaking because I grew up on these films as much as I grew up on Disney."