"Both of these films are in the box set America Lost and Found: The BBS Story, which is a masterpiece. It’s too bad companies like BBS don’t exist anymore. These two films capture loneliness and melancholy in a way that affects me deeply, yet they also have humor and beautiful open endings. There are moments in the performances in The Last Picture Show—Cloris Leachman’s final scene with Timothy Bottoms, or Ben Johnson’s scene at the water tank, just to name a few—that are stunning. The film also has incredible mood and feeling, and sometimes that’s more important than anything."

"There’s just so much on this: It’s a double album and by the time you finish it—if you can finish it—you can’t remember what you heard at the beginning. I liked that,” he said of Beefheart. “It was anti-music in the most interesting and insane way, like kids learning to play violin—which I was going through at the time. So all the bum notes I was being told off for by the teachers were finally being released by well-known artists. “That was my confirmation. From then on, there was room for everything"

"Now, I can tell you about some women writers who truly are fantastic. One is Anna Kavan. She writes stories like I approach Land of a Thousand Dances: she’s caught in a haze and then a light, a little teeny light, come through. It could be a leopard, that light, or it could be a spot of blood. It could be anything. But she hooks onto that and spirals out. And she does it within the accessible rhythms of plot, and that’s really exciting. She’s not hung up with being a woman, she just keeps extending herself, keeps telescoping language and plot."

"This was where I fell in love for the first time. As a boy of maybe nine, or so. Marilyn really nailed my little, tentative heart. Something about her insane beauty, mixed with that self doubt and sensitivity she portrayed, was so effecting. The performances from Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are hilarious. Again, like most great films, this one has some quotes and moments that just stay in the mind and resonate. It’s a film about love and friendship and second chances, I think. Will never get tired of watching this, as long as I’ve got days on my calendar."