"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."

"Y’know, it takes a real pro to grasp the ins and outs of something like racing. It takes time, and even more than that? Passion. You gotta put in the work. From what I understand, with Paul Newman? Apparently racing wasn’t his day job, but he had a real passion for being out on a track, digging in and getting up close to his competition, lap after lap. It wasn’t about winning, it was about how much he just loved doing it, and how he’d do it every chance he got, no matter what anyone else said. You gotta respect that! THAT’S inspiring!"

"In regard to acting, I have to mention Secret Sunshine. It has a performance by Jeon Do-yeon that must be one of the most shockingly truthful, harrowing—unbearable, really—performances in the history of film. When I walked out of the theater, I wondered out loud to my wife Cindy if performances like that shouldn’t perhaps be against the law. So naked. Too naked? I will never forget it, and anyone reading this should watch the film. If you can bear to witness such depth of feeling. And it isn’t just acting. It’s the truth."

"That’s a cheat. I’ll cheat because my Dad directed it and I love cowboy movies and that was sort of a reboot of the cowboy genre because at the time, when he was going to make it, they (the studios) were like no, Westerns will never make money. And it comes out and it’s the number one movie out there. He’s a cowboy — my dad IS a cowboy — so he was the right guy to do that and he did it with a bunch of the kids I grew up with: Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen — those kids are just… It was amazing."

"Like for many Americans, incest is a rough area for me. I just have a natural aversion to it. That being said, when I saw this film in my Bergman/Polanski seminar sophomore year, I was so taken with the Bergman way that I forgot to be freaked out by the sex between siblings. I couldn’t stop whispering the last line, “Papa spoke to me,” at everyone I came across, and I think I will start again. Bergman is the king of mood, and his actors give it all to him, free of vanity and therefore crazy beautiful."