"Viridiana has a super fascistic message, but even if it goes against all my political beliefs, I still think it’s a fantastic movie. It’s a little bit like Salò in that it’s a very political movie but it transcends being just that. Whether you agree or disagree with it, it doesn’t matter. I love Buñuel’s playfulness, and I love the fact that he was nobody’s friend. Communists didn’t like him; Catholics didn’t like him; left-wing people didn’t like him; art people didn’t like him; art-movie lovers didn’t really love him at many points; mainstream moviegoers didn’t like him. Belle de jour is everything that’s great about him and more. It’s also actually really entertaining. I would love to put this on for a bunch of Catholic nuns and evangelicals in a locked room and force their eyes open like in A Clockwork Orange. I would love to see how they would react."

"Viridiana has a super fascistic message, but even if it goes against all my political beliefs, I still think it’s a fantastic movie. It’s a little bit like Salò in that it’s a very political movie but it transcends being just that. Whether you agree or disagree with it, it doesn’t matter. I love Buñuel’s playfulness, and I love the fact that he was nobody’s friend. Communists didn’t like him; Catholics didn’t like him; left-wing people didn’t like him; art people didn’t like him; art-movie lovers didn’t really love him at many points; mainstream moviegoers didn’t like him. Belle de jour is everything that’s great about him and more. It’s also actually really entertaining. I would love to put this on for a bunch of Catholic nuns and evangelicals in a locked room and force their eyes open like in A Clockwork Orange. I would love to see how they would react."

"George is quite stuck as an artist, and he feels like he’s having a hard time finding inspiration. And the character of Dot comes to him and sings, “Stop worrying where you’re going, move on/ If you can know where you’re going, you’ve gone /Just keep moving on.” It’s absolutely the truth. And the specific lyric that breaks me up every time is, “Anything you do/ Let it come from you/ Then it will be new/ Give us more to see.” That is an artist’s credo. That, to me, is like a Bible verse that I return to over and over."

"I usually have Reservoir Dogs and Rocky Horror Picture Show on my list, because I just love them so much. I did Kids, and the first film I really can remember watching specifically to look at acting after that was Reservoir Dogs. My dad had given me the VHS tape of it to watch over and over and over again. Well, he didn’t intend for me, I think, to watch it over and over and over again, but I watched it over and over again; I think I watched it like five or six times that week. I would come home from school and I would just watch it again, and memorize the whole thing, and I was just so blown away by the acting in it. It seemed like it must have had all this money, because you remember it being bloody, you remember the shock, all that kinda stuff. And then you watch it and you’re like, “Actually, [Quentin Tarantino] cut around all of that.” The dude with red stuff on his chest, you know what I mean? It’s all acting. And it’s such an interesting way of telling the story, going back and inside of itself. My dad, I’ll never forget, he was like, “Watch this for the acting,” and I was just blown away. So I feel like that’s a piece of work that I love looking at as sort of a modern way of getting into those huge monologues, telling stories in an epic way, and the sort of more modern kind of small stories."

"You know, I think love the antihero a little bit. The one that you just end up going, “Come on, you can make it. You can turn yourself around.” I loved Dead Man Walking. One of [Sean Penn’s] most brilliant performances. The fact that he manages to get you, by the end, wanting him to live, even after the most heinous crimes, is jaw-dropping to me. You start hating him, and you’re like, “You’re despicable.” And then… I just find it amazing. Only Sean Penn could do that. I think he’s amazing."