"Number three would be a Ken Loach film. I love Ken Loach very much because I love what he stands for politically. I love his bravery and I love the way that he really wanted to get these very socio-economic stories and real examinations of society in England and the unfairness of it. I think the way that he can manage to do that and make films that are entertaining as well, means that he’s such a master. He did a film in 1993 called Raining Stones. It’s one of my favorite Ken Loach films, and it’s one of my favorite films in general. It’s a heartbreaking story about an unemployed man who has to scrape together the money for his daughter’s first Communion dress, because in the society that they live in, that’s quite an important thing. You have to have a new dress for Communion. It’s about the dignity of trying to find the money and not letting her go to this event with a secondhand dress. It’s about how people who would seem to be on the fringes of society and treated with a lot of contempt by a lot of conventional media — it’s an examination of how they do have moral compasses. They are human beings, and they do abide by a set of rules, and they’re not scum. They just had a very unfortunate break. I think there’s something about that examination of that which is very deep psychological and socio-economic issues, but then in a very entertaining way. I think when you get a message combined with the entertainment value, I think that’s when you’re really on to something. Because if you have a story like that, which can be very depressing and very heartbreaking and very dour in other hands, if you can make that funny and actually make that interesting, you can put your message across all the more strongly. So I think that’s what I love about Ken Loach, the fact that he knows that in order to get people to listen to your message, you have to be able to entertain them. I think that’s a much harder thing to do than to just put a message across in a very prescribed way. He works hard to make things as entertaining as he possibly can, knowing that his message is gonna come across all the more effectively. I think he’s the king of the message."

"The last film I would say — and I could pick many of his films, but I will choose Woman Under the Influence, by Cassavetes. I could also have said Faces, or I could have said The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, or Husbands, or Minnie and Moskowitz, or I could have said Love Streams, but — today it will be Woman Under the Influence. I love the structure of it; its two-part structure — it really feels like a film in two movements. Arguably the two greatest performances of all time, between Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands. You know, it’s a home movie, and everything I’ve been trying to make are home movies — movies that take place inside the house and the family. I love the spirit of Cassavetes’ films, in that he’s casting his wife and his best friend in the roles, and his mother and her mother are in it, and the kids. To me it’s a movie that changes, too, throughtout the course of my life. I know the movie isn’t changing, I’m changing; but when I watch it the movie seems to shape-shift. I remember the first time I ever saw it I thought she was crazy; I remember on the 50th time I watched it I thought she was the only sane person in the movie and everyone else was crazy. I love that about movies that are made with a certain openness — that the audience can kind of participate in the imagination of the characters, you know; of their lives and of the story."