"Then each one becomes more difficult as I go along. On the Waterfront — you go straight to Marlon Brando. It was a good picture all around, a good script, and Kazan directed it brilliantly. And the shooting on location, I would assume they would have never shot in a studio — the look of the film gives a great sense of realism, that you are there on the waterfront, you’re there in cold weather, you can see the breath coming out of the actors mouths. I would say it’s probably — probably — Marlon’s best performance, although you would have to give a nod to Godfather."

"What’s the name of that film? Was it Jimmy Kimmel that was involved in it? Windy City Heat? It’s this guy, oh God, what’s his name again? I can’t remember. [Editor’s note: Perry Caravello.] He’s Italian-American and, you know, he’s been in the game a long time, and you see footage of him going into auditions and things like that, and he literally thinks he’s, like, the next Marlon Brando. He really believes he’s gonna be the next Marlon Brando. And his friends create this whole film, this fake movie, that he lands the lead part in. They like shoot the film, there’s loads of things that go wrong. And he’s got an awful attitude, like, he’s really cocky and everything. Anyway, the film came out. They released it. They released, like, the making-of, and I think he kind of put two and two together. And he’s done interviews since then and says, “I was in on the joke the whole time! I knew what was going on! I knew what was going on!” And I don’t think he did. And it’s really heartbreaking then to go back to it then and realize that he didn’t know. He really heard that he had gotten this lead part in the film, you know. You should check it out. It’s funny. Jimmy Kimmel’s involved in that, I think."

"Yes, I admired Marlon Brando and I know that he influenced James Dean and he really kind of changed the world of film acting with his naturalistic style, but it was because of Vivien Leigh’s performance as Blanche DuBois that I would put that as one of my favorite movies; because of her dialog, the Tennessee Williams dialog, the music, Kazan’s direction, and Vivien Leigh’s delivery of lines like — I’m paraphrasing — but when she says, “the human heart, how can that be straight?”, you know. It was such a powerfully vulnerable, tragic performance that I have to put that on the top five, because that movie held that performance."

"It’s another one of those movies that just feels so real. You watch those scenes and you’ve got tanks and armies, you know. It’s the first film I saw, as far as docudrama film style — you know, hand-held, very real, in the streets, in the world. And if I’m not mistaken, he only made a couple of films; the filmmaker made it and then he disappeared. He stopped making [fiction] movies. He made one with Marlon Brando and then that was kind of it. But the fact that he pulled off this movie — it’s a masterpiece. I remember watching the movie and feeling like it was a documentary, it felt so real. It’s so amazing. The performances of the actors, everything — it’s mind-blowing when you watch it."

"This happens to be a Warner Bros movie [like Gremlins]. William Friedkin is one of my favorite filmmakers, I love everything that he does. I loved Killer Joe, I loved a lot of stuff that he did, he’s just great. But The Exorcist is really one of the few perfectly done movies. I also had a huge thrill because later in my career, Ellen Burstyn played my mom [in Surviving], so I got to know her. She’s magnificent. Lee J. Cobb is great in the movie, Jason Miller is incredible, Max Von Sydow is also amazing in the movie — the guy’s like 40 years old and they made him up to be a 70 year old man. Now he actually looks like Father Marin, but back then, he was 10 years younger than I am now. Everyone goes “Oh, Brando is great in The Godfather because he does the accent.” He was 47. He plays like a 66 year old man, maybe a little older, and he’s three years younger than I am now. Google “Marlon Brando Godfather makeup” and there’s a series of pictures of him sitting in the chair, this handsome late 40s guy, and when he’s done the transformation is unbelievable. It’s so trippy."

"I love the first Godfather movie, part one. And two. Another great director, Coppola. And then of course, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro. I had heard the stories about how they wanted a whole other cast, and Francis was under the gun and he rose to the occasion. He got great performances out of Pacino, and De Niro was unbelievable. All the secondary guys from Joe Spinell to Michael Gazzo. The casting was impeccable. He got a lot of great performances from people who were just getting into the business themselves. Duvall, everybody had so many layers. The performance he got out of Lee Strasberg, who never really did much acting in front of the camera. When I was in the Actor’s Studio, the only actor that Lee actually spoke to was Al, so [Coppola] used the relationship that the two had and that was quite interesting."

"I saw Apocalypse Now really with everybody else, so Marlon Brando was there, and my uncle was showing the movie, and Dennis Hopper was there and [Marc Marrie], and … I don’t think Marrie was there, but everybody … Let’s see. Larry was there. They were watching the movie for the first time, and I must’ve been about, gosh, what was I? 12, 13? I don’t know, but it really put a big effect in me, and I was blown away by the scope of the film. I don’t think there really was a movie like that before with the helicopter sequences, and with Brando’s performance with Dennis Hopper was… I mean, he was really going off the rails in that, and that had a big impact on me as well, in terms of my own later choices with film performance. I wanted to get a little more Dennis Hopper or less Dennis Hopper with some of the stuff that I was doing, so that had a big impact."

"The first two, I’m gonna go with Elia Kazan, ’cause they’re really the reason why I became an actor in movies. East of Eden, with James Dean, and A Streetcar Named Desire, with Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando. The performance by James Dean — the scene specifically where he tries to give his father, played by Raymond Massey, the money from selling the beans on his birthday, and he’s rejected — it broke my heart; it was not like anything I’d experienced before, in terms of art, and I’d seen a lot of movies at that point. I was 15, and I’d seen Bergman’s Seventh Seal and Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits and Welles’ Citizen Kane — great films, but when I saw Dean in that, it really put the hook in me because I felt like him and I knew then the power of film acting, and I knew then what I wanted to be, what I wanted to do to try to move people with motion pictures. So that’s why I have to put that on the list."

"For a myriad of different reasons. It’s the ultimate group of lawless action buddy movies. They have all spawned from this. Every sort of two handed buddy movie as The A-Team and — it all comes from this one film: Seven Samurai. It gave Hollywood a genre. Not only did it influence the western genre very obviously, with Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, but every genre of outsider, loner, anti-hero. The character played by Toshiro Mifune, that’s the quintessential character in Hollywood. You’ve seen it played by Montgomery Clift. You’ve seen it played by James Dean, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro. They’ve all been influenced in some way by that one character that appears in the Seven Samurai. The wildness. The gregariousness. The mad genius. The outsider. The survivor. Of course, you know the film is an incredibly, beautifully shot film. Akira Kurosawa is one of the greatest writers of all time. It speaks for itself. I’ve seen it well over a hundred times. But years ago. 20 years ago — possibly the first. Maybe even 25 years ago was the first time I saw it. An extraordinary movie."