"That movie for me was my Marlon Brando experience before The Godfather, before Streetcar. It’s weird to be living in a modern world where acting has changed. Movies have changed so much, and yet you can still see what defined [Brando] and his performance. If I told you that so-and-so was the first person to do something 30 years ago, you’d be like, “Well, I don’t care, because people do it now all the time.” There’s still nobody doing what he does in that movie. And so that really changed everything for me. Also, there was something really exciting and sad about the whole political aspect of that movie. The whole blacklisting thing."

"My favorite film of the eighties. Maybe Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris and Robert De Niro in Raging Bull can compare with Bob Hoskins’s performance here, but very few others can. Who else could have fully mined the depths of unrequited love and authentic heartbreak while wearing a pair of glittery, heart-shaped sunglasses? Who else could have so completely personified the rage, hope, humor, pathos, and cruel decency at the heart of Neil Jordan’s dreamy masterpiece? No one. Absolutely no one."

"Akira Kurosawa made films covered in rich tapestries of Japanese history and charged with terrible violence and drama. Yet here, the contemporary and confined world of a rich industrialist (Toshiro Mifune) who is faced with an overwhelming decision is spare, cold, and objective in the extreme. Hideo Oguni, who worked on seven Kurosawa films, including Seven Samurai, wrote the screenplay based on an Ed McBain novel. Mifune, once again, shows why he is the Japanese Marlon Brando, Edward G. Robinson, and Gregory Peck rolled into one."

"Huge fan of Marlon Brando. For this man to come out of the shadows playing Don Corleone was just captivating. And it never disappoints; to this day it doesn’t disappoint. That movie is still a spectacle of Americana storytelling with a performance by him which is just inspiring. And he was an inspiring actor, he was certainly somebody who I still go back and watch and… the music, the story, the whole trilogy — It was very much connected to my youth as a young man about to go off to drama school."

"It's the best showbusiness book that I've read. It's brilliantly written and it's about a brilliant director who was very meaningful to me when I was growing up and becoming a film-maker. Schickel understands Kazan; he understands Tennessee Williams; he understands Marlon Brando; he understands A Streetcar Named Desire. He writes with great historical knowledge, insight and liveliness. Showbusiness books are usually not worth reading. They're just silly and shallow. But this is a fabulous book. Whatever you think of Kazan politically, it has nothing to do with the fact that the guy was a great director."

"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."