"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."