"What a scope of a film for Martin Scorsese. To really dig into the humanity of that character, Jake La Motta. And what a portrayal by Robert De Niro! What an amazing talent. How he was able to really touch into this organic moment…it was just unbelievable."

"I think a lot about Martin Scorsese and how heavily influenced Paul Thomas Anderson was by him. I feel like he learned so much from Scorsese in Boogie Nights, and so I feel like picking Boogie Nights is somewhat accounting for my Martin Scorsese love. But I’m also being very honest about a movie that I can watch over and over. Just the epic nature and the grandness of it, and some of the shots and the style of it, and the music — my God, the way he uses music — and that great shot where somebody jumps into the pool and you hear the muffled soundtrack. It’s brilliant. I never get sick of watching it. And the acting is just some of my favorite actors at the top of their game. I love doing impressions and one of my earliest impressions of an actor was Philip Seymour Hoffman in that movie, when he’s saying how much he loves the name and he’s chewing on the pen."

"I first discovered this movie, and director Samuel Fuller, more than fifteen years ago via A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. I’ve never been the same since! The first four minutes take your breath away, and it only gets better and stranger, almost hallucinatory, after that. Did anyone understand the grand beauty and horror in pulp like Samuel Fuller?"

"I thought its arc of character was beautifully captured. [Martin Scorsese] has got so many dramatic views — men fed up with life, the situation, the system. These days people are more experienced [as filmmakers] but we’ve just been poorly making movies lately. We used to tell beautiful, humane stories. We used to care about characters instead of just blowing some f***ing building down."

"I discovered the music of Nass El Ghiwane during my travels in Morocco, and I was thrilled to finally see a restored version of this film. Apparently Martin Scorsese caught this movie on late-night public access television in New York and fell in love with it. He helped with the film’s restoration and rerelease. The footage of these guys playing and their political charge are incredible. Thank you, Marty!"

"First one I’d say is GoodFellas. When I was a teenager I slept underneath a picture of Martin Scorsese. I think GoodFellas is just a perfect film. From an efficiency of storytelling standpoint, from an entertainment standpoint, from a performance standpoint, from a use of music standpoint, from a cinematography and editing standpoint — to me it’s just a perfect movie. That’s a movie I saw when I was 16 years old, when I watched it in a theater 30 times. A perfect movie."

"Most people don’t want to hear about the weird dream you had. It may be interesting or bewildering to you, but really no one else cares. I would say that unless you’re Akira Kurosawa and can get Martin Scorsese to play van Gogh in the weird dream you had about van Gogh, you should knock it off because you’re only losing friends. This whole list could have been Kurosawa films. Tied with (in preferential order): Ikiru, Seven Samurai, Rashomon, High and Low, Throne of Blood, Ran, Stray Dog, Yojimbo, Red Beard"