"Not so much for the guitar work, but what’s represented on this collection is a real tight, small band. Wolf’s nickname was appropriate because he actually sounded like a wild animal when he sang. What an outrageous, maniacal voice! He could’ve been a star of those old Wolfman movies and they wouldn’t have needed any special effects. “He played great harmonica, and he could certainly get with it on the guitar. He had a mystique that came through on record. He could be overwhelming and scary. Not many artists can do that. So I’d call him one of the true originals of the blues. I love this collection. Just to have one big box set that encompasses something like ten different recordings, that’s pretty special."

"The film that restored grace and poetry to Berlin and the German language after forty years of stereotypical war movies featuring stereotypical German actors playing the parts of stereotypical Germans. The fog of war had settled over Birmingham when I came along in 1960, and there was no moving it for some time. Nothing about Germany was to be trusted, as even its postwar art was tainted by the events surrounding the Holocaust, unsurprisingly. But I was glad when this movie came along, despite the awful history of the twentieth century, as it allowed me to love Germany for what it is now, its language, the sound of its spoken word and all its formidable arts. Wim Wenders must surely be Germany’s greatest living director."

"One of my other favorite films is Don’t Look Now, which is kind of an antecedent or… something we were going for a similar vibe with our film, The Forest. I think, to date, it’s still one of the most disturbing movies that’s ever been made. I love how Venice is a very unique specific place in that movie. I’m a huge Donald Sutherland fan. I had an opportunity to work with him at one point and always loved that movie, and I was just gushing over that film. And I like its sense of stranger-in-a-strange-land, how it’s about a westerner that’s trapped in this very unique and specific environment, which is something we were trying to mimic in The Forest."

"One summer, they were doing a ’70s movie revival at the Film Forum in New York, and Soter and I would go see double features; you pay for one, you see two. All ’70s movies. It was great, so we’d go there all the time. One of my favorites was John Cassavetes‘ Husbands. That was a great, funny movie; first of all, it was cool because a lot of it was improvised. There’s Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, John Cassavetes…one of their buddies dies, so they basically decide life’s too short and they’re going to go get drunk one night and reflect on life. So it’s one night of these guys going out and drinking, but then they end up going to London."

"My last one probably seems… it’s really true though: Friday Night Lights [laughs] is one of my favorite movies. And I only say it like that because I… look, I love it. Maybe it’s my love of football playing into it as well. I read the book before I saw the movie. The book is great. I was really into it and I thought, there’s no way the movie is gonna be as good as the book and, I don’t know — [director] Pete Berg did it for me. I’m a huge fan. Maybe it’s all those boys. I don’t really know what it is. Any time that movie’s on TV, I gotta watch it. It’s weird, I know; but you know, that’s me."

"My favorite — my number one favorite, actually — is A Woman Under the Influence. [Gena Rowlands] is just… I respect and admire her so much as an actress. I just think that performance is so brave and extraordinary. It was one of those things that, as a woman, as an actress, I kind of appreciate, you know. And also, that film is kind of a really, truly independent film. I think Cassavetes financed it, I think Peter Falk put money into it; kind of no one really believed in it. I was in a film a couple of years ago that a studio would never touch, a movie called Trucker, which was a great opportunity for me; but those sort of movies need to be independently financed."

"My favorite Fellini movie changes as I age. At various times in my life, I might have cited 8½, The White Sheik, Amarcord, even Casanova or City of Women. The movies don’t change, of course. The viewer changes. And now La dolce vita speaks to me in its sweep and totality. As a younger man, I probably only responded to the higher-energy scenes, the orgy, the press corps, Ekberg. But now, at fifty-two, I’m flooded with sadness by the visit from Marcello’s father, and the Steiner storyline and the final moments provoke existential dread. The title used to seem like a winking joke to me. Now it feels more like a punch in the stomach. La dolce vita is forever."

"Woody Allen — namely the Diane Keaton collaborative days — those movies were really important to me when I was like 15, 16 years old, because it was when I discovered watching them and went through the canon. I, for the first time, had seen a woman that I was like, “Oh, I can be that kind of a woman. I’m not really the nerd, I’m not really the charactery person. I’m not really the sexy one, but I am a neurotic, nervous, but semi-intelligent one, but I also say stupid things.” It felt comforting to know that that was an example of a kind of woman I could be when I grew up and when I was going through that transition in teenagehood."