"I was excited that I had the chance to sing something in [happythankyoumoreplease]. I did a lot when I was younger and I haven’t in such a long time, but I grew up doing musicals and musical theater. That was my real passion and I soon as I started doing films, when I was 14, I did less. I would love to do movie musicals or Broadway. [A music biopic] would be a dream of mine… that leads into my favorite movies. Coal Miner’s Daughter is my all-time favorite movie. A lot of that has to do with that’s just a dream sort of ideal role for me. I love country music. I love the idea of playing a country singer and the whole thing, I love it. And I love Sissy Spacek. So yeah, that’s one of my favorites."

"Granted, it’s a little shameless for the guy who wrote a book on 1999 movies to include a pair of entries from that year on his list. But whenever I made a top ten for that year, these are the two films that constantly duked it out for the number one and number two slots. One’s a tightly structured, egalitarian high-school-set comedy that’s as wise about the nightmares of adolescence as it is about the doldrums of middle age; the other’s a happily absurd fable of reinvention that’s part sci-fi, part broad comedy, part media satire. But both are remarkably kind to their flawed heroes, and each one wrestles with the kinds of social and cultural dilemmas—from identity theft to burn-it-all-down political posturing—we’d be dealing with two decades later."

"I need to get something with Meryl Streep, but there’s so many movies. But then I started thinking about Manhattan, and then I came to Woody Allen. The funniest bit I’ve ever seen in a movie is in Play It Again, Sam. There’s a scene early on where he’s — you know, he’s playing another version of himself, this guy who’s just a mess — and he’s trying to go on dates. Of course, his friends are trying to set him up, and they set him up with this beautiful girl. Basically, they’re going to pick him up at his place, and he’s getting ready, and there’s this scene where he’s got the sports medals he’s been out buying. I mean, it’s the funniest scene; it’s slapstick, you know, physical comedy at its best. It’s a very funny movie."

"The funniest human being in my lifetime, in any medium – whether it's stand-up, television, theatre, prose, or movies – is SJ Perelman. The early stuff was a little wild, not nearly as subtle or as good. As he developed over the years, his stuff became relentlessly sensational. There are many collections of Perelman that are filled with great things. This one, which I wrote the foreword to, has a number of spectacular pieces. Because the editors did it chronologically, my own opinion is that the first four essays are weaker. Once you hit the fifth casual, as the New Yorker called them, he hits his stride and the rest of them are absolute comic genius. As funny as you can get. Those of us who grew up with Perelman found it impossible to avoid his influence. He had such a strong, inventive style."

"When Wes Anderson asked me to provide incidental narration to his film about the Tenenbaum tribe, I honestly could not make out what the film was about. It turned out to be a Wes Anderson film, which, in my mind, is the New Yorker magazine’s cartoon staff meets Jules Feiffer meets Preston Sturges. Or, perhaps, none of that. The Royal Tenenbaums, at the time of its release, was arguably one of the most original movies, in tone and style, since Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H. The cast is pitch-perfect, and the film features Gene Hackman’s greatest work. (I know. That’s saying a lot. But it’s true.) Anderson and Owen Wilson were nominated for best original screenplay at the Oscars in 2002. With cinematography by the remarkable Robert Yeoman (Drugstore Cowboy, The Squid and the Whale)."

"The first movie I ever saw in my life, interestingly enough, was The Gods Must Be Crazy. It was a South African movie. It’s ironic that years later, the next most commercially successful film from South Africa after The Gods Must Be Crazy is District 9. The effect was kind of an early imprint that South Africa belonged in motion pictures. Because there was nothing else for years, as I became an adult — or even a young man — I kind of realized it didn’t. Everything that South Africa made was terrible that I subsequently saw. Usually I was just ashamed of it. I was like, “Oh God, we make terrible television, we make terrible movies.” And even with Marius Weyers doing the South African accent — something that was uniquely South African and African could be commercial was just imprinted in my brain."

"This is the movie, above all others, that I can watch time and time again and have the same fun as the first time. It’s the sense of wonder and heightened stakes that make this work so well. Michael J. Fox, of course, makes this work: I as a viewer can see the struggle, fun, joy, and pain Marty experiences without doing anything; [Fox] fully embraces and embodies the journey. I like movies that save the day…go figure, and this one delivers. Also, my parents didn’t let me see this in the theaters when it first came out. My older sister got to go see it with my older brother and I was forced to watch Cocoon with my parents. I had nightmares for months of the the cocoons opening and the old people crawling out of them."

"I think this is one of the best war movies ever made. It covered the heroics of World War 2 which we’re all familiar with from the greatest generation, but it was the first movie to ever capture the absolute terror of being a soldier in the war. It was okay to be absolutely terrified during that world war. Every other movie is mostly about showing bravery in such an unrealistic context, it’s like every soldier that fought there died gracefully. But I know people who fought in that war who saw that movie when it came out, and it brought back a lot of memories and fears and terrors. You weren’t encouraged to get help after the war for the trauma back then. And that movie did more for a lot of those soldiers and veterans, and it is just great filmmaking."

"This movie seemed to come out of nowhere. I didn’t even know it existed until I saw it at BAM, and I remember walking out of the theater thinking this is the best movie ever. I love giant, epic films with incredible black-and-white cinematography. There’s one scene in the film that I literally show to everyone I ever make a movie with. It’s shot through a fence, when Tatiana Samoilova is running, and the camera moves past the fence super quickly, and it speeds up with the pace of her running. It has this effect where it makes your heart race in a way that’s insane. The other thing about that movie is that it’s an epic told from a woman’s point of view, which you rarely see. It’s just one of the greatest movies of all time."

"I know it’s a cheat to select three films as if they were one, but it’s almost impossible to consider Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero as anything other than a linked narrative of the ashes of World War II and of the struggle to rise out of that dustbin of history. They are vital, raw, even primitive in style, full of nonactors who are alternately charismatic and arch; there is an aesthetic in these movies that is stripped to the bone. These films, taken together, are immediate godfather to the French New Wave. When Truffaut saw the cinematic journey of the eleven-year-old Edmund Meschke in Germany Year Zero, the seeds of his Antoine Doinel character were planted. The interviews and documentary extras in this set are one of the great treasures of neorealism research."