"I just am an Italian girl. My father grew up in that exact era and I remember seeing it in Italian class, in school, and then going home and showing it to him and tears streaming down his face as he watched it. He was a boy with a pair of shoes and who was fascinated by the movies, and there was, like, one theater in his town. So that movie has just always struck a personal nerve for me as a daughter of an immigrant."

"A total classic from George Lucas, pre Star Wars. It's the start of pop culture going retro, as it created a whole kind of rock & roll revival with records being reissued and that double LP soundtrack being released. It's the past informing the present so it's important in terms of pop culture and teen films. It influenced a couple of other movies that we're going to talk about later. And I love the music – 'I Only Have Eyes For You' and all those tunes. Fantastic."

"I have been under the influence of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands and their extended family in film ever since I saw a retrospective of Cassavetes’s movies at MoMA soon after he died. I could have listed any number of his films: Faces with Seymour Cassel and Lynn Carlin, Opening Night with Rowlands and Ben Gazzara, or Husbands with Peter Falk . . . it doesn’t matter. Each film is made with a love, passion, and style unique to John, and inspiring to the rest of us."

"I’d read Scorsese, Tarantino, and Jarmusch raving about Jean-Pierre Melville for years. Then I read how Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant first movie, Hard Eight, was an homage to Melville’s Bob le flambeur. I had to see one of his movies but couldn’t track them down at my local Tulsa video store. My first night in L.A., I walked down to the newly opened Cinephile video store and rented all of them! Le doulos is my favorite. It’s one tough-guy movie. Great ending!"

"Okay. You know — it is a recent acquisition for me — but I’m way into the Wes Anderson stuff. Anytime The Royal Tenenbaums is on, I am camped out. People are like, “Is that your favorite?” I think it might be. Also, I do concede, that might have been the first Wes Anderson movie I saw. I love everything about all of his movies. They are so good. They are so stylized. They’re beautiful to look at. I’m always a fan of whichever new one is coming out."

"I’ve heard the opinion that Criterion releases too many Rainer Werner Fassbinder movies, which is madness, because the best one, In a Year of 13 Moons, isn’t among them yet. But I think Criterion should release every single one, including those that no one’s ever heard of, like Bremen Freedom and Das kaffeehaus, and once those are out they should delve into the R. W. F. Extended Cinematic Universe until they’ve exhausted every last Ulli Lommel direct-to-video true-crime movie, culminating in DC Sniper (2010)."