"Probably everybody has that on their list. [Star Wars] came out and I just finished my sophomore year at CalArts. The May of ’77, saw it opening weekend at the Chinese Theatre. It worked in so many ways, but one of the things personally [that] was so inspiring [was] how it entertained an audience to a new level. I was there with a packed audience. I waited six hours. Towards the climax, when Luke is in the X-Wing and he’s going down the trench, I was just shaking I was so excited. And I’d never seen an audience so excited. First of all, it was everybody, from kids to adults, teenagers. Everybody was going crazy for this film. The quality of the storytelling, where it’s one foot in sort of the past and one foot in the future, I was so impressed by that. I came out and said, “That’s what I want to do with animation.” Many of my friends left animation [because of Star Wars] and went to actual special effects. At that time, animation was thought of just for kids. I saw this and said, “No, no, I want to entertain audiences.” That’s all I think about when I make my movies."

"I adore Fassbinder’s work. I’ve been living in Germany for the last ten years, and I think he’s one of the biggest reasons I moved there. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is my favorite film of all time. It’s the kind of film I’d never think of making—I’d never have thought of those two protagonists as a possible couple—but it’s the most beautiful and yet political film I’ve ever seen. When I was growing up, I never thought that I’d be able to make movies, but I began to learn by discovering films that were made in a way that was very technically simple yet powerful in terms of character, which is what you see in Ali. I come from an Algerian family that emigrated to France in the seventies, so there is something about the character of Ali in particular, and the empathy that the older woman has for him, that touched me. There’s also something about the way Fassbinder depicts sadness that I love and find refreshing. I absolutely adore In a Year of 13 Moons, Fox and His Friends, and Querelle, which made me feel the world differently. I didn’t feel so alone; I felt there were other people who were like me."

"I am convinced that Buñuel had intimate conversations with God throughout his life, wherein they would share their observations on humanity and tell lots of jokes. Buñuel’s movies are evidence of these dialogues. That Obscure Object of Desire is about a little man like you and me, self-satisfied and lustful. He is in love with a woman who refuses to give herself to him physically. This 1977 movie (Buñuel’s last) is irreverent, sexual, funny, elegant, shocking, embarrassing, political, and light as a feather. The way to enjoy it is to just let it happen to you, rather than to harbor any preconceived thoughts. To try to analyze why the director uses two actresses to play the same character and the motivation behind when he chooses to use each one is to miss the movie entirely (and to be the butt of a Buñuel practical joke—that’s him laughing at you while you are engaged in this fruitless exercise). As the story unfolds, you begin to feel that these two physically opposite actresses (the drop-dead gorgeous Carole Bouquet and the sultry, exotic Angela Molina) are the same woman and represent Buñuel’s complete male fantasy. Like many of his great films, this one includes a pig, a few nuns, a dwarf, and Fernando Rey."

"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."

"Malle is one of my favorite directors. He flirts with genres, tries all sorts of things, travels all around the world, refuses to let go of documentary, his first love (or first milieu)—although his fiction movies are acclaimed. This film, close to his skin and past, is a strong coming-of-age work, set in France under Vichy. Often, in the middle of the day, I think of scenes from Au revoir les enfants, moments of grace like the restaurant sequence, with the mother. French officers burst into the place and ask for citizens’ papers. They find an old Jewish man dining quietly at his table and start to reprimand him, asking him if he knows how to read; the place is, of course, forbidden to “youtres,” as the young French officer says insolently. Suddenly, every patron at the restaurant starts yelling at the officers, insulting them (“Collabo!”), forcing them to leave. And then, among the clientele, German officers stand up and order them to exit the place. Strong turning point. That is exactly Malle, in there, striking again. Contrast, antagonism, emotions, brute emotions. The rest is craft and mastery. But emotions. That is what he aims for. That is what we get."