"My next film is a noir, so I noticed that you had a neonoir theme on FilmStruck and recently watched Mona Lisa. It fucking knocked me out! I think it’s one of the best noirs ever. It’s like Melville meets Ken Loach, which is my dream. Watching it, I was like, “They’ve already done it. They did it. It’s everything I wanted to do!” Bob Hoskins is out of control. It’s one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. The way this movie begins is so mind-bogglingly amazing that as soon as it starts you feel like you want to watch it forever. So I’ve been watching it over and over, and I think it shows you the breadth of Neil Jordan. This guy does everything and it’s really cool to see."

"I love Hopscotch and dream of making a movie like it. It’s just full of fun and double crosses. Ronald Neame is very unsung as a director, but he made the coolest movies. He worked a lot with David Lean, so I think it’s interesting to look at Lean, who did these giant epics, and Neame, who was way more experimental and wild in choosing the kinds of movies he was going to make. Hopscotch is basically a perfect film, and Walter Matthau is unreal in it. You watch him and you think, that’s what American actors should have been and should always be. Hopscotch has that heist-noir and cat-and-mouse thing going on, but it’s also bright and goofy and funny and hits a tone that’s so unique and clear."

"This is a film noir that was produced by RKO Studios while Howard Hughes was the controlling owner of it. It stars Robert Mitchum and a woman named Faith Domergue, who was Hughes’ discovery and girlfriend who he basically became involved with when she was a teenager, really, and kept promising that he was going to make her a big star – and didn’t. But this movie is the finest showcase she ever got for her unique talents, which – I don’t know that she was a great actress – but she’s really good in this film as a femme fatale who you would initially think is sort of a vulnerable victim. Then, slowly, over the course of the movie, she reveals that she’s actually running the whole show and is incredibly devious."