"Citizen Kane is, like you see now, P.T. Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood. It’s a good movie; it’s the same kind of thing. You follow a crazy character who gets really successful, and in a very bitter way. So I really love those two movies. It’s still one of the biggest crimes of Hollywood that they didn’t finance Orson Welles’ movies after a while. To have a genius like him, sitting there and trying to get his last 5,000 bucks together to make another movie after he did a movie like this… (Welles’ follow-up to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, was notoriously completed and re-cut without his input.)"

"Youthful optimism and sexuality are thwarted by the bitterness of a crumbling town in Peter Bogdanovich’s lovely film of Larry McMurtry’s novel. One can feel the influence of John Ford and Orson Welles in both the deep focus compositions and the unexpected bursts of volatility. For example: there’s a fantastic scene where an argument between Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms escalates into a fistfight—the shots start to come faster and faster, almost every new shot from a different camera angle, culminating in a shocking moment of violence."

"I got four, and there’s one more. It’s a biggie. And again, this is one that’s maybe a little bit of a stretch in terms of it being a con man movie, but I actually don’t think so. It’s F for Fake. If I was numbering these, this might be number one. It’s a movie that’s really hard to define. It’s pretty commonly termed a filmic essay by Orson Welles on the subject of fakery, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s so many things. I don’t even know how to start talking about it. At its essence, it is about what we were just talking about. It’s about the charlatans and fakery and the notion of fake versus real, and the notion of the con versus legitimacy, I guess. And he just digs into that pretty deeply. And also in a way that’s so incredibly entertaining. The way that the movie’s cut, also, you would think that, today with our shorter and shorter attention spans and our notions of fast cutting, you would think that the way that Orson Welles, the style in which he cuts this film, would be easily absorbed by us. But I actually… You know, I have friends of mine who are much, much younger than me. You know, it actually took a second viewing to kind of absorb the film. I mean, it really is still pretty insane, the abstract way that Welles cut this whole thing together and made the whole together work. I feel like he’s absolutely self-aware; that’s part of the act. That’s what’s fun. And that’s why that opening sequence in the train station, you see him putting on that character and very much doing the… You know, I think he’s aware of it. I think he’s also aware that it’s kind of funny, that that’s part of the gag, you know, is pretending to be somebody you’re not, putting that on. Putting on that big cape and that big hat, and being that guy. And, you know, if you’re Orson Welles, you can pull it off."

"Well, first off, I’ll say Beetlejuice because that is my number one movie of all time, period. I know it’s not like no f—in’ Orson Welles s—, but I swear to god, Beetlejuice was, to me, the greatest movie ever made. It’s amazing, and it’s so fun. It’s so fun and it ages well. You know, watching it as a kid was great, and as you get older you’re like, “Oh these were some dirty jokes in here.” I remember I loved it then, and then I got high and saw it, and I was like, “Oh my god! Dude, what the…” It was amazing."

"“In what ca-TEG-ory would you put Mr. James Joyce?” Or, for that matter, this film? Among other things, I’d call it the best gangster picture ever made. Orson Welles got the most mileage from it (including a radio spin-off that recast the swinish Harry Lime as a good-natured rogue), a renown I find difficult to fathom, given the superb ensemble work by Joseph Cotten, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli, Bernard Lee, Wilfred Hyde-White, and a doctor who pronounces his name VINK-el. Carol Reed’s direction makes the most of every incident, and the whole package is tied up with one of the best musical scores ever."

"This was Orson Welles? last chance to work for a major studio and it was all going quite well until they saw it and didn?t quite get what he was doing. But it?s an audacious film, with all of his usual signature flourishes. Prior to that period, he?d seldom had the opportunity to use the technology the studios had and so it?s an exciting film to see visually. Thematically, it?s very dark. At its heart it?s a Universal-International B-picture, which is what they wanted. Their reaction to it is fairly inexplicable because the movie is extremely entertaining and could?ve been promoted into a solid box-office picture. Instead it was released at the bottom of a double bill and they fooled around with it."

"What can I say about The Third Man that hasn’t already been said? This is the first film that made me look at movies in a new way. It made me fall in love with everything about them. You’ve got to hand it to Carol Reed for making a movie that is all about a character (Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles) who doesn’t even show up until three-quarters of the way in. The Anton Karas score remains one of the best ever for a film. I bought a zither just to learn to play Harry Lime’s theme. If I’m having a hard time getting into working, I often put The Third Man on in the background, as it always puts me in a mysterious and creative mood. The music is truly upbeat."