"This film changed my life. I wouldn’t have known it existed if I hadn’t gone to see a terrible Don Johnson movie, A Boy and His Dog, in a double bill with my brother. We’d see anything in Oklahoma City to pass the time, and we were the only kids in the theatre, smoking a joint. Then the second film came on. I hadn’t known this period of Pink Floyd. It opened up a new world of music to me. I was 16, wanting to be a rock star, and they actually talked about how they made their songs. I went out and bought a Stratocaster like Dave Gilmour’s soon after. I still can’t believe I had the luck to see it."

"I could’ve chosen any [Robert] Altman film from that golden period. M*A*S*H was just mindblowingly exciting as… I think I was a drama student, probably, at the time, so all those Altman films that came: Nashville, McCabe and Mrs Miller, California Split. I just loved his work, so McCabe and Mrs Miller — that whole world he created I just thought was magnificent, and the Leonard Cohen music and the beauty of the winter up in Alaska or wherever it was. It was great."

"Say Anything is just such a sweet coming-of-age movie. I just love everything about it: the romance, the comedy, the time period, the music, and the chemistry between the two lead characters. This movie was the beginning of a lot of great careers. The image of John Cusack and the Peter Gabriel song “In Your Eyes” is just so iconic. And Cameron Crowe is my favorite director of all time. If there were a sixth favorite film, it would have been Almost Famous."

"I love all of Bergman’s films, but his later period has had the biggest impact on me, starting with Persona. The film marked the advent of a new period for him; I know that he wrote it when he was in the hospital and thought he was going to die. It adopts a dream logic in a really forward-thinking way, and like Altman’s Three Women, is an example of a proto-Lynchian dream movie. I was thinking about that when we were making Hereditary, how it gradually adopts a nightmare logic. Cries and Whispers strikes me as the most painful and beautiful film about death . . . and sisterhood. I screened it for the crew when we were making Hereditary, which is also a movie about suffering. Bergman was always wrestling with the big things—family dynamics, one’s relationship to God—but he did it in such an accessible way. His films are entertainments—they’re fun, and they’re beautiful. I feel like he has a reputation for being a forbidding director, but I find him to be as inviting as a filmmaker like that could possibly be."

"I love all of Bergman’s films, but his later period has had the biggest impact on me, starting with Persona. The film marked the advent of a new period for him; I know that he wrote it when he was in the hospital and thought he was going to die. It adopts a dream logic in a really forward-thinking way, and like Altman’s Three Women, is an example of a proto-Lynchian dream movie. I was thinking about that when we were making Hereditary, how it gradually adopts a nightmare logic. Cries and Whispers strikes me as the most painful and beautiful film about death . . . and sisterhood. I screened it for the crew when we were making Hereditary, which is also a movie about suffering. Bergman was always wrestling with the big things—family dynamics, one’s relationship to God—but he did it in such an accessible way. His films are entertainments—they’re fun, and they’re beautiful. I feel like he has a reputation for being a forbidding director, but I find him to be as inviting as a filmmaker like that could possibly be."