"This is the best film title in the world, and I wish so much that I had come up with it myself. It’s a completely absurd film. Buñuel dares to make a movie about this group of people who want to but never manage to eat dinner. There’s a moment when a hand comes up and tries to grab a piece of food off the table. He has no respect for the audience at all, and that of course makes him very interesting. I also like the way he dealt with his public persona. He was very free, and he was playing around in a way that gave him distance from the whole circus. When he was nominated for an Oscar for The Discreet Charm, a journalist asked him how he thought it was going to go, and Buñuel said he would win because his producer had bought the Oscar. And then he actually won and in his award speech he said that you can say whatever you want about Americans, but at least they stand by their word."

"I’ve been going through Scenes from a Marriage, the Bergman miniseries, and getting very invested. I think it’s the truest-to-humanity thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, every single person you’d like, or care about as a filmmaker in the past 50 years is influenced by Bergman. He is the ultimate genius when you watch those movies. Nothing’s better than the performances in (these) movies. I feel like Bergman’s movies can come across as being cold and hopeless, but it’s Liv (Ullmann) and all the women stars he made films about that took his sensibility and turned it on his head, making it more nuanced, lush, and beautiful. It’s (the women) being thoughtful and kind, and open, that makes the difference. Everyone reading should go to the Criterion Channel to watch the Bergman collection. I mean, the movies are short, and I am sure that just watching those short movies they’ll get really inspired, without a doubt. You know, think of Persona... nothing comes close to that!"