"Sitting in a house with her guitar, in a huddle with Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell shows the guys chords to a new song called “Coyote,” just before diving into it, in a vivid moment in “Rolling Thunder Revue.” It’s one sustained shot, handheld, and yet it feels like watching something great being born. The richness of Mitchell’s road-hardened writing weaves with her shimmering voice and guitar. Watching Dylan’s chagrined face, listening to, watching Joni, took us back to a kindred moment in the late, great D.A. Pennebaker’s classic “Don’t Look Back,” as Dylan sings “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” while Donovan takes it in. But this time Dylan is the humbled one."

"There’s not really a road map for becoming an artist other than the following: get up off your ass every day and make an effort; don’t be afraid to try and fail, and don’t wait for permission to get started; if you don’t have money, get creative with materials that you find or make; believe without a doubt that you were meant for something more, and that no one else can say something the way you can. If you’re fascinated (like I am) by the New York artist scene in the 60s and 70s, and how the AIDS epidemic in the 80s swept through and took its toll, “Just Kids” will blow your mind."

"Carolyn Cassady was the wife of Neal Cassady who is the hero in Kerouac’s “On the Road.” She was his wife, but also an artist and art teacher, and she was linked to this absolute lunatic of a man who was her Achilles heel. He regularly betrayed her, but you love who you love. She had a love affair with Kerouac as well—weirdly because Neal Cassady suggested it. She was an incredibly gifted writer, but she was managing these crazy men in her life and bringing up her children and I guess she didn’t see herself in that way. But she wrote with so much intuition and insight, and a lot of beauty as well."

"This is a companion portrait of the existential man of The Fire Within, but it is the obverse—men facing their end not by the personal choice of suicide but by literally being blown to bits. Beginning in a slow, sleepy town (an extended sequence that was once severely trimmed), it tracks men who are moving toward death on a literal and metaphorical road but whose ability to face the void ahead of them is Camus-like in its indomitability. Screwed down as tightly as a pipe bomb, this Clouzot film threatens to blow up in front of you at every turn. You want to scream as you reach to grab the truck’s steering wheel."

"After Gone and Road Warrior is Pulp Fiction, which I consider a perfect movie. I consider it a pitch-perfect movie. I’ve gotten to the point now where I pray to not come across it while channel surfing because, if I see five frames of it, then I have to sit and watch the rest of it. I’m now up to something like 30 or 40 times I’ve seen it. I just love that movie and all its dimensions, its crazy story structure, Quentin’s just brilliant dialogue, and the kind of mix of style and atmosphere with these memorable, memorable characters. Pulp is definitely one [of my favorites], although anything Tarantino would be good with me."