"I’m going to go with Raging Bull. I love Raging Bull. That’s another one I saw at a young age, and I didn’t love it at first. I didn’t know what to think of it. I was like, “This isn’t Rocky.” [Laughs] I was compelled and disturbed by what it was doing, stuff I didn’t get at the time. But that movie struck me at my core. I didn’t know if I liked it, but then I had to come back to it, and then I became obsessed with it and his whole career. It’s very hard to pick a favorite movie of his. Raging Bull is one I go back to, and there’s something between the expressionistic filmmaking of those boxing matches. There’s just a neo-realism in the dynamic between him, his brother, and his wife. It’s really powerful and incredibly inspiring."

"As a child, I wanted to grow up to be a professional cartoonist, and when I was about twelve or thirteen my father (right around the time he showed me The Rocky Horror Picture Show) handed me a Washington Post article about Robert Crumb and said, “Here, you might be interested in this.” And boy, was he right! Like finding out that the Cramps and Meet the Feebles existed, this was revelatory. I didn’t know you were allowed to make art like this. (And of course, in Crumb’s case, sometimes you’re not.) Zwigoff’s portrait-of-the-artist-as-nihilistic-misanthrope is one of the all-time great docs about creativity and the toll it can take (see Burden of Dreams for another one!), and on top of that, it’s caustically funny and soul-crushingly humane. Where have you gone, Terry Zwigoff? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you."