"It would just be dumb not to include this. I have been once accused of being irreverent above all, and I am in danger of proving that here when I say that I find most Malick 2.0 movies to be ridiculous. I do like To the Wonder because it’s pulpy. When I heard that Malick was making The Thin Red Line, I checked James Jones’s book out of the library and sat in my attic sublet poring over it in anticipation of what was to come, and when it came . . . gee whiz but what an overblown lint ball of homoerotic bluster and worthlessness. And: there’s nothing wrong with Badlands. Beautiful, great music, magical pace, great, great acting. An ultimate movie, so good that it’s understandable how the momentum from Badlands alone can propel boatloads of people to believe that The New World has content. Springsteen appropriated Badlands, using its power to artificially light his Nebraska. Tarantino and Tony Scott used it to make the best screwball romantic comedy of modern times, True Romance. Badlands is as close to a perfect movie as I can think of (though I don’t hold perfection as the most desirable of qualities in anything), one that holds something to draw in almost any audience. Even the brutality that might otherwise repel is balanced enough with gentleness and charisma that I wouldn’t squirm watching the movie with a grandparent. Well: children probably shouldn’t see it. Maybe probably."

"Number three would be The Breakfast Club, which might be kind of on the nose but you can’t not put it on the list. It’s a great film and you can say it in place of naming all of John Hughes’ films, because we drew so much inspiration from a lot of his. The thing that John Hughes did, which was really the genesis of why we wanted to produce the movie, is that there were equal parts drama and comedy. Now today you’ll see a movie and it’ll be all raunchy — and it’ll be great — but it’ll be just sort of a raunchy fun time. Or you’ll go see a movie and it’ll be really romantic, so it’s all one thing. John Hughes dared to do both, to have kind of a four-course meal, and also he could have young ensembles do it. I love having worked with movie stars but I really wanted to find a bunch of young ensemble peers. The little side note is that all of John Hughes’ kids, in his films, go to Shermer High, and that’s where we talk about having gone to. At the beginning, when you see the yearbook, it says “Shermer High.” That’s the only thing that tips its hat in the movie; everything else is like, we wanted to use some conventions — you know, we wanted to steal a red car, we wanted to have a guy chasing a girl at a party, have a platonic best girlfriend — but with Shermer, we went for it."