"Well, it was an actor playing Othello. It was written by Garson Kanin, who later married a teacher of mine, but he was married to Ruth Gordon, who was a favorite actress of mine. And it was a movie about the theater. I love those kinds of in-house things. I love political movies or plays, but especially plays about the inner workings of the business, or that give you insight into the process of what actors go through."

"A lullaby for the Antichrist, Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Ira Levin’s diabolic best seller has Manhattanite Rosemary (Mia Farrow) slowly coming to believe that her husband (John Cassavetes), nosy neighbor (Ruth Gordon), and almost everyone else in their apartment building are conspiring against her . . . and that the child she is carrying is the prophesied spawn of Satan. The chanting and summoning are solemn yet absurd, but the sense of betrayal and a world turned against a lone woman makes this an enduring nightmare."

"I’m going to go with Harold and Maude, by Hal Ashby. I think it’s definitely one of the most unusual love stories that I’ve seen. Maude is one of the most inspiring characters. She reminds me to see the world positively and forgivingly and put past troubles behind me. The Cat Stevens soundtrack is sublime. The comedy is delicious. The performance of Ruth Gordon – you know, she’s a woman in her 80s acting like a 16-year-old – is one of the most extraordinary performances I’ve ever seen. I believe it got very bad reviews when it came out, almost unanimously, but is, I think, probably one of the great comedies ever made."

"This was the movie, when I was a kid. This and Bugsy Malone. I know all of the dialogue in these two movies from repeated viewings at the movie theater. The Vogue and the Alpha 3 theaters in Louisville. And Ruth Gordon gave me a gateway to Hollywood screenwriting history, and Cat Stevens a gateway to transformation through music. Harold took life’s lemons and made a black psychedelic monolithic lemonade. I learned to do that too. Comedy in death, comedy in failure, comedy in being mystified by societal expectations. I was very fond of MGM musicals during my childhood, and Harold and Maude felt like the closest thing to a modern-day evolution of one of those."