"This might be the first movie that I saw. I remember watching it when I was five or six — I shouldn’t even have been watching it — and I saw it in a theater. I grew up in a small town and they had one of those small town theaters, and they put Westerns and whatnot onscreen. It’s one of those movies that made me think it would be very cool to work in movies. I don’t know if I understood the concept of being a director, but I understood the concept of someone making movies, and this movie did it for me. Other people say Star Wars or Indiana Jones. For me it was this one. That’s why I have an emotional reaction to it."

"I was completely unprepared when I saw Mulholland Dr. in a small art-house cinema in Stockholm, and it blew my mind. I came out of the movie and just felt like I needed to talk to people and ask questions, like, did you see what I saw? It was huge for me, and it almost felt like, you can’t mess with people like this and get away with it, somebody should do something about it. Usually when American cinema tries to be surreal or nonlinear or non-narrative, it turns either really pretentious or really Hollywood. But David Lynch, in this film but also in general, is probably the only person I know who has succeeded in making his own version of American surrealism."

"I saw this movie at the Academy of Music in Northampton, Massachusetts, when I was thirteen. It was my introduction to Chekhov, and it changed my life. I think I went into the theater in large part because of this movie . . . I didn’t see much theater as a kid, and this was my first clue as to what it could be like. They really nailed what’s so great about Chekhov, and it made total sense to a thirteen-year-old girl in Massachusetts. Then all the Chekhov I saw after that as a young adult that was so terrible and haughty and faux-British . . . I’m just really grateful that this was my first encounter with his work. Wally Shawn’s performance is incredible, too."

"Rushmore. That must come up a lot. But it’s funny, and I know that the movie Harold and Maude is probably a big influence on that; but I hadn’t seen that when I saw Rushmore. I hadn’t seen anything like it. It’s really funny. I think Wes Anderson is really hilarious and most people don’t notice, because of the style of the film. Grand Budapest Hotel, to me, was the funniest film of the year, but people saw it as an art film. I think I related to Max as well, because I grew up poor like he did, and when I went to University I did feel like I was kind of pretending of fitting in this world. I related to Max."