"[Taxi Driver is] a film that really kind of struck me on an emotional level and as somebody who works and can kind of appreciate how films are made. I remember when I saw Taxi Driver for the first time, and I saw the creativity and the imagination that went into the shots that Scorsese chose, and to really kind of capture a very particular kind of New York. I thought it was really wonderful. You know, you can watch certain films and there are certain things that will stick out for you. It can be a great character or a performance or an ensemble performance or whatever, but when everything seems to come into play, it’s always really impressive, I think, when every single cast member is very strong. So I felt like with this film, cinematically, it just kind of ticked all those boxes for me."

"The first one is Paul Thomas Anderson and There Will Be Blood. I had seen that movie at a very crucial point in my life. I had just torn my shoulder in wrestling, and it was like the world had fallen away from me. Like a lot in the movie is autobiographical. So yeah, I was really kind of lost. And then I saw There Will Be Blood in the theater, and it rocked my world. It blew my mind. The first Paul Thomas Anderson movie I saw was Boogie Nights at a really young age, and it was perfect for an adolescent. But it also made me realize there’s a creator behind all this. I was transported and inspired. That was when I started getting back into filmmaking and loving movies again. Because I couldn’t do sports. That movie was really huge for that."

"First of all, [for something to be great] there’s magnificence in every single department. Whether it’s genre, whether it’s locations, whether it’s cinematography, whether it’s performances, whether it’s script, whether it’s sound – that’s number one. I saw Lawrence of Arabia in theaters. I’d been an actor for about a year and a half; I was under contract to Elia Kazan. I went to the movie and I was absolutely blown away. But the thing that blew me away more than anything else was that the guy did that. I mean this isn’t “once upon a time;” a guy did that. A guy wrote the book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was there, he did it, and I don’t think he ever saw 40 years old. Excuse my language, but I’ve always been quite impressed with people that got s—t done. And he got stuff done."

"I think when you ask for favorite films, you’re really asking “favorite films at 15” — you know what I’m saying? Formative favorite films. I don’t think they really change much. You sort of can’t argue with your inner 13-year-old that watched something 25,000 times. Now I’ll see something adult and be affected by it — like A Separation, which I saw and I loved — but it’s gonna be hard to top those 25,000 viewings when you were 13. You get past pubescence and it’s cooked. Put a fork in it, your favorite films is done. [Laughs] Don’t hold me to it. The English Patient: Oh my gosh, it was just so affecting when I saw it. The performances are impeccable. The sense of time and place; everything about it. It’s really one of those kinds of epics — like Lawrence of Arabia is an epic. You rarely see epics any more."

"The first film I saw by Dumont was L’humanité. I saw it immediately after I made Japón and it made such an impression on me. At that point, Dumont was doing something absolutely perfect: when he was shooting and creating sequences, he was taking presence into the camera and building with it. In L’humanité and La vie de Jesus, it’s striking how he used sound in such a direct way, to the point where he kept the sound of each shot distinct from its counter shot, even though they are part of the same sequence. You can also feel that he was shooting in the place he was born and raised. The things the characters say, the pauses they take when they talk, the perfect choice of words—all of that just shows he’s someone who is very aware of what he experiences in life."

"The first film I saw by Dumont was L’humanité. I saw it immediately after I made Japón and it made such an impression on me. At that point, Dumont was doing something absolutely perfect: when he was shooting and creating sequences, he was taking presence into the camera and building with it. In L’humanité and La vie de Jesus, it’s striking how he used sound in such a direct way, to the point where he kept the sound of each shot distinct from its counter shot, even though they are part of the same sequence. You can also feel that he was shooting in the place he was born and raised. The things the characters say, the pauses they take when they talk, the perfect choice of words—all of that just shows he’s someone who is very aware of what he experiences in life."