"The next one I was going to say, which is Lawrence of Arabia, I actually just saw for the first time last year. I saw it projected at a theater with the intermission and everything. It was just so awesome, and I loved that it’s “introducing” Peter O’Toole. The character’s so complex and interesting and perverse and heroic and everything in a huge movie and it’s never going to happen again to have a character in front of a movie that’s that big, that’s that complicated. The scene where he’s getting, like, whatever is happening to him… It’s wild. I love that movie."

"Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — that’s another one I rewatched recently. When I first saw that movie it made me feel bad. I didn’t fall in love with it. I loved The Graduate when I first saw it, but [Virginia Woolf], I wasn’t excited by it, because it seemed like there was a negativity about it. But when I watched it more recently I thought it was the most beautiful, inspired, exciting movie. Mike Nichols is one of the most inventive directors that we’ve had, and that’s one of the great, you know, it’s a great movie, and a stunning first film."

"I saw both of these for the first time in film school, then I moved to Paris in my twenties and lived there for many years, always kind of romanticizing the Paris of the late 1950s that I saw in these two films but never quite finding it. You can still find a few little streets and alleyways in Ménilmontant where The Red Balloon was filmed, and a few years ago I found myself on the same beach in Normandy where Jean-Pierre Léaud runs in those beautiful long tracking shots that end The 400 Blows. Landscapes are just as important as story."

"I saw both of these for the first time in film school, then I moved to Paris in my twenties and lived there for many years, always kind of romanticizing the Paris of the late 1950s that I saw in these two films but never quite finding it. You can still find a few little streets and alleyways in Ménilmontant where The Red Balloon was filmed, and a few years ago I found myself on the same beach in Normandy where Jean-Pierre Léaud runs in those beautiful long tracking shots that end The 400 Blows. Landscapes are just as important as story."

"One of the reasons I did Crimes of Passion was because I saw The Music Lovers, Ken Russell’s film, with Richard Chamberlain. It was, and I still think it is, one of the most extraordinary films I have ever seen. Amazing. So when Ken came to talk to me about [Crimes], you know, I was thrilled. I got a wonderful note once from Isabella Rossellini and she told me that she did Blue Velvet because she saw Crimes of Passion. I thought that was a really nice compliment, because I think she’s quite wonderful. So that’s a movie."

"A miracle of discontinuity and absurd tomfoolery, but with the help of a fantastic music track and a great measure of talent from everyone connected—including the costume designer—it took off and never touched ground again. I first saw it in France, with no subtitles, and thought it was a wonderful story. When I saw it later with subtitles, I realized I’d gotten it all wrong. It was a completely different story. But it turned out not to matter. It’s simply a wild film ride. And the joke for me was that I thought I understood French."

"I love that movie, when I was a kid I went to the movie theater and saw it 14 times the first weekend. You could see it over and over, they wouldn’t kick you out of the theater back then, so I would just stay there everyday and watch it. To this day, I still love that movie. I think it was brilliant. Sometimes with things like that, you attach a certain period of your life to it, and I saw this when I was a kid. If I’d been 40 years old in 1966, maybe I would have felt differently."