"Also based on a book. Coming from a super, super anal place as a filmmaker, the idea that the greatest hands-on auteur [Alfred Hitchcock] in cinema history made a movie with his hand buried in there perfectly–a lot of his movies, his hand is on top, and in this one, his hand was buried perfectly in there. Again, I’m not sure what genre it is and I love it because of that. Is it scary? I’m not sure it is. Is it a drama? For sure. Is it a romance? Yeah. And I love it, so elegantly done, I so fell in love with those characters, the performances were amazing. It was epic and haunting, and it was just its own perfect little gem that will never be re-created."

"It’s one of the great endings to a movie ever when Willy asks Charlie what happened to the little boy who got everything he ever wanted. “You don’t know? He lived happily ever after!” And then the glass elevator breaks through the glass roof. It’s incredible. I worked briefly on a television show with Mel Stuart, the director, and heard all sorts of fantastic stories about that remarkable film. And of course I knew all the songs – I still do. I have a 5-year-old, but I haven’t shown it to her yet. It’s kind of scary – that guy who shows up with the little shopping carriage and makes that little speech about how nobody who goes in ever comes out. And the Oompa Loompas. And that boat ride – woo, acid trip!"

"I chose this one because of the feeling I get in sharing in a genius-like intelligence; it makes me understand how a viewer can participate in true genius. That gives me vertigo. This incredible intelligence is revealed by certain images and details so that it sparks your desire to look beyond, to look deeper, to follow certain signs. The other thing that is important for me in her films is the approach to fear. I don’t like movies that are scary in the sense that they introduce me to new fears I didn’t have before—I don’t like that at all. But Lucrecia’s movies help bring to the surface fears that were already in me, and by showing them to me, I am allowed to accept them and understand them and work on them."

"First, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was very important to me. I probably saw that when I was 12 or 13. I really loved acting, and it was the first thing I had ever seen, it felt like, on film where acting just felt alive in a way that I had never seen before. I couldn’t believe how free and chaotic and amazing and human it all felt. Those therapy scenes are just so incredible and special. To be able to have a scene of 15 people where no one is taking you out of it and everyone just seems very vivid. It was scary to me how alive it was but very, very exciting. It just felt like, what an incredible thing it would be to be a part of that."