"This is proof that despite the difficulties it is possible to make a wonderful film from a wonderful but very long book, in this case Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, which describes the dissolution of the great Sicilian ruling families during the 1860s. Set in the magnificent and sometimes crumbling palaces of Palermo and the arid Sicilian summer countryside, the film shows us the privileged but largely pointless lifestyle of the ruling elite, threatened by political change and their own inertia. One shot in the film encapsulates the message: when the central family arrives at their country estate exhausted from the grueling journey there, they enter the local church and sit in their family pew, along the length of the nave. The camera tracks across their faces, exhausted and gray with dust. The reference is unmistakable; they resemble those mummified bodies held in catacombs under the Capuchin monastery of Palermo, held upright in endless rows, many still in their nineteenth-, even eighteenth-century clothes, rotting and collapsing, covered in the dust of centuries. It is a beautiful example of how much can be said in a single camera shot when used by a master."

"Speaking of that, we must go to Blade Runner — true visual genius, and also in a class never matched. I saw it the first show, the first day, with a bunch of my friends. I can remember that because it was at the Cinerama dome in Hollywood, and it was on that huge screen with that incredible sound system. I still remember that great Vangelis music. But that opening — it’s embedded in my mind, that opening, with that scape of the city and its almost Mayan-like temple formation and those fires out of nowhere shooting up. Plus, Sean Young — that interview [with Harrison Ford’s Deckard] is unbelievable. I got a lovely letter from her last year. I worked with her on Cousins. Amazingly, amazingly beautiful. And of course it has the great Harrison Ford, and Edward James Olmos, and we could just go on and on with that movie. Daryl Hannah is great in it. And the doll guy, William Sanderson, who I got to work with on The Client — he played one of Tommy Lee Jones’ posse. One of the great things about my job is that I’ve been able to cast, sometimes, my favorite people."

"My number two movie is Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of Murder starring Jimmy Stewart — one of my favorite James Stewart performances. He’s the country lawyer, so all those folksy tricks that Jimmy Stewart uses just really come into play here– ’cause he’s also so bright, you know? He’s the brilliant, folksy country lawyer. And Lee Remick is in it, in the flower of her youth. Bra-less and in Ray-Bans — you know, who doesn’t want [to see] that? And gosh, Ben Gazzara in a really neurotic, strange performance. I think it’s the screen debut of George C. Scott as the young lawyer from Lansing, MI, who takes on this case; and he’s — it’s just brilliant courtroom stuff. Murray Hamilton — who plays the mayor in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws — he’s the bartender, and he’s wonderful; it’s a great turn. And the music: Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, so it’s a great jazz score. The Jimmy Stewart character tinkles on the ivories and he plays a little bit of jazz sometimes as a kind of hobby, so that justifies the score. But that’s a great film — black and white, beautifully shot, underrated. Almost a perfect film."