"I’d like to say that the television version that’s longer is better than the version that was in movie theaters. Bergman’s my favorite filmmaker, if I had to choose. It’s very much a culmination of most of the themes and motifs of his career that appears as a physical personification in the very beginning of the film, similar kinds of ghosts that Bergman explored in the past. He has his love for the theater and puppetry and there’s moments of hope and joy, but it also just reminds you that humans have certain demons that they can’t ever escape. It’s really rich and it touches on so many things about what it is to be human that it’s really quite remarkable. And as with every Bergman movie, there’s not a moment of bad performance to be found. But I think that the first episode, if you were to watch the TV version, is just Christmas with a family. A long episode of getting to know a family at Christmas. And I was talking with [Home Alone director] Chris Columbus about Christmas in movies and he was explaining how it’s just a time of heightened emotions for everyone. So that’s a really clever way to learn about this family and all of their dynamics super deeply, by beginning at Christmas. And the first time you watch it, you’re kind of like, “Where is the story? What is this? This is just Christmas.” And then the next episode, the plot begins but you’ve gotten to know this family incredibly closely and so then you’re just so invested with them through the rest of the film. Also, like The Lighthouse, it has some fart jokes."

"A third film I’m going to list is Peter Greenaway’s film Drowning by Numbers. And Drowning by Numbers, a few years ago my wife and I at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, [Massachusetts,] got to show each other films that we loved, and the one that was the hardest for the Brattle to get hold of was a cinema print of Drowning by Numbers. I really wanted to see it on a big screen again; I’d seen it on a big screen when it first came out, and in the intervening years, seen it on video, but loved it. It’s a film about games, it’s a film about numbers, it’s a film about murder, men being murdered by women, who may all be the same woman, but are, at least the way that I read it, aspects of the triple Goddess — the maiden, the mother, and the crone — but all of them are having the same relationship with men. All of them are profoundly killing off these rather abusive and appalling men in their life, and it’s a strangely beautiful and absolutely surreal film that plays by its own rules. And one of its rules is it makes you in the audience count. You start noticing numbers showing up on screen and realize they are counting to 100. So when you are at number 50 on the screen and a character is explaining to you the rules of the game, you realize that you have another 50 to go and you’re exactly halfway through. Beautiful performances and beautifully filmed, and just one of those places where, as far I am concerned I wish there was so much more cinema like that, but there doesn’t seem to be."

"It’s probably not cool to admit you don’t quite get a cult movie. But it’s probably better than trying to act cool by pretending you really dig a movie that you don’t fully understand. There are several other films on the Criterion label that I could expound on sincerely and endlessly: Life of Brian, Robocop, Straw Dogs, Hard Boiled, and The Red Shoes, for example. Instead, for the eleventh movie in my top ten, I would like to include a film that has become something of an intangible Magic Eye picture for me: Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop. There is no movie that I have watched more often in an attempt to unpeel and unravel it. I have seen the film many times, first on Alex Cox’s BBC2 series Moviedrome, once at the theater, and many times in this very Criterion edition. Hell, I even visited some of the locations on a Route 66 trip. Still, I’ll admit that the movie is an endearing puzzle for me. I may not be the right age or nationality to fully crack the enigma of this movie, but the fact that I haven’t stopped trying in twenty-three years has to stand for something. Ryan O’Neal’s character from The Driver and Kowalski from Vanishing Point I feel I can race alongside, but James Taylor and Dennis Wilson always seem way ahead of me, their Chevy a mirage in a heat haze. But the fact that I’m talking about it now and waxing lyrical over it means that it has got under my skin in a way that other movies haven’t. And I will continue to pursue this film, even if I never quite catch up."

"I think it’s probably one of the most inspirational movies for me because of Paul Newman‘s performance. I think that is, to me, some of the best, [most] controlled acting in a movie. I think that he has this incredible likability. Even though he’s a drunk, washed-up lawyer, you’re still rooting for him from the very beginning. I’m that sort of weird guy who will watch a movie almost every day if I can. It’s harder when you’re working on the show. I buy a lot of movies on used DVD so I can have certain scenes. I was really looking for things to inspire me. When I got out of college I was waiting tables professionally [and] couldn’t afford to go the theater [every] night. I think those great movies can actually make you feel a certain way. Not only emotionally, but if you’re in this business, it’s one of those things where you see someone do something that good and it buys you a year of energy. That’s what I was really looking for. It sounds so cliché,[but I wanted] to bask in the glow some of these amazing performances, like [those of] Dustin Hoffman and Marlon Brando. But it was also fun. To get back to what I was saying before, that 1970s raw energy, it’s almost frustrating now that people aren’t making more movies like that because people won’t go see them. Even Away We Go is, in a way, a tribute to the 1970s movies, too, but more of the Hal Ashby thing. Again, I don’t think people are making movies like this, so for Sam to do it is incredibly cool. And the fact that my name’s on the poster is totally surreal."