"This is from a Brian De Palma movie. It’s a pretty scary film, and the soundtrack… ok if you want to freak yourself out, turn out all the lights and sit in the middle of the room and listen to this. You won’t last a minute. When I’m first thinking about a movie I’ll start looking for songs that reflect the personality of the movie, I’ll start looking for songs which can reflect the personality of the movie. The record I think most about is the one which plays during the opening credits, because that’s the one which sets the tone of the movie. Like in Reservoir Dogs, when you see the guys all walking out of the diner, and that bass line from ‘Little Green Bag’ kicks in – you just know there’s gonna be trouble."

"Wong Kar-Wai is one of my favorite directors from Asia. I’m a natural romantic. I feel like his movies — slow motion, the momentum of people, even a clock running — are non-traditional filmmaking. Normal movies [have scenes set up] like, I talk to you; you talk to me. Those kinds of movies are boring to me, but his films are advanced. He’s also extremely private and personal. His stories are all about innocent love, sort of like teenage love. How people need; how you love. They’re very, very romantic. When I talk about it, I feel this slow motion romance, high heels, the mystery of women, sexy, walking by. I recognize things in my soul that are unspoken; a lot of those longings, and unfulfilled romances, and dreams within [Wong Kar-Wai’s] films — they make me feel that."

"This movie seemed to come out of nowhere. I didn’t even know it existed until I saw it at BAM, and I remember walking out of the theater thinking this is the best movie ever. I love giant, epic films with incredible black-and-white cinematography. There’s one scene in the film that I literally show to everyone I ever make a movie with. It’s shot through a fence, when Tatiana Samoilova is running, and the camera moves past the fence super quickly, and it speeds up with the pace of her running. It has this effect where it makes your heart race in a way that’s insane. The other thing about that movie is that it’s an epic told from a woman’s point of view, which you rarely see. It’s just one of the greatest movies of all time."

"For me this is Anna Magnani’s best performance. She’s unbelievable in it. Just seeing this woman put herself in this situation and work the way she has to work—though we never doubt why—creates an unbelievable amount of empathy. There’s empathy in that world, and also poetry. That long shot where she’s walking on the outskirts of Rome and there are those lights behind her and she’s owning the fact that she does what she does—it’s not portraying her as this pathetic, sad woman who is forced to do this because life is so hard. It’s still celebrating her life. She’s not living in her own tragedy. There’s a connection that Pasolini always had to his characters that was inspiring, and he was never going to judge people with a normal ideological or moral compass."