"Gus is the best. Idaho was one of the first movies with which I fell in love. I would watch it repeatedly when I was a teenager. River Phoenix gives the performance of a lifetime, original and inspiring. As a young actor, I needed nothing more than this performance for inspiration. The film is a collage of techniques, plots, and themes, expertly wound together as only Van Sant is able to do. When Criterion released this DVD with a film-length interview between Todd Haynes and Gus, it was a gold mine for an acolyte like me. There are also great old magazine articles, and an odd conversation with J. T. Leroy, before he was exposed. Mala Noche is Gus’s first film. He financed it with his own money. It’s a great early glimpse into many of the themes that continue to consume him."

"Gus is the best. Idaho was one of the first movies with which I fell in love. I would watch it repeatedly when I was a teenager. River Phoenix gives the performance of a lifetime, original and inspiring. As a young actor, I needed nothing more than this performance for inspiration. The film is a collage of techniques, plots, and themes, expertly wound together as only Van Sant is able to do. When Criterion released this DVD with a film-length interview between Todd Haynes and Gus, it was a gold mine for an acolyte like me. There are also great old magazine articles, and an odd conversation with J. T. Leroy, before he was exposed. Mala Noche is Gus’s first film. He financed it with his own money. It’s a great early glimpse into many of the themes that continue to consume him."

"First of all, [for something to be great] there’s magnificence in every single department. Whether it’s genre, whether it’s locations, whether it’s cinematography, whether it’s performances, whether it’s script, whether it’s sound – that’s number one. I saw Lawrence of Arabia in theaters. I’d been an actor for about a year and a half; I was under contract to Elia Kazan. I went to the movie and I was absolutely blown away. But the thing that blew me away more than anything else was that the guy did that. I mean this isn’t “once upon a time;” a guy did that. A guy wrote the book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was there, he did it, and I don’t think he ever saw 40 years old. Excuse my language, but I’ve always been quite impressed with people that got s—t done. And he got stuff done."

"There was a really good film, and a film I really liked called Time After Time. With Mary Steenburgen, and she wound up marrying the British actor from Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell. My wife and I both really loved the film. It was a great film, and then the fact that they got married in real life. They didn’t stay married, but they had a couple kids together, and I’d like to think that at least for that period, that was real… where life imitated art. Because it’s such a beautiful movie, a love story. Two people from very divergent, different worlds, and I know them both, Mary and Malcolm, and they are two people from very divergent worlds. That’s probably why the marriage didn’t work out. Yet, there’s something about that that I thought was kind of sweet. It was a really good movie, too."

"I love the first Godfather movie, part one. And two. Another great director, Coppola. And then of course, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro. I had heard the stories about how they wanted a whole other cast, and Francis was under the gun and he rose to the occasion. He got great performances out of Pacino, and De Niro was unbelievable. All the secondary guys from Joe Spinell to Michael Gazzo. The casting was impeccable. He got a lot of great performances from people who were just getting into the business themselves. Duvall, everybody had so many layers. The performance he got out of Lee Strasberg, who never really did much acting in front of the camera. When I was in the Actor’s Studio, the only actor that Lee actually spoke to was Al, so [Coppola] used the relationship that the two had and that was quite interesting."

"Robert Mitchum stars in his signature role as the demonic preacher Harry Powell. The great actor Charles Laughton’s only work as a director is a horrifying fable about the loss of innocence and the darkness barely contained beneath the veneer of American pastoral life. It’s a one-of-a-kind movie. There’s nothing like it. Powerful, beautiful, darkly funny. Visually stunning. Both expressionistic and harshly realistic. It’s an American fever dream that I don’t think was equaled until David Lynch launched Blue Velvet into an unsuspecting Reagan-era public three decades later. The disc features Charles Laughton Directs “The Night of the Hunter,” a deconstruction of the film featuring outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage that enhances the experience of an already perfect film in ways unimaginable. Compiled by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, it’s a special feature as good as the film itself."