"Hustle & Flow showed me what could have happened to me. I hadn’t recognized that until I’d seen the movie completed; you never know what painting you’re making until the final stroke. And even then, it’s not finished until you put it into the frame. I didn’t understand the full impact of those individual strokes that we were making on a day to day basis until I saw [the film] — where A could have led me. I saw where A would end up at. And taking on B, C, and D… For a film to affect me that way, for a character to affect me that way, to where I feel worry and think about who Djay is… I still wonder about Shug and her baby. I still wonder about Key. Hustle & Flow also had music in it, which told some of that struggle. Remember, music used to be written for films, conveyed by the actors themselves. They knew when that music was played and they responded to it. Now, [merging a film to its music] is something that’s done as a separate act, and it’s more manipulative and not honest. Music in Hustle & Flow gave us another plane in which to relate everything to, and to play from. It widened the playing field; it brightened the road down the way, because you could move to that music, and be in step with the audience instead of the audience being manipulated into step with you."

"I blame this movie for starting me smoking again when I was in film school in the eighties. After becoming so smitten with all that Anna Karina embodies, I decided to wear blue tights with red skirts and smoke, constantly. Needless to say it did not turn me into Anna Karina—my tights were the wrong shade of blue, and I was hacking like an old granny at the Santa Anita racetrack. Still, I loved the film, wildly, and love her in it. What is so gorgeous about this DVD is, firstly, Anna herself, and nextly, the color is like powdered paint, soft yet vibrant—not just the gorgeousness of everything Karina wears but also the murals on the walls of the strip club where she works, the jukebox from which Charles Aznavour sings. The exteriors, often shot from high angles on rooftops, have the feel and texture of what Paris must have been at that moment. I saw in the booklet that this film was very special for Jean-Luc Godard and Karina. They were in love, they wed, she was pregnant with their baby, and you can feel the exuberance of the romance in this movie. It’s absolutely exhilarating to me, and also incredibly funny. The other amazing feature on the DVD is a short documentary on Anna Karina made in 1966, clearly to promote Anna, the musical Serge Gainsbourg wrote for her. Serge closes the short, talking in the most brazenly sensual, big, bold close-up about Anna’s humor, her voice, and her sex appeal . . . It’s scrumptious!"