"If I was really stranded on a desert island, this novel would be good to have. The movie is also good, but the book would help to pass more time. Both make surviving on a desert island seem like a walk in the park. What’s great about this adventure—which I find rare in pop culture—is the celebration of the mind, invention, and science."

"An Iranian poetess made this film on her own, upon a request from a leper’s house. She died three years after. I often show this most poetic and distressing film in festivals. The audience is always blown away, despite its monstrous side. I also think about the destiny of this woman, directing a movie in Iran in 1962, which must have been very difficult..."

"The Shining. I’m a huge horror fan, classic horror specifically, and there’s just something about them. Carrie, The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby. They’re horrifying, and they’re definitely frightening, but they’re also elegant, and they also show patience. And they’re also discreet in certain ways. When the horror comes, they’ve set it up so that there’s more of a payoff, because what’s come before has been executed in such a way that it doesn’t feel like… You know, you watch a horror movie that’s produced today, and they’re trying to scare you or freak you out, or they’ve got cats jumping out of the cupboards in the first five minutes. There’s no gradual build-up; it’s as though they don’t trust that the audience is going to hang in there and wait for the impact coming sixty or ninety minutes into the movie. They want to give it to you in the first ten minutes, which I think is kind of shoddy storytelling, and disrespectful to the audience."

"The Shining. I’m a huge horror fan, classic horror specifically, and there’s just something about them. Carrie, The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby. They’re horrifying, and they’re definitely frightening, but they’re also elegant, and they also show patience. And they’re also discreet in certain ways. When the horror comes, they’ve set it up so that there’s more of a payoff, because what’s come before has been executed in such a way that it doesn’t feel like… You know, you watch a horror movie that’s produced today, and they’re trying to scare you or freak you out, or they’ve got cats jumping out of the cupboards in the first five minutes. There’s no gradual build-up; it’s as though they don’t trust that the audience is going to hang in there and wait for the impact coming sixty or ninety minutes into the movie. They want to give it to you in the first ten minutes, which I think is kind of shoddy storytelling, and disrespectful to the audience."

"The Shining. It was the first movie that I saw when I was a kid that, like, really traumatized me. It was mostly the two little girls as well as being in room 237. That was one of the movies that I remember really, after watching that movie, having a problem sleeping. But as I’ve sort of grown up with that movie, what’s been so inspirational about that movie… if you watch that movie, like everybody watches that movie, it’s terrifying, it’s one of the scariest movies of all time. And what I think’s great about it is that it’s not only a horror movie, it’s more a movie about an alcoholic man who hates his family, and then it’s a horror movie. To me, all the best horror movies are a regular movie first and then they’re a horror movie. That’s true with the The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby as well as The Shining. But what’s most exciting to me about The Shining, and there’s a famous quote from the Vivian Kubrick documentary, from Jack Nicholson, where he says he’s been spending his whole career trying to make his performances real, like no one’s ever seen realness onscreen and he’s going to be the one to make it real and he’s going to do something no one’s ever seen before, this quest to make it authentic. And then he’s like, “Then you get someone like Stanley who says, ‘Yeah, Jack, it’s real, but it’s just not interesting.'” After I heard that conversation, if you watch The Shining and don’t get sucked into it just being a great scary movie, if you walk into it and just watch the choices that are being made, it’s an insane movie. Like, everybody’s performance is, like, the stakes are so high, as if every line they say is the end of the world. Every shot is so grandiose. The locations are so unbelievable, and they’re all built, which is also totally insane. It’s like this constructed movie that’s so hypnotic because every time Shelly Duval comes on the screen and screams, “[falsetto] They’re trying to kill Danny!” and it’s like, in any other movie that would just be like a joke. Or Jack Nicholson, if you look at every take of his in the movie, [it] shouldn’t work. It’s all so extreme with his performance. But it’s consistent and, I guess as Stanley Kubrick said, it’s interesting. Because it’s consistent, the movie has this very hypnotic tone to it and it’s something that Kubrick is obviously very known for. It not only is an amazingly terrifying movie and one of the best horror movies of all time, it also is just this really unique approach to filmmaking that I’ve always found really fascinating. It seems to, across the board, raise the stakes and make everybody just operate on this much higher level, and that’s always been very hypnotic to me."