"It’s another movie that you run into everywhere because it’s so frequently stolen from. Another reluctant hero, and an unsympathetic, morally ambiguous character… Besides its visual triumph as a movie, there’s a constant juxtaposition of an individual versus the fascist architecture, and the way that politics become very personal, and the way this guy, who doesn’t seem to care about anything, ends up caring about everything. It references Casablanca in many ways, and it also feels like it’s got a great sense of irony about politics because he flips over in the end in a second, and I think a lot of people identify with him and the fact that he’s being forced to do something that he thinks he can do easily and doesn’t have the stomach for. It’s image after image of people either in nature or in the civic environment that are part of fascist architecture and it’s a very memorable, evocative movie. Great music, great cinematography, great acting, and it’s a movie that’s a touchstone for me."

"The first one is Paul Thomas Anderson and There Will Be Blood. I had seen that movie at a very crucial point in my life. I had just torn my shoulder in wrestling, and it was like the world had fallen away from me. Like a lot in the movie is autobiographical. So yeah, I was really kind of lost. And then I saw There Will Be Blood in the theater, and it rocked my world. It blew my mind. The first Paul Thomas Anderson movie I saw was Boogie Nights at a really young age, and it was perfect for an adolescent. But it also made me realize there’s a creator behind all this. I was transported and inspired. That was when I started getting back into filmmaking and loving movies again. Because I couldn’t do sports. That movie was really huge for that."

"This was the first movie where I was aware of what a director did. There’s a scene near the climax where the camera zooms in and rotates 45 degrees into an extreme Dutch angle close-up on Giancarlo Esposito’s face. “Someone made that decision!” I thought. I also love the fact that it was our last president and irst lady’s first date."

"This is such a beautiful, sad movie. A film about the fifties infused with the disappointment of the seventies that, when watched now, simply seems to be about the disappointment inherent in all of our lives. Like all incredible films, it seems to burn itself into your mind like memories of your own life. Jeff Bridges is also really hot in it."