"So, Raging Bull. We got a young De Niro, who put the weight on and took it off. “I got no choice!” I mean again, its something very specific to a culture and neighborhood. A young Pesci, Scorsese, all the acting in it, I just connected with it. I laughed and I got uncomfortable at the same time. I felt every emotion every time I watch that film. That’s a great night at the cinema for me when I’ve laughed, when I’ve cried, when I was angry, and when I was turned on. All of those emotions are happening when I watch that film. It’s like putting my favorite audio book on. Sometimes I can just close my eyes and listen to them talk, and there’s such a rhythm. It just feels so authentic and this is just regular conversation. It was almost like they didn’t even have a script. I think that’s a testament to the acting and the writing."

"The strange thing about Altamont, with all its horrors—brilliantly and intimately documented by the Maysleses and by Stanley Booth in his book The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones—is that one still wishes one had been there. (I interviewed Stanley onstage in 2012 after a screening of the film, and he still seemed traumatized by the gig, all these years later.) The film and Booth’s book can both be usefully cross-referenced with Sonny Barger’s autobiography, in which he concedes that while it may have been a big night for the Stones it was just another night for the Angels! One of the great moments in documentary is when we focus on Barger at the edge of the stage, looking at Jagger as though he might still decide to beat the crap out of him, as no one had looked at him since he was a little boy at school in England."