"Don’t think I’m in love with the mob [laughs]. I think it has great humor even though it’s about killing and murder and the design of all that. There were wonderful humorous moments in that film and it came from such a real earthy place. The humor was so steeped in the truth — it was the truth. I tell you, I happen to know that world because I ran night clubs. I know that world very well. So I think it was such an incredible depiction of the mob and their lives and the horrible things — I mean Joe Pesci — he was so mean and so ignorant and so arrogant and yet you loved him. It’s very hard to do and it was really great. I was torn between that and Raging Bull. I think Goodfellas was more textured — a more interesting study of character. But Raging Bull has a high place in my best films. Goodfellas is very funny. It’s not in any way billed as a comic film, but it’s quite a phenomenal character study as well, with great humor. Godfather doesn’t have any humor in it, but that’s OK."

"I’ll start with This is Spinal Tap. It sort of took an American perspective to show the characters and the attitudes surrounding British rock bands in the 1970s and 1980s, which, I guess, was what it was supposed to be, and I just thought the characters drawn were so excellent. And yet, it was odd, because everyone involved was American. You’d think it’d be just the kind of thing that some British writers or comedians could’ve done better, but clearly we didn’t. And I thought Christopher Guest, et al., did it fantastically well. It’s just always a kind of reassuringly funny film. The best comedy is watching humans interact, and people with their own petty ambitions, and self delusions, and all that sort of stuff. And that movie is absolutely brim full of it. If they say that comedy is essentially exaggerated truth, that was almost the perfect exemplar of it, where it’s almost a documentary. Well, it is obviously a mockumentary, but you don’t have to exaggerate much for it to become inherently comic. So that’s kind of what it is. It’s a perfect exaggeration, but exaggerated not very much."