"This 1948 film is a classic Italian neorealist film that takes place in post–World War II Italy. It is a beautifully told and photographed story about a close relationship between a father, Antonio, and his young son, Bruno, who idolizes his father. As the story opens, Antonio is desperately searching for work and finally gets a job posting signs. In order to do this job, he must have a bicycle. His wife, Maria, pawns her wedding sheets to buy him a bicycle, but it is stolen on the first day of his new job. The rest of the film, father and son pursue the thieves to get the bicycle back. They fail. In the end, Antonio is forced to steal a bicycle so he will not lose his job. Bruno witnesses this and Antonio is humiliated in front of his son. For me, the film was about the ultimate and heartbreaking betrayal of trust between a father and his son. I’ve always photographed families and family relationships. This wonderful film encouraged me to look beyond the surface and find the real relationships that exist between family members. The epic quality of the film was a great inspiration for me."

"Beastie Boys and David Bowie are two of my favorite artists. The David Bowie album I am going to choose is Scary Monsters, which is kind of different. He always reinvented himself and he was doing something in the 1980s with Scary Monsters that nobody was doing. You can kind of hear stuff on that album that a lot of groups are doing now like, 'Aw, yeah I know where you got that from. That’s off that album.' It’s not one of his most popular albums to everybody, but I think it’s my favorite. There was a song on that, ‘Teenage Wildlife,’ and if you don’t like that, we don’t have to associate with each other. If you don’t get that song—it's cool man, I’ll see you around. “‘Teenage Wildlife’ is just epic. It’s like five or six minutes long and it kind of crescendos and builds into this insane vocal of Bowie wailing. I think I would pay $5,000 dollars to see footage of that recording session. I don’t know how he hits the notes that he’s doing and how long he does it but he’s just belting it out. You know he was feeling something when he was doing it. It’s just a cool song."

"Yes, there was quite a controversy kicked up last year over the restoration. And while it’s not an uninteresting issue, it doesn’t distract from the gratitude we who hold Fassbinder dear feel when we hold this handsome box in our hands. This is the epic he was racing against destiny to complete; poring over the extras, you can’t help but sense that he knew it too. All of Fassbinder’s period pieces are, of course, about the Germany he lived in, the Germany I would begin visiting regularly just a few years after he’d gone, a Germany at ferocious odds with itself, arguing in the streets and in the papers and in classrooms and over dinner over what sort of country it’d make of itself, even in those later stages of starting all over again—not too long, of course, before starting all over yet again in 1989. An intense love-hate relationship with the German character, with German history and culture, and an ongoing recognition of the inextricability of the personal and the political, for better and for worse, permeate all of Fassbinder’s work; here, all that’s practically on parade. And the fireworks at the end are gruesome and gripping."