"It’s sort of the first–and I think still the best–about the media circus, the kind of the vulture culture of descending onto a place where’s child’s life is in danger, the “boy in the well” kind of thing, and how the press is either hoping that the kid dies or is heroically saved so they have a good story. They’re supposedly covering what they think will be a heartwarming story of bravery, but it’s really the darkest cynical tale about popular media culture. It was too dark for people to deal with at the time. Billy Wilder had such a heart of darkness in him, in such a funny way."

"The last one, I’ll say another classic: 2001. I think it’s a movie that you can watch every year and you’ll keep discovering new things. It’s funny how, as time goes by, the movie becomes more relevant and poignant. I love the fact how the storytelling of Kubrick is always inviting you to interpret the movie yourself, but at the same time it’s so rich — so much layers. The fact that now we’re living in a moment where technology is replacing man from [the] center of life — Kubrick really started to talk about that so many years ago, and I think it’s overwhelming. Every time I see it I think it’s overwhelming because I discover new things."

"I love Stanley Kubrick so much that the mere mention of his name is enough to make me smile involuntarily. This is not my favorite Kubrick film, but it’s terrific. Peter Sellers. The war room. The Coke machine. The way each plot element triggers the next like falling dominoes. It’s a perfect machine. There are so many funny and absurd lines: “Now look, Col. Bat Guano, if that really is your name” and “Of course it’s a friendly call. Listen, if it wasn’t friendly, you probably wouldn’t have even got it.” As always, I love Kubrick’s bureaucratic, non-psychological language. His persistent return to flat, transactional dialogue provides the perfect banal foil to his wilder, more imaginative moments."

"I really like Fargo a lot. It has everything. I love the Coen brothers. I love Frances McDormand, I think she’s just an extraordinary actress. She’s so funny in that movie, as Marge. I’m from the Midwest, I’m from Iowa; so obviously that accent’s really heightened, but it’s something that I hear every time I go home. It’s something that feels like very much where I grew up; that backdrop is exactly where I grew up. It’s definitely exaggerated but yeah, there’s definitely that, “Oh, oh my gosh” where I come from. And when I go home and after I have a couple of beers you’d probably hear it come out: “You betcha!” [laughs]"

"An African American filmmaker [Robert Townsend] and being Keenen’s little brother inspired me to want to do movies. It really told the whole truth about African-Americans in the struggle, in a funny way, without all of us banging on the door going, “Hey Hollywood, love us.” Through laughter, it erased color lines, and is one of my all time favorites. I love when you do a movie with people doing multiple characters. That’s something I do and love to do, and I find that it’s one of the hardest things to do and still be grounded as a regular person in a movie. I’m inspired to do movies like that in my next phase."

"“I fled through Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am and halfway through I was in tears and again a bit further on, more tears – as a father, as a son and as a husband. The last book that did this was Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and in some way this book is not dissimilar – there is a family in crisis and there is an apocalypse – but The Road is all darkness with brief spasms of light, and although Here I Am is also a deeply melancholy book about a doomed family, it is wickedly funny, so that you are laughing too, as it all goes to hell. A book with an enormous and furious heart. I loved it.” -NC"