"A very theatrical construct of noir. Black humor, nursery rhymes, expressionist lighting, a zoological boat ride, Shelly Winters underwater, and Robert Mitchum cackling when getting shot. I can hear Charles Laughton chuckling in every scene. Best use of frightening artifice. If Mitchum only acted in one movie, if Gish only appeared in one movie, they should be proud for this to be the one. As it is, Laughton only directed one."

"Alright, I said before that I missed Vonnegut. Well, Don DeLillo isn’t Vonnegut. And he’s not trying to be. He’s like Vonnegut and is an equal wordsmith. DeLillo is also a brilliant observer of life with a deliciously wicked sense of humor. He understands how best to employ irony and uses it to point out our collective anxieties and the absurdities of contemporary living. DeLillo is the shit."

"MASH. To me, MASH is the superb realization of [Robert] Altman. Amazing. Whether it’s the improvisational nature, the way he layers dialogue, the way that he has scenes that are alive on every level. The rebelliousness, the anarchy, the humor. You know, Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould were just [great]. To me, it was sort of like the perfect realization of what he does, although McCabe & Mrs. Miller is another favorite."

"This is my favorite collection of short stories, and every time I pick it up, it reminds me that there is a genius on Earth with heart and humor so evolved I have to wonder if she is from the future. This book breaks my brain open so it can grow. I'll be sitting there on my island, praying that someone will drop Barrodale's next book on my head from heaven."

"I’d say The Shining. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I’m a huge Jack Nicholson fan. He’s obviously… Everything from Five Easy Pieces, another one that’s just phenomenal to me… Yeah, he’s a god to me. I love him. I don’t know how to properly explain why, but he’s just fantastic. His sense of humor, his intensity, his charm, you know. There’s only one Jack. I love him."

"Steig wrote and illustrated the best American children’s books. I love the humor, sophistication and pure romantic sweetness of his drawings and stories. His protagonists (in this case a pig called Pearl and her magical bone,) all still manage to keep hold of a sense of wonder and longing in a frightening world. They are romantic dreamers longing for more. I have loved reading them to my kids."

"No movie is funnier or more scary. Kubrick somehow ramps up both the very real stakes and the increasingly weird humor throughout the movie. Most of the praise usually lands on Peter Sellers’s multiple performances, but don’t sleep on George c. Scott. The man who played the ultimate military authority in Patton plays the ultimate military buffoon. Fun fact: this movie has the longest title in film history."

"Brian DePalma’s breakthrough thriller pays homage to several Hitchcock classics—Rear Window and Psycho, mostly—in a genuinely innovative manner, with jittery, counter-culture-ish New York wiseass humor rather than Hitch’s British wryness, an interesting set of mirror image antagonists in peculiar twins played by Margot Kidder (with a seductively odd French-Canadian accent), and nosy reporter Jennifer Salt. It has graphic shocks but also stretches of hallucinatory strangeness."