"It’s a mad movie. It’s just insane. This was the first movie I remember having so many stars that I loved. My favorite scene is when the older woman realizes that her son-in-law lives close to the treasure, so she calls him up. I remember the phone ringing and ringing, and when they cut to her son, he’s with a girl in a bikini doing the twist to some song. And she has this disaffected look on her face, just staring into nothing. The son is in a ’50s-style bathing suit just jumping around her going, “Yeah. Go.” That moment is something I’ve put in theater pieces, and even when I go out and I’m on the dance floor, I think of that scene. So if that movie gave me anything, aside from the excitement of seeing all these awesome comedic actors, it was that moment. I love that old-style humor, you know, like Some Like It Hot, just over the top. I think comedy was done with a lot more class back then. And that was a crossover period. It’s hard to get that these days. Now it has to be cool. Back then it just had to be crazy and zany. That movie should be listed next to the definition of “zany” in the dictionary. “What is zany?” “Watch this movie.”"

"Like many people I was stunned and saddened when the world lost Tony Horwitz. I had met Tony and his wife, Geraldine Brooks, at several book functions over the years, and I marveled at his comingling of journalism and storytelling, as he traveled the world in search of knowledge. I was introduced to Horwitz, as many were, with Confederates in the Attic. In this, unfortunately his last book, Horwitz travels the south again as he traces the footsteps of Frederick Law Olmsted, who would find fame and fortune as a landscape architect, with perhaps his crowning glory being Central Park in New York. Horwitz travels throughout the south and talks to people from all walks of life in an effort to figure out what has changed in America, or if it’s always been so divided. And if there is a pathway forward to forge a national consensus on anything. Like Bill Bryson has done in his travels, and Mark Twain did well over a century before, Horwitz has not simply written a book chronicling his journey, he has opened the heart of America, its majesty and its darkness for all to see. We all will miss Tony Horwitz and what he has brought to our collective conscience. If you’ve never read him, this would be an ideal place to start."