"I’ll start with Midnight Run. Just one of the finest Goddamn movies I’ve ever seen. Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro. If there’s a better buddy comedy, show it to me, and I’ll shake your hand. It’s so funny. It’s also where I learned what chorizo is. Being from Illinois, not a lot of truck stops serve chorizo and eggs. It was part of my “goin’ out west” legend, like, “One day, I will go to California, and on the way there, I will experience chorizo and eggs.”"

"I’m currently reading Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick. Young Elvis lived in a non-wealthy section of non-wealthy Tupelo, MS and Memphis, TN, and liked to wear a lot of pink, which was unusual in either place. He was kind of a rebel without a cause, but then he found his calling, and the success story is pretty entertaining. His junior prom picture shows a young girl with what looks like a cardboard cutout of the King…he’s just already totally there, and he’s like 16."

"I feel like that’s going to be a common one on a lot of these people’s list, but for me it’s just about the coolest movie I ever saw. When I saw it I was like, “That is so cool.” I don’t know if that was Charlie Kaufman’s intention, but I love that it was the real John Malkovich. I think that’s where I started to be kind of excessive with pulling back the fourth wall a little bit. Although, that might be a recurring theme with my movies, now that I’m thinking about it."

"I don’t know which John Waters to pick. The go-to would be Pink Flamingos — that was another movie that was pivotal, when I discovered that — but I would pick Polyester out of his movies. I’ve got a big soft spot for John Waters, ’cause again, there’s a guy who’s doing things on his own terms, and I think people would find his topics shocking but he has a lot of kindness towards these people, these characters. I love him. I just saw him this weekend when I was in Maryland."

"Each time I watch this film, I try to keep count of all of the characters. There are at least twenty-five significant roles and so very many outstanding women. This is a perfect Altman film and the one to start with if you haven’t seen any of his work yet. It captures a lot of melodrama in the country music capital, and some of the actors play fictional characters while others play themselves. Plus, there are so many awesome musical performances that serve to both enhance the setting and propel the narrative."

"When I was a teen, like for many of my generation, Monty Python were my comic heroes. But as brilliantly directed as the Python films are (look close at Monty Python and the Holy Grail—there are a lot of incredibly shot sequences), nothing prepared my for the amazing mix of humor, heart, and insane inventiveness that Terry Gilliam brought to his solo work. These two titles are films I bring up constantly in meetings in Hollywood—which usually leads to me being asked to leave. But I don’t care."

"When I was a teen, like for many of my generation, Monty Python were my comic heroes. But as brilliantly directed as the Python films are (look close at Monty Python and the Holy Grail—there are a lot of incredibly shot sequences), nothing prepared my for the amazing mix of humor, heart, and insane inventiveness that Terry Gilliam brought to his solo work. These two titles are films I bring up constantly in meetings in Hollywood—which usually leads to me being asked to leave. But I don’t care."

"It’s a piece that Messiaen wrote when he was in a concentration camp. It’s very spiritual, and that’s one of the things that’s so interesting about it. The fact that he was in such a terrible environment and could create music of such beauty is pretty remarkable. I’m a big fan of Messiaen for his use of textures and colors. He’s like a lot of film composers in that you can really see his music; he creates a landscape of sound and uses unusual tones and instruments to tell a story."

"This is another classic record that shaped a lot of what we did, I guess. You get those songs sometimes where you hear the sound of it and think something has happened here. Whether it's the glue or whatever that's given it this sound - and I get that with 'Crosseyed And Painless'. Whether it's loops or samples I don't know but it comes across like a soundscape with everything working off everything else. That one track does so much in terms of hearing how records can be made."