"I’m a huge Mike Leigh fan and would love to work with him. His approach to filming sounds fascinating and exciting. I understand that he doesn’t give his actors a script but instead hands them scenes and encourages improvisation. I’m not sure if this is indeed his process, but the result is nothing short of beautiful intimate moments. And this film is full of them! At times it feels so intimate it’s almost voyeuristic. To me, that’s what makes a performance really exciting…when you’re almost embarrassed to be peeking into peoples’ lives. And that happens a lot in this perfect emotional drama."

"I saw this with my parents as a very young child in the seventies, on television, and I never forgot it. I went back to it over the years on VHS and DVD, but this Criterion edition is quite a rediscovery. It’s an unusual VistaVision beach western with unstable and elusive racial narrative elements. It’s also the product of star power and a studio willing to go along, with reportedly messy results, but I see nothing wrong with this film. I like it a lot. Brando is wonderful in it, both as a director and as a star."

"For me, 'Soul Love' is an amazing love song without being too sugary. It isn't boy-meets-girl, jealousy, betrayal, sort of thing - it wasn't normal. It was a spiritual kind of love song, so I have a lot of respect for how he kept it in that kind of a concept. I didn't really know what it was about, but the concept is about a love of a person and a love of the spiritual side of man, which is my personal take on it. Might not be what he meant, but that's how I have always felt about it."

"Another recent album that I love, and will probably always love. Again, this dude just has a sound that I’m like, ‘This guy knows exactly who he is.’ For 12 or 13 tracks or however many it is, he has a consistency where you recognize that it’s definitely a Twin Shadow song. A lot of albums could have 10 songs where they all kind of sound the same. But these all sound different. They all sound to me like fucking radio hits but he hasn’t really popped yet. But I recommend his album Forget to anybody."

"I would say five would probably have to go The Color Purple, Steven Spielberg’s film, which obviously deals with racism but also deals with a lot of human emotions. Everything from abuse, controlling husbands, abusive parents to family life. Just so much emotion. The music is incredible — Quincy Jones did an incredible job on the soundtrack. The vocalists on the soundtrack were staggering. And the performances by Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover, I mean just some of the best performances ever put on screen. Eloquently and beautifully directed by Steven Spielberg — I think, actually, his best work."

"I was so caught up in that book and when I got off the bus I was beside myself. The book just wrecked me. I was like twenty-four years old. All that stuff with the tiger. People have a lot of opinions about Conroy, but that book is very, very moving. I remember being incredibly upset and moved and I had to go to work in two hours. It screwed me up so bad. All I could think about was this damn book, and I had to play this impressionable kid who could really give a shit about reading books."

"The Warriors, only because it was such a brilliant… Well, actually, the reason why is because I did it as my first-ever stage play. We did a staged version of The Warriors, which is absurd, and it was, like, a lot of British kids running around hitting each other with polystyrene baseball bats. It was such a theatrical version of New York, of the gangs in New York, and it was visceral and sort of fun and energetic, and I loved it. I watched it when I was probably about 11, and kind of loved it."

"New York is where I go in my head a lot when I’m writing. I have deep imprints of the city in my backbone: sounds, smells, music, pizza parlors, Chelsea Hotel, TV, fire hydrants oozing, the Lower East Side, people everywhere living their lives inside-out, on top, and through each other… maybe there is something even more in the memories old New York in the ‘70s—unpolished, unclean, lived in. It’s all there in this coming of age story of a young Puerto Rican boy/man. I feel this story all around in my memory bank."