"I love 400 Blows. [François] Truffaut is just a genius and, again, just there’s a total Cassavetian quality in his performances as well. I know that story was close to his own story, so that was very moving and just a totally immersive experience. I like him and a lot of the French filmmakers, obviously, for the exact reason we’re talking about. That last scene in 400 Blows where he escapes the children’s home in that really, really long tracking shot was just astonishing, just such an astonishing end to that film. That and when the kids steal a typewriter too, and they’re struggling with the weight of it; that was great. It’s just great, great fun."

"Probably some people will go, “Huh?” But I love the film Wag the Dog with Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman, and Anne Heche. It’s a really good movie — sort of political parody I think, that sort of played on what Clinton went through and how they have to sort of trouble shoot, and try to spin the story in order to get him, the president, re-elected and things like that. And even though it was a fictional story, to me it rang really true. And that’s another one that’s very character-driven. I loved every one of them, from Denis Leary to everyone, Willie Nelson… I just thought it was very well done."

"I discovered Fassbinder senior year of college, and I couldn’t believe it. Both of these films are perfect to me. Ali tells a grotesque yet delicate love story that, to my dummy liberal arts mind, was an analogy for the challenges of a gay relationship in the repressed Germany of the 1970s (at least that’s what I said in my thesis). Maria Braun is the tragic, triumphant story of a woman who does what she must to get by, but loses herself in the process. They both make you wanna dress up and smoke opium and fuck people you meet late at night in a bodega, even if you’re not into that."

"I discovered Fassbinder senior year of college, and I couldn’t believe it. Both of these films are perfect to me. Ali tells a grotesque yet delicate love story that, to my dummy liberal arts mind, was an analogy for the challenges of a gay relationship in the repressed Germany of the 1970s (at least that’s what I said in my thesis). Maria Braun is the tragic, triumphant story of a woman who does what she must to get by, but loses herself in the process. They both make you wanna dress up and smoke opium and fuck people you meet late at night in a bodega, even if you’re not into that."