"I remember watching this, stoned, while at university, and I think you kind of have to be stoned to watch it, because it’s so psychedelic and weird. I’ve always had a fascination with Jim Morrison and regularly I ask myself: “What would a female Jim Morrison do in this moment?”, because I like his commitment to the moment as a performer, and his shameless expression of his sexuality, which, as a woman, I think is a nice thing to exploit. I don’t know how I would feel watching this film now, not being stoned, but at the time it seemed like a really romantic portrayal of a poetic artist."

"Then I’m gonna go into Kubrick. 2001, because it is so enigmatic, it is so poetic, and it remains a mystery to me, even today where I can view it annually, three times a year, and still find something new in it. I’m still mystified by it. It achieved this status of being eternal in a way that didn’t rely heavily on performance; it was the special effects, the music. The fact that it was a success, that it was a commercial success, and it challenged every critic — many critics didn’t get it — so it was really ahead of its time. Nothing’s been ever quite like it again."

"Most people remember David Lean for his big-scale epics, like Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, or The Bridge on the River Kwai. But here he is at his most precise and poetic. Both movies are epics of the spirit, and both are plagued by grand, utterly magical moments and settings; whether showing Oliver’s mother straining and in pain, by intercutting with a flexing branch of thorns, or by lovingly lingering on Miss Havisham’s decaying splendor, Lean understand the need for hyperbole in order to manage the larger-than-life Dickensian archetypes. Some of the passages in both films skate the fine line between poetry and horror."