"A lot of record shops were closing around this time, and I won’t use the internet to buy them. The internet is for porno, encyclopedias, and video games, of which I waste an awful lot of time on. So I slowed down in the purchasing around here and went back to old stuff like Kate Bush. On “Wuthering Heights,” her voice is almost hysterical but always in her own register. I find it very soothing for her to be squealing away up there, it’s fantastic. She’s a gift. I love PJ Harvey too. That’s one very interesting woman who doesn’t play the sex category. She strides in there at the level of any man, and I’m really proud for her in that respect, because that’s really what we wanted in punk—we wanted girls to be the equal to the boys, and she carries that great tradition. "

"I made a film not too long ago that was originally called The Moguls, and then they changed the title to The Amateurs. Written and directed by a fellow by the name of Michael Traeger. First time director, I’ve had great success with first time guys. He assembled a brilliant cast. We had Ted Danson, Glenne Headly, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Joey Pantoliano, Tim Blake Nelson, Bill Fichtner, a wonderful cast, and it was about a small town making a porn movie. This was before that movie that came out, Zack & Miri Make a Porno. Anyway, it was a wonderful film, got great laughs, and then it got picked up by a distributor who went bankrupt and took about five or six movies down with him and the movies got very small releases. It’s a film that I’m very proud of, makes me laugh, I think people will like it, so you might check that out."

"I love all of Stanley Donen’s movies and I wanna put one of them in there. I’ll put Two for the Road, which I love. Audrey Hepburn, Stanley Donen’s movie. Those would be my five. Today. [Laughs] Tomorrow I’m gonna pick Claude Lelouch — And Now My Love. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that. It is amazing. It’s with an actress named Marthe Keller who made Bobby Deerfield with Al Pacino. And Now My Love is the story of two people who never meet until the end of the movie, and the protagonist is a kid who is a thief and gets sent to jail and learns how to use the camera in jail — and goes from making porno movies to making, you know, great movies, like Truffaut and Godard and Lelouch and the French new Wave. It’s really the best love story, and he’s an unsung hero of cinema, Claude Lelouch. Actually, that would be tied for Two for the Road — that way I get a sixth choice, and I’m greedy. [Laughs] Tie it. That’s a tie."

"I love all of Stanley Donen’s movies and I wanna put one of them in there. I’ll put Two for the Road, which I love. Audrey Hepburn, Stanley Donen’s movie. Those would be my five. Today. [Laughs] Tomorrow I’m gonna pick Claude Lelouch — And Now My Love. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that. It is amazing. It’s with an actress named Marthe Keller who made Bobby Deerfield with Al Pacino. And Now My Love is the story of two people who never meet until the end of the movie, and the protagonist is a kid who is a thief and gets sent to jail and learns how to use the camera in jail — and goes from making porno movies to making, you know, great movies, like Truffaut and Godard and Lelouch and the French new Wave. It’s really the best love story, and he’s an unsung hero of cinema, Claude Lelouch. Actually, that would be tied for Two for the Road — that way I get a sixth choice, and I’m greedy. [Laughs] Tie it. That’s a tie."

"I would say Taxi Driver. First time I saw Taxi Driver as a kid, it f—in’ blew my mind. I’ve always been a huge fan of movies about solitary, sort of loner people. I think that’s what I liked about horror movies as a kid, because the monsters were always portrayed that way. And Taxi Driver‘s obviously the ultimate movie about that. I don’t know. I’m picking very obvious movies that are genius, but they were new to me as a kid when I saw them, and they just made me go, “Oh my god, the genius of movies.” I love Taxi Driver so much; I’ve seen it so many times. It’s probably one of those movies where I could recite the whole movie straight, or I could at one point; I probably can’t any more. But when I moved to New York — I lived in New York in the early 1980s — and I literally went to every location that was in Taxi Driver, and it was all still there: the porno theater, Variety photo place where Jodie Foster runs in front of Travis’ cab, the furnished rooms building where Harvey Keitel’s standing. I actually had a friend who lived in that building, so that was even more exciting. I used to be a maniac; I went everywhere. It was like my walking tour of Taxi Driver, New York. And again, I was like, “It’s Peter Boyle as the Wizard! This is the greatest movie ever made!” I remember seeing Peter Boyle at the Beverly Center once, and I freaked out. It’s like, “Who do you get excited to meet?” “Peter Boyle!”