"I have been under the influence of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands and their extended family in film ever since I saw a retrospective of Cassavetes’s movies at MoMA soon after he died. I could have listed any number of his films: Faces with Seymour Cassel and Lynn Carlin, Opening Night with Rowlands and Ben Gazzara, or Husbands with Peter Falk . . . it doesn’t matter. Each film is made with a love, passion, and style unique to John, and inspiring to the rest of us."

"Come on, it’s common sense. Jaws is a fantastic film. Maybe the second film I saw in my life — I saw The Gumball Rally prior to Jaws — but Jaws is the first one that made a deep, deep impression. I saw it a drive-in with my parents when I was five, which is kinda weird in retrospective. It was PG at the time. My kid’s nine and my wife still won’t let me show her Jaws. I made the mistake of showing my kid Gremlins when she was six and I have heard no end of it from my old lady. She’s all, “She’s still afraid of Gremlins.” Gremlins is a harmless f–king movie."

"Saw this at a Bresson retrospective at MOMA, popular dinner spot of many of NYC’s finest moviegoers. And who knew dinner could be so work-intensive, demanding to be unwrapped and rewrapped several times over? Now that I have Laurie Bird on my mind, I am seeing her resemblance and similarity to Balthazar’s Anne Wiazemsky. Maybe these two films have more in common than I would have thought. Both involve brown hair with bangs, drifters, and modes of transportation, although in the case of Balthazar the real tragic, beautiful victim is the donkey. You just don’t get more beautiful and tragic than a donkey. Let it be said that I did not liken James Taylor to a donkey."