"Set in Cuba in the early '60s when there are student uprisings. Cruelly, an act of sympathy has disastrous consequences. There are two of the greatest dolly shots I've ever seen, and this in the days before Steadicam or anything similar. One starts on the roof of a building where party goers party then goes down the side of the building to a poolside and then into the pool and under water. The other starts in a sweatshop and… See for yourself. A really beautiful movie where optimism and repression are at war, as they always are."

"The first time I saw this film I thought there’s no way Tarantino wasn’t influenced in some way by Repo Man when he was making Pulp Fiction. This type of genre mash-up, a film that has unapologetic fun and is blissfully self-aware, is the kind of vibe I am always pulled to as a filmmaker. It's also insane that he made the film—as a student, for no money. The Criterion packaging for this one, with the comic inside, is one of my favorites. I showed it to the distributors when I was packaging A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night."

"I was a student when I read Orlando for the first time, and I remember how for many days afterwards I walked around in a happy daze. Daring to transcend boundaries of gender, class, history, culture, geography…. this is a story—Woolf called it a biography—like no other. Our hero wakes up and finds himself turned into a woman, and delightfully, this transition takes place in Istanbul—Constantinople. Orlando is a novel about transformations and journeys—from man into woman, from the West to the East, from one existence to the next and vice versa."