"There’s a funny story here. When I was with Dave Roth he would always talk about Tom Waits in a very respectful way which was rare. I never heard Dave speak reverently about anybody and I didn’t even know who Tom Waits was. I had never come across his music. But all through the years, Dave would always say, ‘Yeah, like Tom Waits’ and I’d just say ‘Yeah, yeah!’ And then I was on tour with Whitesnake and there was this band opening up called Bad English whose singer was a guy called John Waite and I thought “Wow, this was what Dave was talking about? Hmm, it’s kind of strange because it’s not the kind of singer that Dave would be reverent about.” And then I realized I had the wrong guy… So I went to the store and bought about twenty Tom Waits albums and (one of them was Mule Variations), and I remember that I was listening to all these records, getting three tracks in and literally throwing them away. Then I put Mule Variations on and stopped dead in my tracks. It completely leveled me and I can say – out of everybody I’ve talked about – Tom Waits is my favorite artist now. I completely resonate deeply with his music, his voice and his lyrics; I buy everything he ever does. He’s one of those guys who are totally at one with the creative element with no excuses or concerns about what’s going on around him – totally uncompromising.A lot of people think they’re uncompromising, but they’re not…"

"I blame this movie for starting me smoking again when I was in film school in the eighties. After becoming so smitten with all that Anna Karina embodies, I decided to wear blue tights with red skirts and smoke, constantly. Needless to say it did not turn me into Anna Karina—my tights were the wrong shade of blue, and I was hacking like an old granny at the Santa Anita racetrack. Still, I loved the film, wildly, and love her in it. What is so gorgeous about this DVD is, firstly, Anna herself, and nextly, the color is like powdered paint, soft yet vibrant—not just the gorgeousness of everything Karina wears but also the murals on the walls of the strip club where she works, the jukebox from which Charles Aznavour sings. The exteriors, often shot from high angles on rooftops, have the feel and texture of what Paris must have been at that moment. I saw in the booklet that this film was very special for Jean-Luc Godard and Karina. They were in love, they wed, she was pregnant with their baby, and you can feel the exuberance of the romance in this movie. It’s absolutely exhilarating to me, and also incredibly funny. The other amazing feature on the DVD is a short documentary on Anna Karina made in 1966, clearly to promote Anna, the musical Serge Gainsbourg wrote for her. Serge closes the short, talking in the most brazenly sensual, big, bold close-up about Anna’s humor, her voice, and her sex appeal . . . It’s scrumptious!"

"What don’t I love about Taxi Driver? Taxi Driver is my favorite performance, and it’s my favorite score — Bernard Hermann, man. I was talking to someone today about why it’s the greatest film of all time. It turns this kind of sadistic ticking time bomb of a man who’s falling apart at the seams into this dreamy, seductive, gorgeous portrait of a vulnerable person. It turns all this sadism and all that deep hatred for the world into this empathetic, Holden Caulfield-type, just deeply pained truth. Not even to mention how it ties into today’s isolation. It’s a movie made in the ’70s that’s more relevant now than ever. It’s needed to show how this sort of isolation, this sort of alienation, can lead to rage and vengeance, but can also be used for good. It’s this crazy luck of the draw — Travis Bickle could have gone in either direction. He could have become this horrible man who murders a bunch of innocent people, but then he latches onto the idea that he has to murder all the bad people. I find that to be such a beautiful concept. Not to mention that it’s shot with these gorgeous reds and greens that are so lush. To watch, it’s like chewing a chocolate bar. It just melts in your mouth, that film. It’s everything I love about movies. It’s the smoothest, most velvet, but also the roughest and the deepest pit of despair you could go into. It’s everything. It’s everything in one film."