"I remember watching this movie in the theater and not being able to hear lines because my older sister was laughing so hard. To me, Broadcast News is a romantic comedy, but the romance is not between a man and a woman. It’s between Holly Hunter and her work. Her portrayal has shaped how I write female characters who are game and ambitious—restless, competitive souls who crave an exciting professional life."

"Something Wild made me fall in love with Melanie Griffith and with the idea of making movies. Like Jeff Daniels’s character, I wanted to be taken on a wild ride and to take people on one. There’s both such joy and terror in here, hardness and frailty. It made me appreciate that contradictions in characters are what make us sit up in amazement at the movie theater. There’s a Ray Liotta inside all of us"

"I loved the mood of it, I loved the dialogue, I loved the relationship. Every aspect of that film, and I didn’t want to leave the mood of it for hours after leaving the theater. I watch that movie over and over again just because of the mood. I feel like it’s so hard to put poetry into a movie, but Sofia Coppola did that. The ending is one of my favorite endings ever."

"Gena Rowlands is a goddess. I almost don’t know what else to say beyond that. I love the scene when her character, an actress named Myrtle Gordon, shows up to the theater drunk beyond belief on opening night. The physicality of Rowlands’s performance is brilliant: the tension in her mouth, the heavy breathing, her limbs rigid one moment, limp the next. Watching her gain her composure is harrowing and hilarious at the same time."

"This film is as much about the landscape as it is about the people. It achieves such a delicate and alluring balance; watching Days of Heaven feels less like watching a screen in a theater and more like looking out a window in this farmer’s home. It’s an experience, not a tale. I remember watching this film for a class in college. When that train crosses the bridge against the bright blue sky, I gasped."