"I was a student at N.Y.U. in the ’90s. It was the first semester of a musical theater class, and one of the students got up and sang “Every Day a Little Death.” It was dark outside and snowing, and I remember hearing the song and thinking, “What is this?” It’s such a simple series of tiny moments that make up a day, that seem to be completely pragmatic descriptions of everyday life, played against the unbelievable torrent of sweeping emotion underneath in the music. And that is such a classic skill of Steve’s, where lyric plays against music, and the two things together, in the ear of the listener, tell you the whole story."

"A total favorite from when I was a kid was My Bodyguard. When they’re riding together on the motorcycle it’s like one of my favorite images in a movie. I think I also like the story. That type of story has always really appealed to me, two outsiders coming together like that, basically united as a cause who are from opposite sides of the tracks. That movie is just so awesome. The two of them on the motorcycle in that one really… It’s just that image, that feeling. I watched it at the perfect time in my life. I watched it when it came out in the theater. It was very meaningful to me growing up."

"Well I guess my first one has to be Withnail and I, the 1987 Bruce Robinson classic. You know, the plot is one that would get you laughed out of any Hollywood studio: Two unemployed actors go on a holiday, drinking, to one of their uncle’s cottages for the weekend; but it’s one of the most deeply rich, brilliant, tragicomic tales of male friendship. I actually remember seeing it when I was a kid, and walking out of the theater in London — and by the way, it did not do well at the time it was released; it was a tiny little film — but I remember thinking that I wanted to become a filmmaker after that."

"It’s a throwback, but I grew up in the East Bay in Northern California. That was pretty much my first exposure to Bay area rap and I’ve just been in love with it ever since. I’ve always had love for the Bay and all that. I think that’s what started me on the tip of looking into other stuff like Mac Dre. Even Tupac is on that album. Even though E-40 is kind of mainstream, he’s always kept it underground, too. I just have fun memories of that tape with me and Kyle driving home from working at the movie theater in the middle of the night just letting that album slap in his tape deck"

"Through a Glass Darkly and The Silence strike me as two of the most psychological films ever made. The former dramatizes madness, and it doesn’t shy away from the despair and horror of the subject. It is equally fascinated by the way that lives are halted, turned, and redirected by tragedy. The Silence is possibly the most Freudian film ever made, a fever dream about the short journey from sexual ecstasy to absolute despair. Fanny and Alexander was Bergman’s Amarcord, a melancholy epic punctuated by moments of unexpected joy. It’s an incredibly rich film, a culmination of a life spent mastering film and theater. All three of these movies were shot by the great Sven Nykvist."

"Through a Glass Darkly and The Silence strike me as two of the most psychological films ever made. The former dramatizes madness, and it doesn’t shy away from the despair and horror of the subject. It is equally fascinated by the way that lives are halted, turned, and redirected by tragedy. The Silence is possibly the most Freudian film ever made, a fever dream about the short journey from sexual ecstasy to absolute despair. Fanny and Alexander was Bergman’s Amarcord, a melancholy epic punctuated by moments of unexpected joy. It’s an incredibly rich film, a culmination of a life spent mastering film and theater. All three of these movies were shot by the great Sven Nykvist."

"Through a Glass Darkly and The Silence strike me as two of the most psychological films ever made. The former dramatizes madness, and it doesn’t shy away from the despair and horror of the subject. It is equally fascinated by the way that lives are halted, turned, and redirected by tragedy. The Silence is possibly the most Freudian film ever made, a fever dream about the short journey from sexual ecstasy to absolute despair. Fanny and Alexander was Bergman’s Amarcord, a melancholy epic punctuated by moments of unexpected joy. It’s an incredibly rich film, a culmination of a life spent mastering film and theater. All three of these movies were shot by the great Sven Nykvist."

"I’d die a happy man if we could Riff this one live. Never has a film been so perfect for us. I had heard my nieces talk about the books and how much they were going to love this film. I actually went to a movie theater to see Twilight — a grown man on my own on a Monday so no one would see me — and I came back and emailed immediately, “You guys, you guys, we have to have to have to do this film.” And it’s one of our most popular. It’s so perfect. In every turn it begs for someone to mock it. It is so dead earnest about itself, it is so serious."

"This was the movie, when I was a kid. This and Bugsy Malone. I know all of the dialogue in these two movies from repeated viewings at the movie theater. The Vogue and the Alpha 3 theaters in Louisville. And Ruth Gordon gave me a gateway to Hollywood screenwriting history, and Cat Stevens a gateway to transformation through music. Harold took life’s lemons and made a black psychedelic monolithic lemonade. I learned to do that too. Comedy in death, comedy in failure, comedy in being mystified by societal expectations. I was very fond of MGM musicals during my childhood, and Harold and Maude felt like the closest thing to a modern-day evolution of one of those."