"This is the first movie that moved me to tears. I saw this in the theater with my mother when I was eight years old. I was a pretty lonely kid, who made friends slowly when I made them at all. So when I saw this masterwork in a darkened room, surrounded by strangers, spellbound by the flickering world onscreen that painted a devastating portrait of childhood loneliness, it felt like someone had ripped out my insides. I was sobbing in my mom’s arms, aware on some level that what I was watching was completely fake, but on another level was more real than anything I had ever felt or understood. It was the first time I became consciously aware of the power of film to make us feel something. Something I wasn’t even aware of was roiling around inside me. E.T. introduced me to the profound and melancholic truth that love and pain go hand in hand, that love both gives us strength and makes us vulnerable. But, above all, it made me understand that love heals us and gives our lives meaning. E.T. introduced me to an idea that, over thirty years later, would beat at the heart of my directing debut. An eight-year-old me wasn’t prepared for any of that. But watching this movie, clutching my mother’s arm, an overwhelming feeling of empathy washed over me, and it reminded me that I wasn’t alone after all. Someone out there felt just like I did. “Ouch” indeed."

"The next one is The Thing, the remake with Keith David. That was the first Rated-R movie my mother ever let me see, and oh, dude, I was scarred. I was scarred in a good way. [laughs] John Carpenter’s The Thing took me to a whole other place, man. I was like, “Oh my god!” It was almost like losing your virginity. [laughs] Remember what I said about coming out of the theater a different way? The Thing was so violent and so creatively crazy, no one had ever seen anything like that on screen. You know, heads growing legs and walking away? I think Rob Bottin was the special effects guy on that. But, you know, heads ripping themselves off, dogs having three heads, it was just “Oh my god, there’s no stopping this!” One of my favorite movies; if it’s ever on, I can’t turn it off. I just can’t. It’s impossible. And the thing is, you see how most of the movies that I’m mentioning have always had copies, you know what I mean? It’s like, any movie that’s out there, you can see they’re trying to be like The Thing, or they’re trying to be like Aliens. It’s so wild how you see this kind of dynamic, because it changed for those filmmakers when they saw it too. So those are my top five for today. I tell you, that’s so hard to say. [laughs] Again, I love movies man. I just love it."

"I remember it was showing in New York City, and I walk over with my friend [to the theater] sort of not knowing what I’m about to see, which is always kind of my favorite thing. I try more and more to not read a review of a movie before I go see it, to not read a review of a play before I go see it, so that I’m not inundated with other people’s opinions about things and I’m able to sort of … It really speaks more to my susceptibility to other people’s opinions than it does about anything that could be playing. I want to have a clean experience that’s just mine. I didn’t know anything about Edith Piaf. I had, of course, recognized many of her songs and had loved many of her songs, but I had no connection to, nor did I know historically, what had happened to her and what her story was. But I was just bowled over by Marion Cotillard’s performance. And of course then I started Googling her and trying to understand where she came from. And she had been in that Russell Crowe movie, and she was so much younger than Piaf, playing that part, and it was just another acting feat! The combination of all the beautiful and tragic things you learn about someone who is so gifted, and then also to see it portrayed by someone equally as gifted and once again be transported into a world you knew nothing about – that’s really the power of the movie."