"Both of these films are in the box set America Lost and Found: The BBS Story, which is a masterpiece. It’s too bad companies like BBS don’t exist anymore. These two films capture loneliness and melancholy in a way that affects me deeply, yet they also have humor and beautiful open endings. There are moments in the performances in The Last Picture Show—Cloris Leachman’s final scene with Timothy Bottoms, or Ben Johnson’s scene at the water tank, just to name a few—that are stunning. The film also has incredible mood and feeling, and sometimes that’s more important than anything."

"Dirty and loud, this film put a face to the music that represented the ultimate freedom from the suburbs. Pre-YouTube, footage of these bands was super hard to come by. There were only a couple videotapes floating around… and once in a while, you could see something truly outré on “120 Minutes”… but in truth, if you weren’t in LA/NY/DC, you missed out on most of the scene. Like water to the desert, Penelope Spheeris’s film brought the culture into our lives. And shortly thereafter, I had myself a hideous painted leather jacket — just like Darby Crash."

"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."

"I think that [E.T.] was a whole new way of entertaining. I think that the whole idea of shooting from E.T.’s point of view — humans. And always making us kind of look like villains, and scary. You know really — how did E.T. feel in this world? And then the whole idea of being a fish out of the water kind of idea, it was so well done. Spielberg did just a spectacular job on that. It was literally for everyone to enjoy. I mean, it doesn’t matter — women, men, young, old — everybody could enjoy that movie."