Adam Scott

“I'm going to start with Defending Your Life. Now, this movie, I know a lot of people pick it, and rightly so. There's, like, three movies I did this with, where I went and saw this movie and then I went back the next day and saw it again. I think it's incredibly moving. The performances are great, but Albert Brooks, his... He's such a beautiful writer and such a disciplined, simple director that he leaves all of this room for the comedy, but while he's leaving room for these big comic moments and set pieces, he's also ushering in all of this emotion and all of these big, big questions. This is an incredible movie. It's one of my very favorite movies.”

“The Irishman. Okay. This is one of the other movies that I went back the next day and saw again. Certainly one of Scorsese's most underrated, I feel like it's underappreciated. I mean, it's about death and it's about coming to terms with... With your life ending. One of the great De Niro performances. That phone call he makes at the end is... Is heartbreaking. And it's a Martin Scorsese mob movie with no rock and roll in it, and I think that is significant. And there's no movie that feels like this in his filmography. And I'm not joking, I've probably seen it... I saw it those two times, like I said, but I've probably seen it at least 12 times since then. I think it's an extraordinary movie.”

“Sex, Lies, and Videotape. I would say this is in my top three movies ever, probably. This blew my mind when it came out. I grew up in the '80s, so it was all, like, Amblin and... Still is, those are... Temple of Doom is my favorite movie. Those are the movies I grew up on and love. And then when I was around 16, this came out, and this and Do the Right Thing came out the same year, and then from those I was, like, Scorsese – I kind of discovered this whole new world of movies. You know, this is when I realized people in a room talking is all you need. And James Spader's performance in this is... I've stolen from him so liberally.”

“On that note, Do the Right Thing. Incredible. I remember I used to read Spike Lee's journals. He would publish them for each movie back then, he wrote a journal while he was making the movies. And Giancarlo Esposito had those glasses that made his eyes bug out, and I remember reading that he had contact lenses to reverse the glasses' prescription so he could actually see, and just thinking that was the coolest actor move ever.”

“The Big Chill. Again, child of the '80s, so when this came out, I was a pretty little kid, and just watching the adults in my life react to this movie and watching the movie, not quite understanding what these grown-ups were talking about and what their problems were, but loving their clothes and their cars and not understanding their sorrow and all the stuff they're talking about and feeling. So I feel like this movie had this weird influence on how I put the world together for a while. You know how you kind of... When you're too young for something, you kind of reach for it and sort of put your own version of why this is happening together. Anyway, as I got older and understood the movie, as I was watching it, I realized just what a great movie it was. And I can say that I do understand The Big Chill now. Incredible group of actors here.”

“Yeah, Blue Velvet. I love the David Lynch-Kyle MacLachlan kind of mind meld they had for a few years there. There's a certain amount of audience surrogacy a leading man needs to do, and Kyle MacLachlan did that really well, but he also left enough room for weirdness. He wasn't particularly weird, but he was able to really carry a movie that was ushering in kind of a new era and showing the audience a lot of new things that they hadn't seen much in American movies before, in a new way.”

“Oh, His Girl Friday. I did a reading of this once, like a live reading in front of an audience. I played the Ralph Bellamy role, I believe. The script for this movie is, like, 200 pages. It was so long, we sat down and started reading it, they talk so fast. The movie is, what? 92 minutes. I remember when I got a small role in The Aviator, the Martin Scorsese movie, I went up to... To Montreal to shoot the movie, and when I landed, someone picked me up at the airport and they said, "Mr. Scorsese would like you to see something in a screening room before we take you to set." So from the airport they brought me to a screening room and I watched His Girl Friday by myself in a movie theater, in a screening room. And then it ended and they brought me to set and took me to video village where Scorsese was, and he was like, "Do you see... You watched the movie? Did you like it?" And I was like, "Yeah, I love His Girl Friday. It's so good." And he's like, "Great. Yeah, talk like that. That's... Get it? That's good, right?" And I was like, "Yeah, sure. That sounds great." And he's like, "Okay." And so that's kind of what I did in that movie was this. It was simple enough.”

“Okay, I love this movie so much, The War Room. It's a documentary about the 1992 election. I watch this every election season, every single one, because it's just people in a room with a white erase board trying to figure it out, beating their head against a wall, and you watch them, little by little, just hack away, just, "Okay. Cross that off. Let's try this. Now let's try this: 'It's the economy, stupid.'" Just trying everything they can. And they win the fucking election, they win the presidency. Just a great movie. Always worth watching again.”

“All right. Okay, my eyes are closed and I'm just picking at random here. Two Days, One Night. Marion Cotillard. I know that this movie is beautiful and she's always incredible. I look forward to seeing this. I have not seen this movie and I am now the owner of this movie. Thank you very much.”

“Oh, yeah, The Before Trilogy. I love these movies so much. I remember when the first one came out, Before Sunrise, it was 1995 and I went to see it by myself and loved it. And Ethan Hawke was so important to me in that era because I was just getting started in LA, trying to audition for stuff, and Ethan Hawke was just, like, becoming a giant star and was really good and really... I just started trying to emulate him because I was searching for an identity and not knowing– I was doing background work and then trying to get guest spots, and Ethan Hawke was– it was like, "That's what I want to do." But now looking at them, and them as a trilogy, it's timeless, and we've kind of moved through... Through the decades with these three people, and I would love to see another one. I hope they do another at some point. This is a really important trilogy.”

“The Wes Anderson Archive. Holy cow. I love Isle of Dogs so much. It's one of my favorites. My son, he was a little kid when that came out, and we used to listen to the soundtrack. It's kind of a sad soundtrack, so, he always wanted to listen to it, and it worried me, like, "Is he sad? Why does he want to keep listening to this music?" But I think it's just because it was beautiful and because the movie is beautiful. And the movie, if you're a dog lover, the movie is really a joyful experience, but also an emotional experience. I love these films, as does anyone with a head on their shoulders.”