Amy Irving

“My first choice today is the first film my family saw together, which was in the back of our car at a drive-in. The Great Escape, well, I had grown up in the theater. My parents were in the theater, so it was all plays. Shakespeare, Chekhov. And suddenly mom and dad took us to see a real entertaining movie. Not only did I experience World War II for the first time, really, at nine years old, but saw some of the greatest movie stars all in one spot. Steve McQueen’s escape on his motorcycle, there was nothing more exciting. And it had James Coburn, James Garner, Richard Attenborough. It was just an amazing… If you’ve never seen this, treat yourself, it’s really great.”

“Oh. This is very important to me. Not only because we’re honoring David Lynch these days, but my mother plays Kyle MacLachlan’s mother in Blue Velvet. Mom’s 100 years old now and still going strong, and she and I do this kind of film sessions at her assisted-living facility, and Blue Velvet was one of them. So mom and I will be watching this together again.”

“Oh, Cries and Whispers, that was one I wanted to find. I grew up learning my craft watching my mother on the stage. So as far as theater went, mom was the… the bar to reach. In film, I thought that Liv Ullmann was about the best actress I’d ever, ever seen in my life. And I’ve worshipped her forever. There isn’t ever a false moment in this woman’s acting. And she goes deep. She goes so deep. You can be true, I can be true, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone as deep as Liv Ullmann goes.”

“Very quickly, I haven’t seen this for a long time. I had visited the set of Thief because Willie Nelson is a great friend of mine, and we’ve just done an album, I’ve just done an album celebrating Willie. And Tuesday Weld is in this. I’ll never forget my first husband Steven Spielberg’s face when I brought Tuesday home for lunch. What man doesn’t want their wife to bring Tuesday Weld home for lunch? Anyway, so, Thief.”

“I have a few stories about films that either didn’t happen or I didn’t get, and one of them is… What am I looking for? I’m going to be looking for… Days of Heaven. Terrence Malick tested various couples to star in this film, and Brooke Adams and Richard Gere were one couple and John Travolta and I were the other couple. First of all, Brooke Adams has since become a very close friend of mine, and I’m really glad she did it because she was wonderful in it. What I learned, too, was how a filmmaker can make a film like this, “We’re taking all the dialog out of the script.” When I read the script, there was a lot of dialog. And when I went to go see it, it was like he’d taken it out and he still was able to tell that story. I just found it gorgeous.”

“They’ve given me this lovely satchel to fill up with movies, but I brought my own because Criterion has just released a new Blu-ray of Crossing Delancey, so I have a bunch of pickles for my bag. This is the new Blu-ray of Crossing Delancey, which has this really wonderful new art representing Peter Riegert and myself for this really charming, beautiful, classic Joan Micklin Silver film.”

“I’m going for a random pick. Oh God, Rules of the Game. I picked the best film in the whole world.”

“And Le petit soldat, The Little Soldier, by Jean-Luc Godard. I don’t know this film. Looking forward to it.”

“This is The Ranown Westerns. Five films directed by Budd Boetticher, starring Randolph Scott. Now I’m told by my husband, Ken Bowser, who is quite a film historian, that these are some of the best westerns ever made. And he asked me to bring them home for him, so I am.”