Barry Levinson

“Jules and Jim. See, I didn't see a movie like this until much later in life because when I was a kid, you just couldn't, you didn't see these films. It was almost impossible if we had a chance to see, especially some of the foreign films or movies that were made somewhere in the '40s, they'd have to be reissued in, in Baltimore, was impossible to see. So I didn't see a lot of some of the really classic movies until much later in life.”

“The thing about Spartacus, it's so wonderful is that it's this big epic film that Kubrick does, and yet it's got this personal story in it, and, and then you connect to it that way rather than just the big spectacle of it. It's one of the first movies that I saw that I became aware of the score. There's a couple melodies in it, they're just extraordinary.”

“Pennebaker's Dont Look Back is, is pretty extraordinary when you think about when this was done and the nature of, of a documentary at that point in time. I haven't seen it in a long time, so I think I'll pull this out. Great work.”

“One-Eyed Jacks, Brando's only, directing film. It has great stuff in this film. There's a line in it, I remember when, I think Brando kills somebody in a bar, and Karl Malden comes in and, "So what happened, kid?" And Brando says something like, "He didn't give me no selection, Dad." I thought that was such a great line. He didn't give me any selection, so they killed him.”

“Chimes at Midnight. This is Welles's film, right? Welles in some ways is still untouched in terms of how he's able to handle certain things. He has a choreography of camera to actors that's, I don't know that it's ever been equaled because he, it's not just simply the camera move, it's how he's moving the actors. So he's moving the actors, he's moving the camera, he's doing both of those things, so you can see where he has his great sense of stagecraft. You wonder what would it have been like if he were, if he had made 25, 30 films in his career, you know, and had the support that I think was probably necessary for him. God knows what he might have done.”

“Shadows, 1959. My God, to think that he was actually in 1959 decided to try to make a movie on his own without having any kind of studio. Of course, I don't know what studios would be interested to do it, but the fact is that a guy who was an actor decided he wanted to try to make movies and do it his own way. I mean, that's what makes Cassavetes so amazing, that he just said, "Look, I want to do this, these are the people I want to work with, this is a story I want to tell, I just want to get it made. If I have to shoot for a while and shut down, I'll do that. I just want to make the movies I want to make."”