John C. Reilly

“And the first one that did is this movie by Jim Jarmusch, Down by Law. "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream," the famous Roberto Benigni line. But also this was in the early days of my obsession with Tom Waits when I was in college, that's when I discovered Tom's music, and he's such a good actor. And you can tell he's improvising these weather reports from the prison cell, and it's just a real formative movie for me. I'm still trying to get in a Jim Jarmusch movie. No luck so far, but at least we have this movie. I saw it at the Biograph Theater in Chicago on Lincoln Avenue, and that one's going in here.”

“The Killing of a Chinese Bookie by John Cassavetes. Timothy Carey, one of the great, bizarre character actors. He was in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. Anyway, he plays one of the goons, and there's this whole showdown scene where he's been assigned the job to kill Ben Gazzara, and he starts to get the sense, "This guy is tougher than I realize. This guy…" And then Ben Gazzara's sort of like, "Get out of here, man. You're an amateur." This is just a great, great movie. And it's also kind of a travelogue of Los Angeles.”

“This one's kind of random. I haven't seen this movie since it came out in the theater when I was a child, and I snuck into the movie theater, the Marquette Theatre on the Southwest Side of Chicago, which is no longer there, to see David Cronenberg's The Brood. It really upset me. A woman has a… she bites open this embryonic sac and these babies– these monster babies come out. Anyway, terrifying movie. That weird moment. Be careful what movies you sneak into, kids. I also saw Jaws way too young. Way too young. It made me afraid of the bathtub.”

“So, moving right along to some comedy: this movie, Defending Your Life by Albert Brooks, might be the hardest I have ever laughed in a movie. I was laughing so hard I thought… it felt like I was tripping on mushrooms. All of it, from top to bottom, is– it's just a brilliant, brilliant movie. And Albert Brooks is one of the all-time American greats of comedy.”

“On the Waterfront, by Elia Kazan. Of course, one of the canon, right. I went to boys' Catholic high school, and we had this whole year of junior year where they would show us movies that had ethical issues, and then we would discuss afterwards. I remember seeing Billy Budd and Rebecca and On the Waterfront. I pick it out because it's one of the great misreadings of lines in history. So Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando are in the back of the car, right, and he says… The misconception is the line goes like this: "I could have been somebody, Charley." But what he actually says in the movie is: "I could have been somebody, Charley." It makes me cry because it's, like, "My life could have had meaning." And began probably my lifelong love of Karl Malden. Every time Karl Malden showed up, you knew he was going to be standing on the side of righteousness, and when he stands up for the people on that waterfront, it's a beautiful thing.”

“All right, one more. Like, a nostalgia movie, okay? And that is The Great Escape. It makes you punk rock, this movie. It teaches you how to resist the system. How do you… What do you have to do to trick the guards? And I kind of took that through my whole life, growing up on the South Side of Chicago and going to Catholic school. And Steve McQueen in this one, it's just one of the all-time great performances. It's full of amazing actors, actually. Donald Pleasence is so great in it. And it's just got that catchy… It's got a very catchy theme song.”