Peter Sarsgaard

“La strada. I first saw this movie in my after school class with Father Garavaglia in my all-boys Catholic high school. I'm gonna take this, actually.”

“Number 59, Night Porter. This movie, this movie, like, I can't tell you how big an effect it had on me. I'd never seen a movie with the content that this movie had in it. So it was Father Garavaglia was the name of the priest, and he took me through, like, Italian Neorealism, but he also through all of it, I mean anything Italian he was showing me. But, you know, Night Porter I guess was just a special last movie that I got to see with him, but it blew me away. I actually remember after I saw the movie, walking out of the room, I saw Father Garavaglia down the hall and he asked me if I liked it, and my response was I did a thing Dirk Bogarde does in the movie: head swing. That meant I really liked it.”

“Eating Raoul. Okay, if you haven't seen this movie, go see this movie. I think this is a great movie to see right now also, you know, it's just, I mean it's made with such glee, and the humor is so messed up. But the, again, for me a lot of the time with movies, because I guess I'm in them and I can see them being made on some level, is this movie was made with glee and spontaneity and just going for it. I mean there's no other movie they've made like it before it was made. I want to be in a remake of this movie, I'm just putting it out there right now. I'll be Raoul, I don't care. Yeah.”

“Oh, one more, hang on, hang on. Just because I feel like sometimes you don't really understand why a movie's good, have all these really great people and then it just kind of comes together. I think that this movie, Breaking the Waves, I don't think he's made a movie like that with as much compassion and heart and forgiveness for his characters, but still has that strangling anxiety in it that he's so awesome at, since this one. And I think sometimes, you know, I mean he's gone and made many great movies, but I really love the God stuff in it, the, I'm so Catholic, God when she prays. To me, that's what it feels like to pray, you know?”

“Oh, here's one last one that I just really want to do, because this movie, Safe, is the best movie about this particular topic. And with just, she gives such an amazing performance, and he's obviously a fantastic filmmaker, but this idea that our environment is killing us. I have so many friends who think they have this or that, or the black mold, or the mycoplasma, or the Epstein-Barr, the Gulf War Syndrome, or whatever it is, gluten-free anything. It's just the one. Our movie, you know, the movie I made with Michael Tyburski, which is about sound killing him basically, it's just, I mean there's some scenes in this that will haunt you for the rest of your movie-going life. This is a horror movie, and a great one.”

“This movie, because I got to work with the director and I was such a massive fan. But this is also a kind of music movie unlike any, I think at that point, that I'd ever seen. And I think it actually was my, I was already into David Byrne, was it, it was my gateway to becoming obsessed with him. And I mean when I dance, this is what I look to do.”

“So Wanda, I'd never seen, but I saw Wanda on the Criterion Channel when it was on there, and my wife Maggie was doing The Deuce and we watched it. You know, I think it was something that, it really inspired me, this kind of like really wild, troubling vision of this woman who's just like right on the edge of what it means to be alive. I mean, it is terrifying in how like the potential for violence in it and stuff, it's really intense, and how at risk she is the entire time. But I know it really inspired Maggie when she was doing The Deuce, so I'm definitely taking that one.”