Philip Kaufman

“Amarcord, one of my favorite movies of all time. Just atmosphere, Fellini, coming of age, fascism, wonderful. It's one of my favorite Fellinis of all time, so glad to have it.”

“Wages of Fear. What can you say? One of, you know, not only the, the time of France, Yves Montand, some of the most tense, nerve-wracking scenes I've ever seen, but really captures the post-war existentialist, it's a, it's an existentialist epic adventure.”

“But Crumb, Terry Zwigoff's Crumb. I've seen this many times. It's one of the films I can see over and over and over again. It just, it's, it's a great, it's about families, it's about San Francisco, it's about art, and it's about lunacy.”

“Battle of Algiers. Well, you know, I use the music from this often as a temp track. And you know, but the vitality, you know, of, of, Pontecorvo's film. I mean, it's, you know, it's a unique film, it's a unique political film, but, vitality is extraordinary. And I can remember being in little theaters in Los Angeles, and I've saw it a number of times, and there'd be revolutionaries photographing off the screen how to create a revolution, literally, 'cause these were revolutionary times. I mean, this was the primer, for a lot of people. And, you know, it, it's a film that transcended the cinema, really.”

“Just look at the, what a great still. The, the children, you know, the seeing, I mean, the eye. That is a marvelous still, isn't that? The way that Fanny and Alexander are looking around. Just also has the best fart scene I've ever seen in a film.”

“Once at a screening down in Los Angeles, I came late and I walked into the screening room and I stepped on somebody's toe and I sat down next to him and just as the film was beginning somebody came in front of us and the man next to me said 'Hello Fritz' and Fritz Lang turned around and said 'Hello Jean' and I was sitting next to Jean Renoir with Fritz Lang sitting in front of me. They're great films, inspire me and all of us to get started.”