Rob Delaney

“The first I’m gonna pick is this one right here: Harlan County, USA, which is an incredible documentary by Barbara Kopple. And I picked this one because, yeah, I love it. It’s terrifying and heart-expanding. And it is about the power of collective action and the importance of union membership. Two things that I believe in very much. We have a lot more power than we think. There are those who don’t want us to use that power, and they try to convince us that we’re powerless and they can do a pretty good job. Watch this film and see that they’re lying and own your power. So Harlan County, USA, that’s going in my sack.”

“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg by Jacques Demy. I have seen this movie… I do not know how many times. But to be able to make a perfect 92-minute gem like this. Oh, I should also say it’s fully sung through. It is technically an opera. There is no speaking in this film. Catherine Deneuve. Look at her. Are you kidding me? So you get to look at her. If you like guys, it’s got Nino Castelnuovo in it, and he’s just as beautiful as she is. You can swap back and forth: who do you like better on a particular viewing? They’re both so beautiful. And this film is not cotton candy, although the pink in it is cotton-candy colored. And the use of colors in this thing are bananas. Probably the most amazing… I mean, it was like this and then you had to wait a while and then you had Kieślowski, and since then nobody’s been doing color like them. To make something that even flirted with the quality of this would just be… is a life’s work. You can spend your life doing that.”

“This is three films that André Gregory and Wallace Shawn made together. But the only one I’m featuring right now is Vanya on 42nd Street, simply because it was a very important film for me. It just blew my mind because it was the filming of the rehearsal of a play. Like, Wallace Shawn and André Gregory and friends had been rehearsing Uncle Vanya by Chekhov for years. I don’t know if it was even towards the goal of necessarily performing it. They’re just kind of workshopping it. So they did that. Then Louis Malle heard about it and was like, “Why don’t I film you doing this?” And so he films them. And so it’s like a story within a story within a story. So you know it’s not real. And I love films that are open about their artifice. Like, these are not… This is not a Russian landowner. It’s totally Wallace Shawn, who you saw get off the subway and walk into the theater and do the thing. But you immediately forget that because you’re watching Chekhov being directed by André Gregory being directed by Louis Malle. So you’ve got all their stink on it. And it’s just a beautiful, beautiful film that really taught me a lot about storytelling.”

“Not the whole Before Trilogy, but the final one. Sharon Horgan and I were writing the first season of the show Catastrophe, and my wife said, “Let’s watch Before Midnight.” And so she puts it on and watching I’m like, “Oh my God.” As soon as it was over, I called Sharon, I was like, “Put down your quill. We have to retool everything because the ultimate work of art about a marriage has just been made, and if we think that we’re gonna play in that arena, then we got to study this playbook.” Before Midnight is such a spectacular, horribly accurate picture of a marriage. It made me love being married even more than I already did. Even though people who aren’t married would watch this and be like, “That looks awful.” But don’t… You’re not supposed to be happy. Being married isn’t about– No one’s happy, whether single or married. It’s not about that. But the whole world that can be contained in a marriage is accurately captured in this masterpiece by Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. I revere the three of them individually. Put ’em together? I mean…”