RZA

“I got to turn you onto this one. Look at this. Mikey and Nicky. I’m talking about Peter Falk and John Cassavetes. You know, when you think of a movie like Midnight Cowboy, when you see Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight do their thing, you get this buddy energy that the ’70s is bringing to us, but I don’t think no film did it like Mikey and Nicky. And I’d never seen this film before. Criterion released it. I was in one of my Barnes & Nobles and I saw this film. I suggest this to anyone who’s trying to write a buddy film. This is a master class of that technique.”

“I first got turned onto them by Jim Jarmusch when I when I was looking for his old films and I found Down by Law. This was one of the films that led me to the Criterion Collection, because I was looking for Jim movies and this came out on it. And then I started just searching that whole section, back when we was able to go to our DVD video stores. But anyway, Down by Law goes in. John Cassavetes goes in my bag.”

“We talked about Jim Jarmusch. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. This film is special to me because this is the first film that I was actually hired as a composer. Without this film I’m not in the film business. So thank you, Jim Jarmusch, for giving me the chance on this film. I went on from here to do… bong. This gotta go in the bag. And this is a Blu-ray edition. The soundtrack is bananas.”

“I’m pulling this one out, once again for selfish reasons. I’ve seen this film ten times, but I’ll watch it over and over again. Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront. The cinematography, the story, the two brothers, the struggle of this movie, the extras, even the extras. This is a masterpiece of filmmaking. And every time I get kind of lost in my writing or lost in my ideas, I could pop this film on and the film energy and the film techniques open up my third eye and I’m right back to moving my pen.”

“La Haine, which means “the hate.” Mathieu Kassovitz film. One of the new pioneers of the French cinema. French cinema has always made their mark. But when La Haine came out, it was like a regeneration of it. So this has to go in your collection as opposed to my collection.”

“So everybody knows that the RZA is from the Wu-Tang Clan. So that means that the first thing I got to put in my bag is the Bruce Lee collection. I have this already, but you never can have too many of these. The thing about Bruce Lee was that he was one of the first ones, I think, to integrate the cultures. When you look at John Saxon, Jim Kelly, and Bruce Lee and Bolo Yeung in Enter the Dragon, Hollywood has never seen that kind of a diverse cast come together and make a blockbuster. So Bruce Lee pioneered that. So that’s number one in my bag.”

“So since we’re dealing with me and the Wu-Tang Clan vibe. All my Asian cinema is something that I’m crazy about, and it’s probably quite obvious that I’m an Asian cinema fan. And I’m looking over here, sticking out like a like a beautiful flower or a beautiful lotus on a pond is Tsui Hark’s collection, Once Upon a Time in China. Now, this was like the revolutionary vibe of 1990s martial-arts films when Jet Li exploded on the scene, first in Martial Arts of Shaolin. Once he drew into his mature years, Tsui Hark went and got him and they did three of these movies. And I’m telling you, it was the elevation of martial-arts films. Wo-ping, of course, and his wire work. He went on from doing these to doing The Matrix. We don’t get The Matrix if we don’t get this. So this is a must-watch. Also the cultural relevance of Wong Fei Hung and what he meant to the Opium Wars, etc. Etc. This is a great one to add to my collection.”

“-oh. I just talked about John Cassavetes and my eyes just kind of went out– I didn’t… See, I don’t have this. Look at that: Five Films, John Cassavetes. See, this is why the Criterion is so special, because… I first got turned onto them by Jim Jarmusch when I when I was looking for his old films and I found Down by Law. This was one of the films that led me to the Criterion Collection, because I was looking for Jim movies and this came out on it. And then I started just searching that whole section, back when we was able to go to our DVD video stores. But anyway, Down by Law goes in. John Cassavetes goes in my bag.”

“And then as I see that, right here on the left, this one here I’m going to pull out. Not going to put it in my collection because I bought this recently, but I want you guys to see this one: Melvin Van Peebles, his whole collection. Melvin Van Peebles being one of the pioneers of Black cinema, making independent films. He has one called The Three Day Pass, which he filmed in France. And actually one of the techniques he used in that cinematography has been emulated by filmmakers all over the world. Even my boy Spike Lee picked up a few tricks from this.”