Steve Zahn

“Richard Linklater, Slacker. It’s, like, here I am, this suburban kid, I listen to the radio, the top 20 songs, and you go to the movies and you watch the movies that everybody else watches, and then I remember I went to see my first… The first movie, I don’t even know if you’d have it… Oh, Straw Dogs. The first movie I went to see that was an independent film that kind of changed the way I started looking at things was Birdy. So then I started walking… I started going into Blockbuster and not getting The Outlaw Josey Wales for the 15th time and watch it with my friends, I started going, “What’s– What is that?” Richard Linklater, one of the greatest filmmakers of our time. Period.”

“Let me stay on this Slacker… which then turned me to: “Hey, what’s this?” Really an amazing experience that I had as a young person watching this for the first time. Oh, and so I’m going to keep Mystery Train.”

“Here’s another one. Paris, Texas. I mean, it’s such a great… You know what’s also great? You got to listen to the soundtrack, Ry Cooder. It’s one of the best.”

“Miller’s Crossing. That’s… These are people that I’d love to work with at some point. Maybe… I don’t know. You know how sometimes people show up in movies after you’ve kind of washed out a little bit? People get bored of you and then you go into hibernation for ten years and then some great filmmaker goes like, “Hey, I wonder what so-and-so’s doing?” Maybe that’ll be me. Maybe I’ll just go fish for ten years and have people be like, “What happened to Steve?” And then maybe the Coen brothers would be like, “Maybe we should just put him in a really cool movie?” I’m just throwing it out there, guys.”

“Some Like It Hot. This is genius. This is great comedy. I would put this up at, like, top five.”

“Being There. I got to have… Peter Sellers is frickin’ genius. Sometimes it’s crazy, I’ll forget who the director is. And then you’re like, “Of course, of course! Hal Ashby.””

“Oh, yeah, I do have Night of the Living Dead. That’s a real… This was, also, as a young person watching, watching something that was just off-kilter. Think about that. That’s really interesting, too, that 1968, Vietnam, right before the Tet Offensive, and this cat makes this movie. It’s kind of interesting.”