Terry Zwigoff

“Dr. Strangelove. I saw this film first run when I was a young teenager, 1964. I was 16 years old. My parents took me to it in downtown Chicago... I just loved it. I mean, I thought Peter Sellers was so great. Everybody was great. Sterling Hayden. At the very end, when… I mean, is that the darkest ending of any comedy I ever saw. And Kubrick, who’s the master of music, I think, in his films, puts in this great Vera Lynn song, this really beautiful song. She sings 'We’ll Meet Again.'”

“Jean-Pierre Melville, Army of Shadows. This is probably my favorite film of all time. This was actually brought to this country for the first time in 2006 by Bruce Goldstein... The color palette on this film is so obsessive. It’s so meticulous and controlled, it’s great. And my friend Robert Crumb came to visit me from France a few years ago, and he’d never seen this. I said, 'Oh, you got to see this film.' So I put it on for him. He’s got unpredictable tastes in film. He’s a very fussy guy.”

“The Asphalt Jungle. This is a perfect film. It’s one of my favorite films of all time. Marc Lawrence really stood out to me in this film. He plays Cobby, the sort of nervous, sweaty criminal guy who’s trying to arrange a loan or a deal for this heist, and I couldn’t help but thinking, the entire time I saw this, that this had to inspire Francis Coppola to cast Fredo in The Godfather. Again, they’re so similar. Either he cast him and thought of it that way... Marc Lawrence, great actor. Incred...”

“All About My Mother. I’ve never seen this film, but, when I was in pre-production on Ghost World, my producer said, 'Have you thought about a DP yet?'... I come across this film. I don’t know anything about it. Put it in, put it on, see the opening. The colors look absolutely right for Ghost World, I don’t know why. Fast forward, 'Oh, it’s still perfect.'... Who is this cinematographer? Affonso Beato. So Lianne gets off the phone, comes in, I said, 'What about this guy Affonso Beato?'”

“Here’s a great film: Robert Siodmak’s The Killers. Opening of this film, the first couple scenes are so great, I remember. These killers come into this diner and menace this diner owner. I realized that, watching No Country for Old Men, in the scene where Javier Bardem goes into the gas station with the actor Gene Jones as the proprietor, where he makes him flip the quarter and he doesn’t want to call it, it’s the exact same dynamic. They must have had that in mind. But, you know, steal from ...”