The movie that always makes you cry or the film that is your emotional comfort food.
“The Godfather,” both parts one and two, are the best movies. I once heard an interview with James Gray where he said that Robert Duvall as Tom Hagan is the best performance in cinema. I have to agree with him there. Basically anytime Tom Hagan is onscreen I’m in tears. He is such a tragic character, someone who never feels like he’s a genuine member of the family, and wants more than anything to share his brother’s burden. When Duvall says, “Why do you hurt me, Michael?,” I am crying out loud, like a child, every time. Incidentally, my only family industry connection is that my Grandmother’s uncle was John Marley, who, among many great performances, plays the studio head Woltz “the horse head guy” in ‘Godfather.’
The movie that always makes you scared.
Watching “Shoah” fundamentally changed my understanding of history, my cultural background, and what human beings are capable of doing to each other / surviving. I grew up learning about the holocaust as part of the curriculum at the Quaker schools I attended. But, despite my exposure to the archival films, the scripted films and the novels we were shown, nothing made me feel the emotional connection to history that this film forged in my brain. It’s the most frightening movie ever made; in a hidden camera sequence, an actual S.S. officer is bragging in the 1970s. But, somehow it’s uplifting that it was created at all, and that people are willing to tell their stories because of Claude Lanzmann’s work.
The film you’ve rewatched more than any other.
The movie I always go back to for pure entertainment, mastery, and inspiration is “We Own The Night” by James Gray. He is the most underrated filmmaker/writer on the planet. Again, I have never given a shit about a car chase/violence or action in a movie, but the car chase in that film is so good that it’s not even a car chase—it’s just an incredibly powerful emotional scene between a father and son. I tried very hard to steal one idea from a stunt in “We Own The Night,” for Derek’s “I Know This Much Is True.” I have learned so much from watching James’ films again and again.
The movie you love that no one would expect you to enjoy.
When I was tiny, my Mom used to get us cassette tapes of the soundtracks to musical films. We listened over and over again in the car until I knew the music pretty well. Then she rented the movies, and I was hooked because I already knew the songs. I recently started playing the same trick on my five-year-old daughter, and we just rewatched “The Sound of Music,” which is an incredible film. My favorite moment is when Captain Von Trapp is firing Maria, but he overhears his children singing and he is completely transformed. Years of emotion, bottled up since his wife’s death, spill out through song and he is reunited with his oldest daughter all while singing. I have always been in awe of musicals and dance films that manage to keep a scene progressing dramatically even when breaking into song. I have a big soft spot for “Fiddler On The Roof,” “West Side Story,” and stuff like that, all because of those cassette tapes in the car and because of the genius of choreographer, director, dancer, and theater producer Jerome Robbins.
The movie that defined your coming-of-age/high school experience.
I saw “Kids” when I was 13, the second it came out on video. I was entranced, a little scared, and very drawn to the independence, the diversity, the substance abuse, the skateboarding, the camaraderie, and the danger I saw in that movie. It felt so raw and made sex seem real for the first time. I hadn’t emotionally experienced the idea of AIDS and rape on that level before watching it play out dramatically with people my age as the characters, who looked like my friends. Harmony Korine will always be an important figure in the history of cinema to me, and I was lucky enough to work with Kevin Thompson, the production designer, on a film years later. Really a dream come true.
What’s a movie that you love, that is vastly underseen by the moviegoing public that you recommend (and why)
“Straight Time,” starring Dustin Hoffman, is about a man who gets out of prison and tries to stay straight, but he can’t because of the pressures around him. It’s filled with wonderful performances by Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, and Kathy Bates, and I consider it a ’70s classic that sort of disappeared. The visual style is hyper-real, and it has the ’70s feeling of just being shot on the street with nothing. It’s unbridled, captured like it is really happening, almost like a documentary. It’s pure cinema. It was one of the films I showed to Derek Cianfrance while we were prepping “I Know This Much Is True,” because it felt like something that would further the conversation about the language of our film.
“I Know This Much Is True” has debuted its premiere episode on HBO. The six-episode mini-series airs Sundays at 9pm ET.