Billy Eichner

“I wasn’t planning on picking this one, but I’m just going to choose the movies I really love and Tootsie, motherfucking Tootsie. It doesn’t get better. Has music ever contributed as much to a movie? It would be great without the music, but that score—I still listen to it. I listen to… there’s a song on the soundtrack which is, like, ♪ Go, Tootsie, go ♪ and she’s marching through the streets of Manhattan. It’s this very ’80s shot of Dustin Hoffman in drag marching.”

“Moonstruck. Boy, this is a movie that made me fall in love with movies. This is a movie that made me say, “I want to make magical, romantic, uplifting, funny, human things.” And God damn it, why isn’t Cher acting? That really pisses me off.”

“The Fisher King. If you had asked me what the best movie ever made was when I was 13, I would have said The Fisher King. I used to analyze all the Best Actor and Best Actress nominees. I wrote a long analysis as a child about, even though I knew Anthony Hopkins was going to win, that if I were voting, I would have voted for Robin Williams in The Fisher King. I thought it was the greatest Performance I’d ever seen. It’s very of its time, but I loved revisiting this movie.”

“Barbra Streisand’s The Prince of Tides. Barbra has always been like a North Star for me, and I think for anyone at all unconventional trying to make it in show business, because she was the epitome of unconventional when she started and she succeeded in every way. And the more she tried to branch out, when she went from a singer to actress and then director, screenwriter, producer, and star, like in this movie, the more flak she got. And yet she did it.”

“My Beautiful Laundrette. This stars a young Daniel Day-Lewis, before he was a really big star, and it’s about him having a gay relationship, a gay romance, with a younger, closeted Pakistani man in London. I am eight years old at that point and my aunt said, “You should watch My Beautiful Laundrette,” because we had read about it. It had gotten good reviews. Stephen Frears directed it, the great Stephen Frears. I do believe it ends up getting nominated for Best Original Screenplay.”

“Metropolitan. I grew up in New York City. This came out when I was a teenager and really getting into movies, and I wasn’t ready for Metropolitan when I was a kid because it’s a bit muted, you know? It’s really sophisticated and chic, but on a different level. Now I love it. And the movie that Whit Stillman made that I finally said, “Okay, I get this,” because I had gotten a little older, was Last Days of Disco. They have it. It’s a whole Whit Stillman box set.”