Judd Apatow

“George Washington. The great David Gordon Green, who directed Pineapple Express. I remember watching this. We were trying to decide if he would be a good director for Pineapple Express, and then he crushed it. I love this.”

“Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Cameron Crowe, Amy Heckerling. I feel like everything I’ve ever done is deeply influenced by this movie, because it was really funny and very real and stands the test of time. Judge Reinhold forever.”

“Defending Your Life, director-approved edition. Albert Brooks. Is there a comedy better than this? I don’t think so. This is as good as you can get. Hey, Albert, I plugged it for you. Just… notice. I plugged it. I got you.”

“Company. Them recording the soundtrack to Company. What is more fun than that? Elaine Stritch getting pissed off because she can’t sing it well enough. Then she comes back the next day and she crushes it. Dean Jones, “Being Alive.” Can’t go wrong here.”

“This is a great one: Tootsie. Come on, Sydney Pollack. And... Who wrote it? Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal. And I guess they all fought a lot about the script. And there’s an incredible commentary track on here that years ago I only had on LaserDisc, and now it’s back, where they explain exactly how they wrote it. So if you’re a screenwriter, this is, like, the good one to learn how to do it.”

“Wes Anderson. The Life Aquatic. I have a soft place in my heart for this movie. I cried when you saw the fish. Fully cried. That was one of my biggest movie cries. The big fish reveal.”

“Another blind… The Age of Innocence, Martin Scorsese. Very romantic, very subtle. Just, like, a touch of a pinkie against a pinkie is, like, the hottest part of it. It shows restraint. I don’t know how to show restraint. I know how to show people pee with a boner. I don’t know how to be this subtle. But maybe this is what I’m going to learn from this: subtlety.”

“Oh, man. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Have you seen this? If you haven’t, you need to. This movie is gorgeous and amazing. And now he’s doing Frankenstein. How come I don’t do any of the monsters? No one’s ever offered me a monster. I think people don’t think I can do stuff like that, but I might surprise you.”

“This is a movie I need to see. And then you’re going to see my next movie and you’re going to go, “Man, he certainly got influenced by In the Mood for Love. It has a real taste of it.”...”

“Kamer... Kameradschaft. Yeah, “When a coal mine collapses on the frontier between Germany and France and traps a team of French miners, workers on both sides of the border spring into action, putting aside national prejudices and wartime grudges to launch a dangerous rescue operation.” That’s good. This is going to help me learn how to direct action.”

“John Cassavetes: Five Films. And it also has this, like, insanely long documentary in it. It’s, like, three or four hours. And I used to watch this all the time as a way to gird myself for notes on scripts from entities that didn’t understand it. And I would think, “John Cassavetes would fight that note.” And then they’d yell at me and I’d give in.”