Mary Bronstein

“Dance, Girl, Dance. Dorothy Arzner, she was one of the… or maybe the only female filmmaker making movies in the studio system in the ’30s and ’40s. And also this movie has a scene-stealing Lucille Ball.”

“And I’m going to also get her other one, Merrily We Go to Hell. And this is just… She’s working in pre-Code, and does some very radical feminist storytelling, in both of these films. I would recommend them highly.”

“I gotta give a little shout-out here to Frownland. My husband, Ronald Bronstein, this is his first movie, and this is the movie that I met Ronnie on. My whole life is due to this movie. This movie was also my film school.”

“One of my other idols of all time: David Lynch. My favorite of his is a little movie called Inland Empire. David Lynch is one of those directors who spent his career really focusing on one idea and trying to get at the heart of an idea, and I think he does it in this movie. And then also, at the end of the movie, which I won’t spoil, it’s a celebration of his whole body of work. It’s beautiful.”

“So this movie, Spinal Tap, is so seminal to me as far as… as far as a comedy without jokes. What I mean by comedy without jokes is every single line that is said, every single vision that is shown, is for comedic effect, but it is real. They are playing this as if it is the highest drama that has ever been made, and that is why it succeeds so heavily as a comedy. And I recommend it to anybody.”

“And now I’m going to get a little silly. I grew up in the Tri-State area, PIX Channel 11. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, always on television when I was a child, always loved it... You got Ethel Merman, you got everybody. You got the Three Stooges... It’s Sid Caesar, it’s Mickey Rooney, it’s Spencer Tracy, it’s Jonathan Winters. It’s everybody that– Young people don’t know who they are. But it’s insanity in film form.”

“One of my idols of all idols: Chantal Akerman. I love that this is called Masterpieces. We have everything in here. Hanging Out Yonkers. Oh my God, I’m so… The film-school tests. I’m so excited. I’m so excited about this.”

“One of my favorite things as a set, as a piece, is Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales. I would say Love in the Afternoon is my favorite of the Tales, but they’re all stories about women and men and the different dynamics that… really complicated dynamics that can come from women and men encountering each other in different ways. And again, I love a guy who sets out to make a set of movies that are all of a piece.”