Peter Sarsgaard

“Number 59, Night Porter. This movie, I can't tell you how big an effect it had on me. I'd never seen a movie with the content that this movie had in it. Father Gerarelli was the name of the priest and he took me through Italian Neorealism but he also threw all of it, I mean anything Italian he was showing me. Night Porter was just a special last movie that I got to say with him but it blew me away. I did a thing Dirk Bogarde does in the movie, a head swing, that meant I really liked it.”

“So Wanda I'd never seen but I saw Wanda on the Criterion Channel when it was on there and my wife Maggie was doing The Deuce and we watched it. I think it was something that it really inspired me, this kind of like really wild troubling vision of this woman who's just like right on the edge of what it means to be alive. I mean it is terrifying and how the potential for violence in it and stuff, it's really intense. I know it really inspired Maggie when she was doing The Deuce.”

“This movie because I got to work with the director and I was such a massive fan but this is also a kind of music movie unlike any I think at that point that I'd ever seen. I think it actually was my gateway to becoming obsessed with him. I was already into David Byrne. And I mean when I dance this is what I look to do.”

“Eating Raoul, okay if you haven't seen this movie go see this movie. It's made with such glee and the humor is so messed up. This movie was made with glee and spontaneity and just going for it. I mean there's no other movie they've made like it before it was made. I want to be in a remake of this movie, I'm just putting out there right now. I'll be Raoul, I don't care.”

“This movie Safe is the best movie about this particular topic and she gives such an amazing Performance. This idea that our environment is killing us—I have so many friends who think they have this or that, the mycoplasma or the Epstein-Barr, the Gulf War Syndrome. The movie I made with Michael Tyburski is about sound killing him basically. There's some scenes in this that will haunt you for the rest of your movie going life. This is a horror movie and a great one.”

“I think that this movie Breaking the Waves, I don't think he's made a movie like that with as much compassion and heart and forgiveness for his characters but still has that strangling anxiety in it that he's so awesome at. I really love the God stuff in it that's so Catholic. When she prays to me, that's what it feels like to pray, you know.”