Ron Shelton

“First of all, The Lady Vanishes. I'm not an Alfred Hitchcock fan, I'm just going to tell you that. Yes, he's a genius, but his early movies I like the best, and this is one. I haven't seen it in a while and I can't wait to see it again.”

“Straw Dogs. Pauline Kael called it a fascist work of art. I don't know what she was talking about, but it is a powerful one and a disturbing one, and I need to see the Criterion Blu-ray special edition because I haven't seen it in a while, because I need to be disturbed a little this week.”

“Oh boy, this is one of all-timers: Badlands. Terrence Malick's first movie, and this is one of the great examples of the unreliable narrator, which is hard to pull off in movies. Sissy Spacek is telling a story that is different than the one we're watching. She's telling us a romance, in a way we're watching a murder of a psychopath crossing the plains of America. A stunning movie, I think it's my favorite Terrence Malick movie still.”

“Oh yeah, got to have Billy Wilder. I met Billy Wilder once. The best review I've ever got, I was in a restaurant about 6 months after Bull Durham came out and a man came over and said somebody would like to see you. It was Billy Wilder and I went over and he said, 'Great picture, kid.' I thought that was as good a review as you could have. So Some Like It Hot, one of my favorites.”

“Oh, this is a good one: His Girl Friday. These movies I play for my kids who are 18 and 22 and they love them. Showing fast dialogue, kind of crazy screwball stuff. An amazingly timeless—that all these generations later they can play. Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, thank you.”

“And the final movie for my bag: the classic Elia Kazan, Bud Schulberg script, Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront. 108 minutes. Notice how many of these movies aren't long. My little speech for today's filmmakers: short is good. I met Bud Schulberg once and he wanted to do a new On the Waterfront in the Long Beach Harbor in LA... It was an honor and of course one of the great performances ever.”