“I think Terry has one of the most pronounced, specific visual styles of any filmmaker. He gave me something to aspire to as a visual artist but also as a storyteller, as one who aspires to be a social satirist.”

Alex Gibney on The Exterminating Angel: “There’s one scene where two maids are about to go out the front door, and then they see all the guests arriving, and they quickly skitter back. They hide until the guests arrive and then they move quickly out the front door, exactly like rats leaving a sinking ship. So there’s a wonderful and delicious irony, and he plays it so straight in those scenes. When the mistress of the house finds out they’re doing this, she gets all huffy. “Haven’t you liked working here?” “Yes, ma’am, of course I have, but I’m afraid I must leave.” You’re giving up a job you’ve had for five years for mysterious reasons you can’t really understand? There’s something wonderfully comical and mysterious about it.”

John Waters on The Wizard of Oz: “It was surreal and it was magical and it was trippy. We saw it when we were young, and it had good villains and one of the most famous songs in a movie ever. And great surrealism: ‘How about a little fire, Scarecrow?’ When the winged monkeys fly, and rip out the straw! It’s surrealistic.”

“It’s probably the most pessimistic, downbeat film about America ever made, because no one wins anything, everything’s sad, there’s no happy ending. On any level. [laughs] And it’s just bleak. And yet the technique through which this bleak story is told is so dynamic and exciting that it actually makes you feel the opposite of what you would feel if you just go by the story. And that’s the interesting tension in that movie.