“What’s great about the way Buñuel treats his actors is he puts them in these ridiculous situations and then always asks them to act as if they don’t think the situations are ridiculous at all. He shoots them from a medium distance, rarely shooting them in close-up, which has a tense, but sometimes partly comic effect. You know, you never shoot comedy in close-up.”

“Try, if you can. You can watch that film, and you know what is going on. But I defy anyone who is able to watch that film, and the end when the table is cleared, and everyone is coming in with the money—I just cannot believe there isn’t anyone with wet eyes at that point, or a big lump in their throat. I’ve seen it millions of times, and I’m just in floods of tears at that point.”

“Maybe it’s because—and what I do believe—in America, anything can happen. The great freedom of living in America, compared to many other countries—maybe this could happen; you could be home one day and be really just transported to another world, learn everything, and come back. To me, it is American because of the values with friends, and how people save each other and expose fraud—the person behind the curtain is really bullshit that has no power. All those are very American subject matter, but I don’t know why they aren’t European really, either.”

“The director, Albert Lamorisse, was a helicopter operator, and he had invented stuff to shoot from. In this one he had his son in a basket hanging under the real helicopter. It’s not like studio stuff. It’s really flying. It’s under the helicopter; it’s always super windy and they have to change the sound because when you travel in a balloon, you don’t have wind because you move with the wind. So it’s very quiet. They had to post-direct all the sound, but it’s dubbed very roughly—that gives it a very dreamy quality.”