“I think I watched Commando 49 times,” Hawke laughs, “I don’t know why. We rented Commando when I was young and nobody returned it and I just watched it a million times.”

The Year of Living Dangerously. We had that VHS. I saw it the first time, actually, when it came out in the theater. It had Mel Gibson in it, so I thought it was gonna be an action movie. I was really disappointed. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I got the VHS and I started watching it. T

I’ll pick Apocalypse Now Redux. If you see that last release version up on a big screen, you crank up the music, that is a life-changing experience.

The truth is, it’s the “five” part [in Five Favorite Films] that’s a joke, you know? I probably have a good 100 favorite movies of all time. I mean, like, my brain is rifling. Am I really not gonna include A Woman Under the Influence? Am I really not gonna include Nashville? Am I really not gonna include Synecdoche, New York? I could do my five favorite films with terrible cinematography. I could do my five favorite films about love affairs.

The truth is, it’s the “five” part [in Five Favorite Films] that’s a joke, you know? I probably have a good 100 favorite movies of all time. I mean, like, my brain is rifling. Am I really not gonna include A Woman Under the Influence? Am I really not gonna include Nashville? Am I really not gonna include Synecdoche, New York? I could do my five favorite films with terrible cinematography. I could do my five favorite films about love affairs.

This is one of my favorite performances of all time.

Today, I’m gonna have to go with The Bridge On the River Kwai. You see that movie on the big screen and Alec Guinness is so proud of his bridge, then he drops this little stick he carries with him the whole time into the water and you start…

I’ll continue the Jack Nicholson theme and go to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Of its era, the great American novel. R.P. McMurphy is probably the defining Jack Nicholson character, if you had to pick one. It’s actually the first film I ever saw. I don’t remember it, but I was a little baby and my mom took me. It’s one of those movies I’ll watch whenever I’m feeling lost or alone in the universe.

Warren Beatty directed, about the life of John Reed. Jack Nicholson is Eugene O’Neill, one of his greatest performances. It combines everything I love about movies: great acting, unbelievable romance, and politics. Sondheim did the music, Elaine May helped write it.