"""Next, I’ll go Die Hard. You have to understand, my son, who’s nine years old, is constantly asking me, “What’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite action movie?” Every day. So, it’s hard to say to your nine-year-old, “Well, son, actually, I love watching The Magnificent Seven.” And I do, I love The Magnificent Seven. But he wants a movie that he can look forward to and see, something he can relate to, and I think, ultimately when I start talking about great action movies, you know, it’s Die Hard. Die Hard is a top five favorite film. Great villain, the right amount of humor and strength and, you know, sadism. [laughs] And Bruce Willis is fantastic. And again, the scenes with Bonnie Bedelia, you really get it. The estranged husband, conflicted home, and yet he really cares about her. It’s not just some cookie-cutter thing, like, “This is my wife; I’m doing this for you, baby!” They have major marital problems, but he’s there, and all of a sudden, he’s in the midst of it. It’s certainly the best out of the ‘80s, I think, one of the best action movies."""

"She made three in the series, this, then II and III. This one is about hardcore punk in L.A. in the early ’80s so there’s a lot of Black Flag and that whole scene. Its aesthetic was one of the main influences that Chris Blauvelt and I used for Mid90s – for the way things looked, the way the backstage in the apartment looked, for the 16 mm. It’s a remarkable and encompassing snapshot of a scene that I’m personally drawn to, and the ethics and aesthetics of the film are as fucked up and raw as what it’s depicting. The crazy thing is that Penelope Spheeris started as a punk doc maker and ended up directing broad ’90s comedies - she made Wayne’s World (1992)! She also made Suburbia (1983), which is amazing, and another influence for Blauvelt and I. The main thing I did when I became a known as a an actor and had access to people and filmmakers, was me saying, like, “Hi, I’m the kid from Superbad, can I please have all the Decline movies?” That’s how I abused fame at that time."

"Number two I would say is Less Than Zero, which, you know… there’s a point in [Take Me Home Tonight] where we kind of go “across the tracks” in Los Angeles, which is the Hills. The Valley was a big deal; it’s where the majority of the movie takes place, but then we go to a different party, kind of a banker’s party, and that’s going over the hill into Beverly Hills. I realized when I first moved to LA that there was a big difference between the Sunset Strip and Los Angeles proper, and then going over into the Valley, which is more of a hometown community. It’s crazy that the Hills is kind of those train tracks, so to speak, and we really wanted to focus on that second party as in Less Than Zero. That’s what we were going for. The atmosphere in there, we really wanted to see that side of the ’80s too, which is very different. You would say the other side is maybe Valley Girl, and that kind of party, and this side is Less than Zero."

"I've heard their new album about six times on our trips together and I don't think I've embraced it as much [as Smile], 'cos it's got a more 80s sound. It helps that I'm not sure what these guys are singing about. It's not music that could have been done by an American group. I like the fact that it's done by these fucking drugged out Japanese dudes. There's probably something in one of those eight minute long jams that I picked out and thought 'Oh yeah! Cool! Let's hear that again'. There's something about these long passages that aren't going to tell you a story, it's not going to tell you an answer, it's not about a melodic piece playing out. It's just holding you out there on the edge, like, what's happening next? I don't know, I don't know. There's a lot of music doesn't mean anything, so it just spins my mind where I'm not thinking about anything. That's a great druggy calling that their music has for me. It suspends you, and you're free - you're just listening to Boris. That's the only thing in your world at the time."

"I included this one because sometimes you can read things into records that aren't necessarily there. In the mid-80s I had my first proper girlfriend, we had an on/off thing for ages and then we finally split up. On the Thursday before, she gave me this Marianne Faithfull LP, so in the aftermath of the split I listened to it and heard lots of like 'ooo she's sending me a message through the songs'. I got to know the record quite well, I wallowed in the self-pity. I happened to meet her in Sheffield about 20 years later, was speaking to her and I mentioned to her about that record and she just said 'I knew we were going to split up and it was on offer at WH Smiths, it was only three quid so I just thought I'd get you that'. She'd never listened to it and wasn't making any points or comments to me at all. It shows how you as a listener bring a lot to any record. I didn't tell Marianne Faithfull the story when I worked with her... I should do shouldn't I?"

"I saw her at a Mississippi Records evening at Café Oto. I went there because the guy from Mississippi Records had somehow inherited 700 hours of footage by a man who woke up one morning, I think in the 80s when the technology of hand-held cameras had just appeared, and he felt like he had a mission to go and film people, poorer people, and how they expressed themselves, artistically and spontaneously. So we're not talking about people who were trying to make records, just people who play the guitar and sing or whatever, just musically expressing themselves. And that man felt like these people would soon disappear, that society would disappear and it would be extinct. And I think he probably had a very strong intuition that proved to be right. I think technology will soon take us away from just picking up a guitar and singing some songs, spontaneously. It's refreshing because we don't see that on TV, where everything is manufactured and filtered. It felt so good for my brain and my senses to be connected into that, and to witness all of these expressions."