"Mad Max. George Miller is my ultimate mentor. I went to see Fury Road 17 times in the cinemas. I can’t really express in one word of how good Mad Max 2 is. There’s hardly any dialogue in that movie, right? But the character stands out so much, visually, how he moves. Usually, you express through dialogue, but with George, it’s totally different. Like how a character throws a boomerang: No dialogue, but all character. I’m also influenced by where Geroge places the camera. It never goes away, far from Mel Gibson. Even looking through the telescope, usually the camera jumps to that location, but here you’re always looking at Max. It’s kind of basic, but George Miller keeps it basic in a way no one else can. It was tough when I had to leave my previous company. George came to Japan, and that was the first time we met. He cheered me up in my darkest time. After I became independent, and opened my studio, I went to Australia in 2017. I had two trailers at that time, but there was no gameplay revealed yet of Death Stranding. I explained what Death Stranding would be over an hour — the system, the story, the world. George told me, “What you’re doing is mathematically, philosophically, and physically correct.” He said: “Congratulations; it’s a guaranteed success.” George is a very kind gentleman. He is really into computer graphics and technology, and he also knows game technology. It’s really rare that a director of his generation knows all of these. He’s even older than me, but he has a lot of energy. There are game producers who are much older than me. But, as for creators who actually write scenarios or game designs, I think I’m the oldest in the industry. Sometimes I feel lonely because of that. But then there’s George; he’s over 70, and he’s still wearing this leather jacket, still young. That cheers me up."

"Outside of 2001: A Space Odyssey, these are my favorite Kubrick films. The Killing is a tense and lean noir starring the great Sterling Hayden and a cast of character actors (Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Jay C. Flippen, Timothy Carey, et al.), each of whom possesses his or her own special brand of menace and pathos. The film’s dialogue is by the best crime writer who ever lived, Jim Thompson (who worked with Kubrick and Calder Willingham on Paths of Glory as well), and it’s the music in Kubrick’s nonlinear racetrack heist caper, which I think is the best noir ever made. Hayden is one of the most curious creatures to ever grace the screen. I can never take my eyes off him, and as gruff as he is, I always feel for him. The tragic, cosmic joke at the end of this movie will break your heart—even when you’re wondering why you wanted this bum to get away with the crime. Johnny Clay is the ultimate “beautiful loser.” Paths of Glory is, in my humble opinion, the finest war film ever made. While not concerned primarily with combat and focusing instead on its multilayered consequences, the drama is as explosive as any battlefield action you’ll ever see. It lays bare the blatant hypocrisy of the powers that be, who never get their hands dirty but put innocent and well-intentioned men in the trenches to fight their battles for them. Kubrick takes us through the trenches with dazzling tracking shots that show us the weathered faces of the men who fought the Great War, some of whom will later be brought to trial and executed for “cowardice” after not being able to pull off an impossible mission. Kirk Douglas has never been better. And if the final scene in the battered cabaret, featuring Kubrick’s future wife, Christiane, singing a German folk song, doesn’t destroy you completely, you are probably some hideous sun demon."

"Outside of 2001: A Space Odyssey, these are my favorite Kubrick films. The Killing is a tense and lean noir starring the great Sterling Hayden and a cast of character actors (Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., Jay C. Flippen, Timothy Carey, et al.), each of whom possesses his or her own special brand of menace and pathos. The film’s dialogue is by the best crime writer who ever lived, Jim Thompson (who worked with Kubrick and Calder Willingham on Paths of Glory as well), and it’s the music in Kubrick’s nonlinear racetrack heist caper, which I think is the best noir ever made. Hayden is one of the most curious creatures to ever grace the screen. I can never take my eyes off him, and as gruff as he is, I always feel for him. The tragic, cosmic joke at the end of this movie will break your heart—even when you’re wondering why you wanted this bum to get away with the crime. Johnny Clay is the ultimate “beautiful loser.” Paths of Glory is, in my humble opinion, the finest war film ever made. While not concerned primarily with combat and focusing instead on its multilayered consequences, the drama is as explosive as any battlefield action you’ll ever see. It lays bare the blatant hypocrisy of the powers that be, who never get their hands dirty but put innocent and well-intentioned men in the trenches to fight their battles for them. Kubrick takes us through the trenches with dazzling tracking shots that show us the weathered faces of the men who fought the Great War, some of whom will later be brought to trial and executed for “cowardice” after not being able to pull off an impossible mission. Kirk Douglas has never been better. And if the final scene in the battered cabaret, featuring Kubrick’s future wife, Christiane, singing a German folk song, doesn’t destroy you completely, you are probably some hideous sun demon."

"This was also quite a challenging record for me. I bought the 7"" of 'Ceremony' when it came out, and I thought that's what Movement was going to sound like. A very pretty, emotional, bucolic record, and of course it has moments like that, but in a strange way it's almost darker than Closer. When I was 14 or 15-years-old I was full ensconced on the cult of Ian Curtis, so when I got Movement I listened to it and tried to decode it... how many songs were influenced by Ian Curtis, how many songs were written by Ian Curtis, were they trying to communicate with Ian from beyond the grave. It's certainly the darkest of all the New Order records, and after this they became much more melodic and happy. The first track on the record is quite uplifting, then everything else is quite dark. One of the things I've always loved about Bernard Sumner's voice is there's a naive, vulnerable quality to it. I was at an airport the other day and 'A Perfect Kiss' came on, I hadn't listened to it in about 25 years, and it's such a perfect song. His vocals are sing-songy, like a nursery rhyme, but they're so effective. Each of these records that we've talked about, one thing they have in common is that they're all primarily electronic. At the time I was completely surrounded by very traditional rock music, and it felt interesting and subversive to be listening to these records primarily made with electronic instruments. I think that affected me a lot. I was a guitar player at the time, and I was so bored and frustrated with playing the guitar because it didn't do that much. I couldn't figure out how to make a guitar not sound like a guitar, and then you hear all these electronic records with all these textures and atmospheres and sounds that I'd never heard before, and I found that quite exciting."