"My copy of Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself, an illustrated beauty of a book by Allen Crawford, which exquisitely spreads out Whitman’s famous Leaves of Grass poem over 234 pages. Its cloth-bound body was a gift from a friend who had been staying in Paris, and it bears a stamp from the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore situated on the Left Bank. The friend is a dear one who I barely see given our current geolocations, but the sort where years can pass and you can still converse as if it were yesterday"

"For me, Criterion was an entry point for Asian cinema, which was really awesome. I started picking out films like Good Morning. Ozu is so beautiful. You look at the colors he’s working with, the stillness, the beauty. I tried not to put another Ozu on this list, but I had to include Tokyo Story also. I remember watching it for the first time and was like, man, so little happened but so much happened, and there’s such a wise grace. I hope we can see more films like this again."

"For me, Criterion was an entry point for Asian cinema, which was really awesome. I started picking out films like Good Morning. Ozu is so beautiful. You look at the colors he’s working with, the stillness, the beauty. I tried not to put another Ozu on this list, but I had to include Tokyo Story also. I remember watching it for the first time and was like, man, so little happened but so much happened, and there’s such a wise grace. I hope we can see more films like this again."

"I’d have to have a John Ford movie; there are four or five movies of his that are tied in my book. He added a secular audience involvement in what was the beauty of cinema. In other words, he was the first guy that I think made movies live up to the potential of what they could be, and continued to do so throughout his career. He was able to be, to me, the most profoundly humanistic bridge between the potential of cinema and how it relates to the human condition."

"If I were stuck on a desert island, I’d find it hard to let go of this record! It encapsulates every part of the perfect beauty of classical music, particularly Bach, yet it uses that with electronic synthesiser. It’s a totally new world, bringing the future and I think it’s fantastic. It also featured on A Clockwork Orange, which featured the 9th Symphony by Beethoven and is also one of my all-time favourite records. But that wasn’t on Switched On Bach, so I had to source the origin of that later."

"I just finished editing my new movie and I basically haven’t slowed down since the shoot in August, so I’m playing catch up on a ton of things I missed. This film has stuck with me like crazy. I’m trying to find some normalcy in life again and writing ideas for a new movie in my note pad, spending time with my girlfriend, and taking care of my cats. I think there is inspiration and beauty in so many small things all around us… This movie has latched on to me and hasn’t let go."