"Confessions Of A Sex Kitten was so major. Eartha Kitt is a huge possibility idol for me. The thing about women like Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, and Diahann Carroll — these black artists in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s — they were making a way out of no way. Eartha’s book, the first paragraph of it I was bawling. It’s just so deep! Her love life I can so relate to as a trans woman. She dated a lot of white men, who dated her privately. They would neverdate her openly or marry her. That’s something I can certainly relate to as a trans woman. She is brilliant and amazing and sexy and smart and political! She was blacklisted for like 10 years. Eartha Kitt is everything, may she rest in peace."

"There aren't many tunes here - it's just a way of making music, really. It's one of those things where you read the sleeve notes and listen to it and just become completely engrossed. It's a bit pretentious being a drummer and liking Drumming by Steve Reich. But it's basically really, really simple and primitive, and I like it. I like how it has a simple motion which just gradually becomes something incredibly sophisticated without you noticing, but it's all in your head. You're making it like that. It's a great driving record. Going down the motorway listening to Drumming is absolutely brilliant. Does it remind me of working with Martin Hannett? Well, he wasn't tyrannical, but he was in charge. And he would never let you forget that."

"Is there a greater, more suggestive and bittersweet movie title than All That Heaven Allows? (Well, yes, there is, Yasujiro Ozu’s I Was Born, But . . . , but that’s another story and another great Criterion disc.) Sirk dug beneath the surface of idyllic American small-town life in the 1950s, and the surface has never been more beautiful than in this Technicolor nightmare of conformity and the repressive nature of community and family life. It’s Freud vs. Walden, as pettiness, jealousy, and repression pair off against a bohemian vision of rural tranquility. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose brilliant essay on Sirk is included as an extra, remade the movie as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, and it was also the model for Todd Haynes’s Far from Heaven and Sanaa Hamri’s not-too-shabby Something New."

"The flip side of the “The Sorrow of War,” this book is a brilliant and telling account of one brutal battle in Vietnam from the American perspective. Moore was the commander of soldiers who were airdropped into the jungle, only to be promptly surrounded and massively outnumbered by North Vietnamese troops. The reporter Joseph Galloway had rare access to the troops, witnessing this desperate battle for survival. I love it for the story of heroic journalism. It is why I so admire books like “Once Upon a Distant War,” by William Prochnau, which is the Vietnam war seen through the eyes of legendary correspondents like Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, Peter Arnett, and others of that generation, providing stark evidence of their courage and fearless contributions to history and truth."

"The Big Lebowski. Jeff Bridges – I almost put Starman down, too, but I really think I kind of don’t remember the movie so much because I haven’t seen it in so many years – but I love Jeff Bridges, and I love the movie he just did. What was it called? Crazy Heart, he’s great in that. But, I mean, there’s something about The Big Lebowski and that combination with the Coen brothers sensibility, which, he nailed that down. I don’t know exactly what you’d even call that, but brilliant. I loved his performance in that, and I loved John Goodman, and I loved Steve Buscemi. And you know who else was great in that, was Philip Seymour Hoffman. He was really good in that movie, too. Yeah, great, great, great fan of that movie."