"Still with the Italians, I’m sorry! With many things in life you’re there because there’s a cute girl around that you want to go out with and you end up finding magic. You end up not caring about the girl but wanting to stay there because of what you found. That happened with Amarcord to me. I really thought a lot about creating images and the connection that cinema had with theatre in a way. That film feels a little bit like theatre. I lived all my life watching theatre and it’s when I found the connection with what I was watching and could do in my life."

"In recent years, with financing so much harder to come by and the best television raising itself to the level of great filmmaking, I’ve been happily earning a living working in serialized cable dramas, while still trying to get my own films made. For me, Berlin Alexanderplatz was the grandfather of all the best of modern television, using the expanse of hours to dig ever deeper under the skin of characters, seducing us into caring for a dark antihero in spite of ourselves, and showing that television can be as visual and inventive and surreal as the best movies. I hope we get a Blu-ray version soon!"

"They’re the one band I’d love to see reform and get all the money and all the credit they’re due. They were so explosive, so prolific, so ragged and quite harsh live. They were very much of a pre-90s world, if you know what I mean - under-rehearsed, slamming it out, not caring. Probably never had a fucking tour bus. They were on the cusp of greatness, then it all fucking imploded. Songs like ‘Too Far Down’, ‘Hardly Getting Over It’, ‘Sorry Somehow’, I love that because of Grant Hart’s desperation on it. I always preferred Grant’s voice but I think Bob [Mould] might have shaded it on the lyrics."

"Cassavetes’ movies to me are a kind of pure energy. He’s the very opposite of Ozu because he cared nothing at all about form. Yet for some strange reason, by not caring about form at all—he just went for it—this produced, in formal aspects, the same result as when you pay a lot of attention to form. His energy with actors can also be felt. In each shot, you can feel what he wants to tell us about story, and you get the feeling that this has to be acted now, shot in the very moment. I would say it’s possibly something very American. This pure energy of making is very American, and it’s very optimistic."