"Obviously Chinatown. Seeing Nicholson with his destroyed nose [laughs], as Polanski is slitting his nose by the reservoir and calling him “pussy cat,” and all that stuff; and him and Faye Dunaway, you know, it’s just extraordinary. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s one of the greatest screenplays ever written. I’m a huge Robert Towne fan, and a Polanski fan. And it was great on this movie — on Hitchcock — to work with John Huston’s son, Danny. He had some stories about his dad. [Laughs] That Noah Cross character [played by John Huston], I think is one of the darkest villains in cinematic history. Every little detail of that film, you know — whether it’s Gittes choosing the cheap bourbon at the beginning, rather than the expensive stuff; every single touch, I think, was masterful. It has such brilliance, and poise, and ultimately humanity to it. And again, it’s a story of power, of big city power and corruption and how power and privilege can destroy people and families. That’s a theme in Sweet Smell of Success as well."

"Joni's the greatest songwriter ever. And what a record. She writes as this omniscient narrator on this album, surveying everything from above, commenting on this world of women and predatory men she's created, and she has such power and agency as she does it. I've read about how music critics – male critics, let's be honest – struggled with this record at the time. Records like Blue, which touch on a woman's emotional struggles from a subjective standpoint, were so much easier and more comforting to them, I suppose. I love how she intimidated people, and didn't care. 
There's a great unreleased bootleg of demos of this album, called The Seeding Of Summer Lawns. Joni's got all these jazz cat musicians in, but she's written all these complicated flute and horn parts for them already, and sings them all, as they're all in her head. It's unbelievable. I can't speak highly enough of her, and of this."