"I’ve never been a huge fan of David Lean’s epics and think the modest British films he did in the 1940s are superior. I also wouldn’t have thought he had a glimmer of humor, but this film is witty, and the actors (even Charles Laughton) have been directed with insight."

"I got this when we were already started, it was when I raided the album closet of Elektra. It's one of the albums where it was, "Yeah, I gotta have this one". Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd traded off rhythm and lead, it'd be like their version of 'Dueling Banjos'! They took turns and there's all these different elements to it. That probably seeped in to [his and Black Francis' playing] on 'Monkey Gone To Heaven' through osmosis. We didn't mean it and it was just lucky. We just figure stuff out. Charles [Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, aka Black Francis] just leaves me alone when I'm doing my guitars. He would say "'Pixify' it", it's when the Pixies really become the Pixies. I'm just quoting him! It's kind of true in a little way. Of course it would be, that's the job, that's a lead guitarist's job, and Charles' job is to make Pixies songs and all that stuff. The guitar happens to be front and centre of the mix. They would even say it, "Now it's Joey's turn", and Charles would say: "Ah, now it's the Pixies.""

"Once Upon a Time in the West would come on the million-dollar movie. We had that once a week, I think, when everything was deployed on television. I had a [inaudible] television and I watched Once Upon a Time in the West, and I was blown away by the power in the stillness and silence of Charles Bronson as Harmonica, and I just thought the culmination of Morricone’s score with Leone’s gorgeous style, and then the showdown between Henry Fonda, who is outstanding as a bad guy, and Bronson was one of the most powerful moments I’ve ever experienced in cinema, and it really made a big impact."

"It’s in my top five list of best films ever made. I just think it’s perfect. It’s an amazing portrait of an artist, an amazing portrait of a family, Crumb is an incredible central character. I feel like whenever I watch that movie — I sort of watch it every couple years — I start talking like him afterwards. I mean he really infects me in a way that totally changes the way that I look at the world. All great artists have that sort of ability. When I read some of my favorite novelists after I put down one of their books, I’m thinking in their words. I’m seeing the world through their eyes and it’s the same with Crumb. I’m a big fan of his comics, but that film does such an amazing job putting you kind of in his headspace. It also looks amazing, it’s shot on film, Zwigoff does an incredible job framing Crumb’s world, and the Jazz music. it’s just great, I just think it’s great. I think the movie’s a pleasure to watch. I mean, his brother Charles is f—ing incredible, man. Like, the idea that this family produced not one great artist, three great artists. And that Crumb was actually the one who was political enough and sophisticated enough and just barely enough of a people person that his art got seen. But, you know, Charles and Matt also were like really pushing the boundaries of the stuff and also hugely influential on Crumb’s stuff. You don’t get Robert without Charles. You just never sort of have access to those stories the way that this documentary has access to that family. It’s a lot to think about, the artwork that we end up getting as a culture, you know, often times is less about what’s better, and more about how savvy the artist is and how able they are to kind of be in the right place at the right time so that there’s an audience for the work."