"In this political season, it’s important to remember that politics has always been a dirty business. Robert Altman scores big with two very well-aimed political targets: the unraveling of Richard Nixon in 1984’s Secret Honor and the media circus surrounding a presidential campaign in his 1988 miniseries Tanner ’88. I grew up watching comedian Rich Little doing Richard Nixon impressions that are seared into my brain. Philip Baker Hall is not doing a Richard Nixon impression. He is Richard Nixon. Sans gimmicks. It is a gut-wrenchingly good performance in what is virtually a one-man show. Tanner ’88 stars Michael Murphy as a decent liberal Democrat who—SPOILER ALERT—does not take the Democratic nomination. Sound familiar? Yeah. Depressing. Haskell Wexler’s 1969 film Medium Cool should really just be called Super Fucking Cool but then you’d lose the play on the word “medium” and boy is Wexler playing with medium here—a fictional story, shot cinema verité style, against a backdrop of the very real riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It’s a doozy and especially resonant as we watch the circus leading up to what is sure to be an ugly convention season"

"In this political season, it’s important to remember that politics has always been a dirty business. Robert Altman scores big with two very well-aimed political targets: the unraveling of Richard Nixon in 1984’s Secret Honor and the media circus surrounding a presidential campaign in his 1988 miniseries Tanner ’88. I grew up watching comedian Rich Little doing Richard Nixon impressions that are seared into my brain. Philip Baker Hall is not doing a Richard Nixon impression. He is Richard Nixon. Sans gimmicks. It is a gut-wrenchingly good performance in what is virtually a one-man show. Tanner ’88 stars Michael Murphy as a decent liberal Democrat who—SPOILER ALERT—does not take the Democratic nomination. Sound familiar? Yeah. Depressing. Haskell Wexler’s 1969 film Medium Cool should really just be called Super Fucking Cool but then you’d lose the play on the word “medium” and boy is Wexler playing with medium here—a fictional story, shot cinema verité style, against a backdrop of the very real riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It’s a doozy and especially resonant as we watch the circus leading up to what is sure to be an ugly convention season"

"In this political season, it’s important to remember that politics has always been a dirty business. Robert Altman scores big with two very well-aimed political targets: the unraveling of Richard Nixon in 1984’s Secret Honor and the media circus surrounding a presidential campaign in his 1988 miniseries Tanner ’88. I grew up watching comedian Rich Little doing Richard Nixon impressions that are seared into my brain. Philip Baker Hall is not doing a Richard Nixon impression. He is Richard Nixon. Sans gimmicks. It is a gut-wrenchingly good performance in what is virtually a one-man show. Tanner ’88 stars Michael Murphy as a decent liberal Democrat who—SPOILER ALERT—does not take the Democratic nomination. Sound familiar? Yeah. Depressing. Haskell Wexler’s 1969 film Medium Cool should really just be called Super Fucking Cool but then you’d lose the play on the word “medium” and boy is Wexler playing with medium here—a fictional story, shot cinema verité style, against a backdrop of the very real riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It’s a doozy and especially resonant as we watch the circus leading up to what is sure to be an ugly convention season"

"This is a weird one. That was in my parent's record collection. They had a few records, but that was one that we would listen to a lot as kids. It's very appealing to children. It's kind of like a musical Monty Python, but a lot better in my opinion! They had this really stupid, silly, strange music that was a lot better than it should have been. You often get that when a comedian makes music, you can sort of tell that actually the music underneath is really good. Lots of their humour is derived from the fact that the music is played really badly, and it was sort of shit and sort of funny! That source of amusement has followed me my whole life. I'm much happier trawling YouTube for awful music than I am looking for the hottest new good band. I almost spend more time listening to awful music. Not just because I find it funny but because I find things in it that a professional would never think of, and that is sometimes all you want to hear, something that you've never heard before. I think a lot of humour is relayed in my music directly from the Bonzos."