"Charles Laughton plays an English butler whose British lord loses him in a poker game to a cowboy from Red Gap, Washington. Ruggles is the butler, a manservant, and he’s forced to move to America, and this cowboy doesn’t [Heaton goes into cowboy twang] feel comfortable having a manservant because it’s ‘Merica and every man is his own man and we have freedom. He tries to help Ruggles become a free man and Ruggles’ family’s whole tradition was being menservants to people. He finds it very hard to embrace American freedom. It has really funny, terrific, and moving performances, and not very many people watch it — or have even seen it or heard of it. I make my boys watch it every Thanksgiving. I’m like, “Boys, it’s that tiiiime!” and they’re like, “Noooooooo, not Ruggles.” but I think they’ll come to appreciate it."

"In 1941, the year of Citizen Kane, a far greater first film coauthored by its director appeared: The Maltese Falcon. From this great beginning, John Huston went on to forge a consistent and unmistakable identity toward life and film that he maintained throughout his long, varied, and productive career. After Laurence Olivier, Albert Finney has been the greatest English actor to work in films, and Under the Volcano is his greatest role. Like all the great characters in Huston’s best films who are ironic, never sentimental, humorous, and usually very unpleasant, Albert Finney, never offscreen, is playing someone totally inebriated from beginning to end. It reminds me of another favorite, Richard III, where another great actor, in this case playing a serial murderer, pulls out all the stops, brings it all off, and brings the viewer over to his side."

"I played British and Irish folk in an early band I had. We only performed one show and Rostam [Batmanglij, Vampire Weekend multi-instrumentalist] was also in the group, so this was the roots of Vampire Weekend. We covered 'Matty Groves' from this album. It's a traditional song about adultery, anger and sex, and I thought it was cool that they could take ancient-sounding stories and make them relevant. It's an important lesson – if you want to reinvent the wheel, maybe pop music isn't for you. As much as it's about being progressive, it's also rooted in a certain respect for the form. Which might seem paradoxical, but that's what pop music is – it combines very old ideas with very new sounds. Fairport are an example of that, taking very old songs in the English language and reinventing them."