"Melville is master of the jump cut. I fell in love with this book. The words were songs, the flow embraced the way we actually think. Backtracking, looping, jumping. But here’s a tip: if you’re thinking of making a multimedia opera from your favorite book, don’t do it! I tried it and didn’t have the nerve to rough it up. I never took off the white gloves. So obviously it didn’t work out"

"I’m going to go with Murmur of the Heart, the Louis Malle film. That’s one that I’ve seen in the last couple years that has become a new favorite. It’s about a little boy growing up and his love for his mother and the complication of being a child and becoming an adult and living in that liminal space. That movie really broke my heart and surprised me in just one hundred ways."

"This album was introduced to me by John Legend who actually played the title song for me while we were writing—he played it on the piano and sang it at first. It was so striking, I said, 'What is that?" And then he played me the actual record and it instantly became a favorite for me. The way her voice breaks is so moving. She totally caught pure honesty and that's inspiring."

"I cover this song quite a lot—I’m really into dumb, hook-y choruses. That’s my favorite thing about pop music, when a song is so dumb that it’s clever; ’I Want Candy’ is a perfect example of that. I also love the singer Annabella Lwin, how she was 15 years old and punk as fuck. I listen to this song before I go on stage, and it always makes me feel free"

"Stephen Frears’s The Hit is John Hurt (in a truly frightening performance) and a young, punked-out, Chinese-star-throwing Tim Roth (ditto) as two hit men transporting stool pigeon Terence Stamp (what a fucking cast!) from Spain to Paris to meet retribution from the crime boss he put away. Add seductive Laura del Sol and music by Roger Waters and Eric Clapton and you have one of my favorite British crime movies ever."

"I adore that film also. I believe Noël Coward is a shared passion of ours. Since I was a very young man, I have always been in love with the various recordings of his nightclub performances, and among those twentieth-century performers who have died, he’s sort of my favorite. And you gave me that incredible collection of his letters, each one of which is more or less engraved on my heart."

"I have that movie where my dad, at a young age, sits you down and is like, “Son, you’re gonna watch this movie.” And you’re like, “Oh, no.” For me, that was Braveheart. That’s definitely an all time favorite. I love Braveheart, I love Mel [Gibson]. I think he’s just an incredible — he’s obviously an amazing actor — but I think he’s also an incredible filmmaker. Braveheart is way up there for me."

"I just love The Godfather. It’s so good. When he takes out Freddy is my favorite part. On the boat, the stone falls so deep in the ocean. It’s like “Luke, I am your father.” It drops so deep. It perfectly tells us what Micheal is, and what he’s become. And everything that Freddy’s done, it just resonates even going back to The Godfather and how Freddy, the child, [was] a sick child."

"This is a film of startling humanity. Ozu is so honest and generous with us; he communicates without guise or flourish. He shows us what it means to be human in the most direct yet gentle way. He respects his characters too much to distract the viewer from their lives. He gives us the opportunity to sit with them. We join them in quiet communion. This will always be my favorite film."

"Another very formative movie. It’s a film that Bergman initially made for television with the beautiful Ingrid Thulin – a lesser known Bergman actress but my favorite. It’s a very claustrophobic film. It uses scene/chapter headings and that’s where I stole the structure for Buy It Now. I had never seen a film that dealt with sexuality in such an honest way, without being overly graphic, and with a very sensual feeling."