"""Great songs. I had it on 8-track in my car. I heard 'Fingertips' first, and I thought ""Shit! Who's playing harmonica on that for a start off?"" So those Motown records were happy records, great for dancing and parties and things. But then it got deeper, more personal, which is why I picked that record. I think people should try things and if you have something to say, something in you, then do it. That can happen in different times of your life, and I think for him, he had that to prove - you know he had done the jolly records, and wanted to get deep. And he did. Favourite song would be 'Blame It On The Sun'. It was different, ""but my heart blames it on me"" - blame it on this, blame it on that, but at the end of that day, my heart blames it on me. I love clever lyrics... and its a simple story but the way he put it together was very clever."

"Goonies, yeah. I mean maybe Goonies is better than Jerry Maguire, though I do love Jerry Maguire. Goonies is just like… I have no words for how awesome Goonies is. I happen to be working with Josh Brolin on this Everest movie I’m about to do, and I still geek out. You know, I want him to wear a headband in the Everest movie because it’s such an amazing character choice. If I remember correctly I feel like he wore sweatpants over jeans in that movie? I’m pretty sure. I might be wrong about that. And that was a pretty dope character choice as well. Just incredible acting, and the scenes with Chunk still move me. And Butterfinger… Oh wait, no. Snickers? What is it, Snickers? My first crush was in Goonies too: Kerri Green. She was in Lucas. She was in Summer Rental. OK? Dude, she… Lucas is a very formidable… I had such a crush on her. Oh my god. If you see her in Lucas, you’d understand."

"My old man got me into The Streets. I was quite young when they first came out and I remember him having them on in the car constantly. Original Pirate Material was a complete game-changer for me, I can recite that whole album word for word. ‘Blinded by the Lights’ was on the second album, A Grand Don't Come for Free, and I could probably recite that whole album as well, I think it’s one of the greatest concept albums ever written. “With ‘Blinded by the Lights’ I just love the tune, it really catches a theme and I can really relate to how he’s feeling in it. It’s that feeling of being pilled-up in a club, of losing control and not really knowing what’s going on, it’s a big tune. “I really like the storytelling element of it and that was an inspiration to me. Storytelling in a song is a complete art and I definitely don’t feel like I’ve managed to do it as good as this does, I don’t know if anyone ever will."

"It's just so obvious - maybe I should've picked records that are more interesting to other people! I picked this because, again, I cannot fault a single song on that record. One song after another is just a perfect, classic song and I could listen to it till the cows come home. Every drop of it is just perfection, as far as my ears are concerned. This is actually quite a late record for me - I found this after I had been making music, after my first record someone introduced it to me; it might have been David Roback from Mazzy Star, it would be right that he would play this. It's a record that when I heard that I thought ""okay, I get it"". I understood how amazing Bob Dylan is, obviously - how can you not? - but this is the record where it really sank in, in terms of understanding him. I also love Desire, with 'Mozambique' on it, but then there's Blonde On Blonde... I don't know, it just grows and grows! What can you do, he's a fucking genius!"

"I love that whole album, Coney Island Baby, I like the whole way that album was done. It’s got a cooler, very studio thing going on with all these ‘Oohs’ and ‘Ahh’s’ on the vocals all over the place. “With ‘Crazy Feeling’, I can’t be sure, but I think I heard it on the radio when it first came out. I think I was going to kindergarten somewhere; that was the ‘60s for me! I heard that ‘bum, bum, bum’, that sort of that chiming thing that goes on, and I really liked it and the sound of the guy’s voice singing. “At this point, it could’ve been a vivid dream that I’m remembering, but I think it actually was that song that I heard that on the radio and mixed in with everything else it caught my ear, at whatever age I was, whenever that song might’ve gotten a couple plays on a radio station. We would’ve been listening to a New York station at that time, living in Connecticut, or a Connecticut station"

"I’ll pair this with Mouchette, because they are beautiful, and if I remember right they were released only a year apart, an anomaly for filmmaker Bresson whose films often had many years between their respective release dates. I tried to go to college; in fact, I did go but did not come very close to completing a degree. The highlight of my attempt at formal higher learning was a seminar led by Michael Silverman on the movies of Robert Bresson. At the first meeting of the seminar, Silverman told us that he was still intrigued, confused, and puzzled by Bresson’s movies, even years into the experiences of witnessing them. So, he said, we would take this opportunity again to explore together their density and power. Balthazar and Mouchette slayed me, maybe Balthazar most of all because I identified more with the ass that was Balthazar than the angel that was Mouchette. Both movies are pitiless and intensely compassionate. They say, “This is how bad it is. Let us love until the end.”"

"I love Time Bandits, and it obviously fits into the kids’-adventure-fantasy stuff that I’m into. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was actually the first film I ever saw in a theater when I was eight years old, and I was euphoric. After that I rented every Terry Gilliam movie. In Time Bandits, he mixes animation and live action, which is an important aesthetic element in the movies I make. When I was twenty I had a short at the London Film Festival, and I was there with my friend so we were traveling from party to party, drinking and eating, because we didn’t have any money. At one party we saw Terry Gilliam, and I started talking to this woman about seeing Baron Munchausen and how it made me want to make movies, and she said, “Well, my husband is Terry Gilliam, you should go say hello to him.” So I went over to him and said, “I just need you to know that I’m here because you made me want to make movies,” and he said, “I’m so sorry.”"