"All of Hitchcock — I don’t think I can even identify a particular film. After I transitioned out of the art world into film, I was doing a graduate degree at Columbia University and I took a class with Andrew Sarris, who I think is one of the treasures of the film world. We looked at an overview of Hitchcock during the two-year course, starting with his silents. And there are some extraordinary silent movies of his; I’m not sure how readily available they are, but there’s a phenomenal film — I think it’s called Murder! — and it’s silent, but it’s as tense as Psycho or The Birds or Notorious or Rear Window. [Editor’s note: Hitchcock’s 1930 film Murder! was one of his first talkies, but his 1927 silent, The Lodger, is one of his most celebrated. Both were released jointly to home video in 2002.] It’s a silent film, but it’s Hitchcock. All of his signatures, all the signifiers, everything we’ve come to know and love about Hitchcock, they’re all in play."

"Let’s see… American Graffiti. People have constantly been telling me to watch it, because they’re like, “It’s teenagers — you would love it, it’s high school,” and I never did. Then recently, on a flight home from Australia — which is, you know, a really long flight, and when you’re on a flight you have less oxygen and all of your emotions are heightened — I started watching it for the first time. And I was like, you know, it’s nice, but I feel like I’m enjoying it from a distance; it’s not really relatable, like “Gee, life sure was different back then and blah, blah, blah.” And then there was this scene between Ron Howard and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend — like, they’re in the midst of breaking up and they’re at the school dance, and then they’re called to slow dance in front of everyone, in the spotlight — and she just starts crying onto his shoulder and he holds her tighter, and she’s like “Go to Hell”, and I just started bawling."

"""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!"