"I’d known nothing of Serge Gainsbourg until I was co-producing an album by a French group called Louise Attaque. Their first album ended up being the biggest rock album in France, which was an amazing thing. Being with these French people and making this album, myself and my co-producer asked, ‘Well, what music would you recommend for us to listen to, things that we might not know that you could tell us about. What do you like? Because we like your music and what you do, so what is it that you like?’ This was the first thing that somebody there said, ‘This is what you have to hear, this is great,’ and it just struck me that way. We went to a big record store and said to everybody in the band, ‘Why don’t you pick out music for us? What’s the two or three CDs that are the best, or that you think we need to hear?’ We wouldn’t know a lot of this or maybe any of it, and one of them recommended this and everybody agreed, ‘This is something you need to hear.’ It didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before and I immediately liked it very much, the whole album. And then I found out about Serge Gainsbourg and all the things he did for decades, all different kinds of music. I think he’s really one of the great ones"

"The first film would be The Professional. I think in France it’s called Léon. Natalie Portman, Gary Oldman; it was one of the first films I saw with Jean Reno and man, it just had this cool vibe and assurance. It was about this assassin with a heart of gold trying to take care of young girl he doesn’t even know – and Gary Oldman is giving this insane performance [as the villain]. [It was] the first time I discovered Gary Oldman, and I was like, “Damn, he’s like a dope actor. I’d like to be on that level one day.” Plus, it was shot in New York, and I was raised in New York and in Jersey as a young boy, up until I was 10, so that’s an element of familiarity to it. I grew up fighting, and both my parents were Marines, so I’ve always been into this element of super-spying and assassins stuff; and there were so many just cool, chilled-out moments in there where Reno was just so cool, man. He was the man. I just loved what he brought to it. I loved the whole film, and again, I loved the way Gary Oldman played this role, because he was the villain, yes, but he wasn’t any typical villain; you believe that he thought what he was doing was absolutely right. That performance was great."