"Westside Story was probably the biggest thing in my life as teenager walking along the streets of London, me and my friends were always trying to imitate the Jets’ dancing! My favourite songs? There were so many, but Leonard Bernstein was a genius and I just thought if I could be anybody, I would be a composer like Bernstein because his music was just so powerful and it also has a jazz tilt. He was doing things with music that I discovered much later. a lot of it was inspired by The Planets by Holst, with this jagged, staccato, kicking in the music with songs like ‘America’. And I thought, yeah I wanted to be in America, although I wanted to avoid all the gang fights! There were so many messages in that film and my all-time favourite song would probably be ‘Somewhere’. That reflects that ultimate aim in life to find a place away from the turmoil, pain and suffering to a place of peace, happiness"

"It is one of the most effective and, in my mind, realistic gangster movies ever made in that it shows you what the allure of that criminal life is, but it also shows how petty and dangerous and stupid it is. But all the time you’re dragged along. It has this incredible compelling force that drags you along whether you want to go or not. And, I think, a beautiful and brutal use of comedy along with absolute horror and fear and moments of sort of operatic beauty, like when they open up the back of the truck with the Eric Clapton song, and the camera goes in to find one of the dead gang members. That mixed with these incredible moments of subtlety like when Ray Liotta realizes that Robert De Niro may well be setting him up. It’s just this tiny little moment. It’s great because it’s incredibly small, mixed with these incredibly big things. And they shoot Michael Imperioli in the foot. You know, come on, that’s wonderful."