"It’s like a surge of intimacy of human beings, you know? It is spectacular. It is well done, a lot of actors, and I like very much Coppola as a director. I like the performance of the main role, the guy…he had a heart attack. I don’t remember his name. Martin Sheen. I almost said Martin Short. [laughs] I like also the performance of Marlon Brando. I like it very much, that movie."

"It was my manager, Ryan Martin, who also does Dais Records, who said, “You don’t know who Acid Mothers Temple are?!” I knew the name, but had never listened to them, so he immediately burned about 30 CDs! We loved it, and then he rang me to tell me they were playing live at The Knitting Factory the following week. He took me, and I was absolutely entranced. The guy at the front, with hair longer than mine that had gone grey, and he was swaying off the rhythm of the music, in perfect time to something in his head. It just blows you away. And then, what’s his name with the guitar, begins with an M…"

"I was raised Catholic and I still consider myself a fairly spiritual person even though I have a hard time identifying with most Christians in this country. But I still maintain a belief in God and in Jesus, and that gets tried on a daily basis. The older I get, the wiser I get, the tougher it is to believe in a divine power or whatnot. So that movie appeals to me on that level alone. To take it beyond, it’s just a fantastic Martin Scorsese picture. Great performances in it. The first portrayal of Christ where I was, “Wow, this might be what it was like.” He wasn’t a guy of all beatitude and perfection. He was a man, first and foremost, who just happened to be the son of God."

"So here’s where, for me, it comes down to either the second Godfather, Taxi Driver, which is [Martin] Scorsese’s best film, I think, or one of two or three Altmans, I guess. And of those three, I’d probably go with Taxi Driver. It’s pretty great, and it’s one of the most dangerous films ever to come out of this country, I think. And it’s got great performances, and it’s got such electric ambiguity in what it’s saying about this guy. For me, that film marks, probably, the end point of that great period of the 1970s. So many fine directors; Altman, Coppola, the freedom of expression. I almost didn’t have the resources to deal with Taxi Driver when I first saw it . I don’t go back to it all the time, because it’s such a handful, but I think that’s Scorsese’s best film."

"I know three right off the bat. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. How’d it influence me? Big Steve Martin fan. Knew I wanted to be a comedian when I was very young. And my sister brought the Wild and Crazy Guy album home, which I still have in my office. When Planes, Trains came out, that was the first film that really I looked at and said, “I’d love to, someday if I’m lucky enough to have a comedy audience, bring them into film and make that kind of movie.” Big heart, big laughs. And, of course, Steve Martin at the car rental shop, you know, “I want my f–king car right f–king now.” Unbelievably funny movie. Of course, John Hughes, John Candy, one of my favorites ever. Can I take two minutes to tell a story? Awesome f–king John Hughes story. [My Best Friend’s Girl director] Howie [Deutch] was directing Some Kind of Wonderful and the studio wanted a four-page rewrite on a scene. So Howie’s all, “I can’t figure out what to do.” Calls John, says, “Can you come over and help me write these four pages?” For two-and-a-half hours they’re just pacing around, John is just smoking incessantly. Howie says, “I need to lay down. I’m beat. I’m going to sleep a few hours and then we’ll finish it.” Then he says, “Dane, I wake up at about five in the morning and John is scribbling like crazy. He hands it to me and says, ‘Read this. It’s only 50 pages right now, but read it. I’m calling it Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.’"

"I got into him in about 1987 or something. If people ask me who I'd like to work with, he's the person I'd like to work with more than anybody. Glassworks is a very accessible album. I used to fall asleep to that record, that was my end of the day relaxation record. I'd leave it on the CD player going round and fall asleep to it, I loved it. Then I started getting interested in the idea of doing music with odd time signatures, and then Martin Ware and I formed a company called Illustrious, and we started doing more music like that. I find it really really soothing, and I'd love to meet the guy, well I'd love not to meet him, but I'd love to work with him. I'm nervous of meeting most people, but him I don't think I would be. I think it would be alright, obviously he does a lot of sequential music but with real instruments and real voices, and I guess he's made the decision not to do it with synthesisers, but I'd be the one trying to persuade him to do it with keyboards."