"This is a really obscure one, but there’s a really weird French-Canadian movie called Leolo. Roger Ebert loved it. He gave it a four-star review when it came out. The filmmaker, Jean-Claude Lauzon… He made two movies and then he died. It’s a really tragic story. It’s this surreal, messed-up story about a kid whose family is going insane, and so he comes up with these fantastical stories to escape from his world. I saw that movie when I was in high school, and it just made such an impression on me because of the way it balanced humor and absurdity, and surrealism, and then just tragedy. It’s great. I should probably see it again. I haven’t seen it in a couple of years, so I want to make sure it still stands up. That movie is another very particularly strange coming-of-age movie that will always be a reference for me."

"We all lived in this house in Los Angeles when we first started the band. It was Shannyn [Sossamon], Emily [Kokal], Theresa [Wayman] and myself. David Orlando, who became our drummer years later, lived in the garage. I’d go over to practise and he’d play me records. I didn’t realise how much I loved Jah Wobble’s bass playing; he’s also on my list of all-time greats. That was over 10 years ago and I’d already developed a style of playing by that point but I’d been told by a few people that I kind of reminded them of him – well, they called me Jen Wobble. I didn’t grow up listening to PiL or anything and wasn’t entirely familiar with his style before we lived in that space. I get the comparison now. When I was in high school I was a fan of the Pistols’ hits, but that was more to do with teenage rebellion. The Pistols were great, but PiL have the edge."

"I listened to Joni so much when I was like 15, and later also. Is this one my favourite? I don't know. Probably. I love For The Roses and I love The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. But Court And Spark is also a little… rock? Not rock, but it's very '70s. When I first heard it, it sounded grossly '70s in an uncool way. When I was in high school, it was a new sound for me and for a while it almost wasn't something I would be comfortable saying that I was into. It was folky vibes and '60s stuff that was cool. It's slightly jazzy, slightly funky and those sounds began to actually be very exciting for me despite what everyone else might have thought. The songs are very relatable for someone of that age, even though they were written by an older person. You take a song like 'People's Parties' and the psychologies and the stories within the songs: it's fascinating to me."

"This one isn’t a high school movie, but more a college-age movie. It’s called Mazes and Monsters and it stars Tom Hanks. It’s about the dangers of role-playing games, and if you play these role-playing games, you’ll lose touch with reality. Tom Hanks is a kid who gets too into their version of Dungeons and Dragons, which they call Mazes and Monsters. He loses touch with reality and thinks he really is on the quest, and disappears into New York City. His friends have to try and find him. It’s definitely worth checking out if you can find it. It might be one of those movies that just disappeared. I think it was a made-for-TV movie, but it’s always affected me. I saw it when I was a kid on the Saturday afternoon matinee movie, and it just has this ending that is so bleak that I’ll never forget."

"We’re often talking about ParaNorman as being John Hughes meets John Carpenter, and that was intentional. It was to try and tell a spooky story that was almost… you know, we talked about it like being directed by Sam Raimi as well. It was to try and combine all those elements: All the angst of a movie set in high school, where your issues are more about, you know, being bullied by the kid who lives down the lane, but to couple that with a movie about the more fictional horrors of monsters. I like that play. They’re actually a really good marriage. I’ve talked about ParaNorman being the characters from The Breakfast Club dropped into the plot of The Fog — and The Fog, I would say, would be one of the other influential ones. Right from day one of writing, I think. I love that movie, as bad as it is…"