"I love L.A. Confidential. If it’s on for even a second, I just watch it to the end. I almost want to call my cable service provider and ask them not to show it any more, because it has overwhelmed my life. It’s because I’m from California, from Los Angeles, because the idea of police corruption, of political ambition, of logic and defying expectations. Really, Bud White is Rudy, in the thug cop questing for detective greatness. [laughs] There’s something about that. Also, the way that it commingles all of the ideas of pornography and politics and financial development and mob power and drugs. You know, I studied history and English at UCLA, and one of the big themes in a bunch of our history classes had to do with, “How is it that Los Angeles and Hollywood and California present themselves to the world as both this destination place of palm trees and glitter and gold and your future, and also corruption and deceit?” There’s this duality to it, and I just think that Curtis Hanson’s way of delivering that… And the performances! I mean, David Strathairn and Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger and Kevin Spacey and James Cromwell… Police corruption, and justice, vigilante justice, and it’s just got everything. It’s just a perfect movie."

"I can't say this about every song on this list, but with this one I was quite aware of what the band were doing when it came out. I wouldn't say Public Enemy are my favourite band, but it's pretty close, and when this record was released, they were the most important group in the world as far as I was concerned. ""They were the most interesting, the most intelligent, and at the time, nobody was more controversial than Chuck D. They were so original; they were breaking new ground with every recording. Before It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, there just wan't music like this. ""That record came out six months before Fear of a Black Planet, and it still felt so sharply of its time because Chuck was talking about everything he'd gone through in the months leading up to it - the controversy with Professor Griff, and everything else. Later on, he said something like, ""Public Enemy is CNN for black people,"" and you get that with this song. It's totally brutal, totally brilliant, and totally of the moment. In the winter of 1990, they just meant everything. ""I've put this one on plenty of mixtapes. Plus, is that a Frankie Goes to Hollywood reference in the title? It's got to be, right?"

"I just feel like that’s a movie that I saw when I was a kid, and you watch it over and over and over again, and you’re like, “Oh, Steve Martin’s doing bits, but they fit a story.” And it’s beautifully shot and directed by Carl Reiner, which some people don’t realize, and I just can’t think of a movie that informed my comedic personality more than The Jerk. It’s also a dumb character… it breaks all these stupid rules that Hollywood has for the sake of humor, and for the sake of jokes, and it’s a feel-good movie. Oh, man. I watch it over and over and over again. It’s got bits of Woody Allen’s kind of mysticalism, but it’s not. It’s jokey but the jokes don’t have punchlines. It’s like a Steve Martin album live, and they did a good job with making it a story. In a lot of ways you have no Borat without The Jerk, you have no anything, Lebowski; all those characters are Jerk-inspired. I play dumb quite a bit; I’ll say that right now. I don’t know if you call it a crutch, or what, but I tend to lean dumb… I don’t think I would have been able to get away with that had it not been for that movie."

"I remember when this came out; I was at a restaurant celebrating someone’s birthday, and I walked by a table that was talking about Mike Leigh, I forget what film exactly. But I chimed in and said something hyperbolic. The table remarked that they all worked for Criterion. I joked that I’d thought about tattooing a line across my chest with “Criterion Collection” underneath it (the old iconic Criterion logo design). I then explained our proximity to Ray Carney and our love for Cassavetes. This was the first time I heard that a big box set was coming soon. Cassavetes is a god and a hero. My introduction to his work as a director was A Woman Under the Influence, which I bought a single version of for our mother, who is petrified of the DVD and will never watch it. Bookie, Opening Night, Faces, Shadows, and the later-added Love Streams are film school for a hundred bucks. We watch the master turn actors into people and vice versa, and hold the feeling above anything else. In the words of JC (not a coincidence) in regards to Opening Night, about Hollywood: “It’s about time it took art and said, ‘C’mon, baby! Show me something!’” (Dear Criterion, please absorb Husbands, Minnie and Moskowitz, and Gloria as well.)"

"I remember when this came out; I was at a restaurant celebrating someone’s birthday, and I walked by a table that was talking about Mike Leigh, I forget what film exactly. But I chimed in and said something hyperbolic. The table remarked that they all worked for Criterion. I joked that I’d thought about tattooing a line across my chest with “Criterion Collection” underneath it (the old iconic Criterion logo design). I then explained our proximity to Ray Carney and our love for Cassavetes. This was the first time I heard that a big box set was coming soon. Cassavetes is a god and a hero. My introduction to his work as a director was A Woman Under the Influence, which I bought a single version of for our mother, who is petrified of the DVD and will never watch it. Bookie, Opening Night, Faces, Shadows, and the later-added Love Streams are film school for a hundred bucks. We watch the master turn actors into people and vice versa, and hold the feeling above anything else. In the words of JC (not a coincidence) in regards to Opening Night, about Hollywood: “It’s about time it took art and said, ‘C’mon, baby! Show me something!’” (Dear Criterion, please absorb Husbands, Minnie and Moskowitz, and Gloria as well.)"

"I remember when this came out; I was at a restaurant celebrating someone’s birthday, and I walked by a table that was talking about Mike Leigh, I forget what film exactly. But I chimed in and said something hyperbolic. The table remarked that they all worked for Criterion. I joked that I’d thought about tattooing a line across my chest with “Criterion Collection” underneath it (the old iconic Criterion logo design). I then explained our proximity to Ray Carney and our love for Cassavetes. This was the first time I heard that a big box set was coming soon. Cassavetes is a god and a hero. My introduction to his work as a director was A Woman Under the Influence, which I bought a single version of for our mother, who is petrified of the DVD and will never watch it. Bookie, Opening Night, Faces, Shadows, and the later-added Love Streams are film school for a hundred bucks. We watch the master turn actors into people and vice versa, and hold the feeling above anything else. In the words of JC (not a coincidence) in regards to Opening Night, about Hollywood: “It’s about time it took art and said, ‘C’mon, baby! Show me something!’” (Dear Criterion, please absorb Husbands, Minnie and Moskowitz, and Gloria as well.)"

"I remember when this came out; I was at a restaurant celebrating someone’s birthday, and I walked by a table that was talking about Mike Leigh, I forget what film exactly. But I chimed in and said something hyperbolic. The table remarked that they all worked for Criterion. I joked that I’d thought about tattooing a line across my chest with “Criterion Collection” underneath it (the old iconic Criterion logo design). I then explained our proximity to Ray Carney and our love for Cassavetes. This was the first time I heard that a big box set was coming soon. Cassavetes is a god and a hero. My introduction to his work as a director was A Woman Under the Influence, which I bought a single version of for our mother, who is petrified of the DVD and will never watch it. Bookie, Opening Night, Faces, Shadows, and the later-added Love Streams are film school for a hundred bucks. We watch the master turn actors into people and vice versa, and hold the feeling above anything else. In the words of JC (not a coincidence) in regards to Opening Night, about Hollywood: “It’s about time it took art and said, ‘C’mon, baby! Show me something!’” (Dear Criterion, please absorb Husbands, Minnie and Moskowitz, and Gloria as well.)"

"I remember when this came out; I was at a restaurant celebrating someone’s birthday, and I walked by a table that was talking about Mike Leigh, I forget what film exactly. But I chimed in and said something hyperbolic. The table remarked that they all worked for Criterion. I joked that I’d thought about tattooing a line across my chest with “Criterion Collection” underneath it (the old iconic Criterion logo design). I then explained our proximity to Ray Carney and our love for Cassavetes. This was the first time I heard that a big box set was coming soon. Cassavetes is a god and a hero. My introduction to his work as a director was A Woman Under the Influence, which I bought a single version of for our mother, who is petrified of the DVD and will never watch it. Bookie, Opening Night, Faces, Shadows, and the later-added Love Streams are film school for a hundred bucks. We watch the master turn actors into people and vice versa, and hold the feeling above anything else. In the words of JC (not a coincidence) in regards to Opening Night, about Hollywood: “It’s about time it took art and said, ‘C’mon, baby! Show me something!’” (Dear Criterion, please absorb Husbands, Minnie and Moskowitz, and Gloria as well.)"