"This is a bit of a sidestep, but in 1987 I went to the States on a Camp America. Me and my mate applied and we got in and he went to work in this really posh Jewish camp in Massachusetts somewhere, with all these lovely kids. I was working with these underprivileged kids from The Bronx, in Carmel in upstate New York. These kids were rough. I was 18 and they were like 12 and some of them were bigger than me. I shared a cabin with a guy called Daryl who was from New York. He just played the Run–D.M.C. album all day. Bigger And Deffer was out then too, the LL Cool J album. I just loved it. That was when I got into hip-hop. I wasn't sold on the music. I always thought it was a bit lumpy, before Public Enemy came out. It was missing a groove really. But 'It's Tricky' is really uptempo. It's really aggressive, which I liked. It's got that 'My Sharona' riff and that's not going to send you wrong is it? It sounded great in the house. It sounded so alien. My mum and dad didn't want to know and when you're that age you want to be freaking out the straights."

"Malle is one of my favorite directors. He flirts with genres, tries all sorts of things, travels all around the world, refuses to let go of documentary, his first love (or first milieu)—although his fiction movies are acclaimed. This film, close to his skin and past, is a strong coming-of-age work, set in France under Vichy. Often, in the middle of the day, I think of scenes from Au revoir les enfants, moments of grace like the restaurant sequence, with the mother. French officers burst into the place and ask for citizens’ papers. They find an old Jewish man dining quietly at his table and start to reprimand him, asking him if he knows how to read; the place is, of course, forbidden to “youtres,” as the young French officer says insolently. Suddenly, every patron at the restaurant starts yelling at the officers, insulting them (“Collabo!”), forcing them to leave. And then, among the clientele, German officers stand up and order them to exit the place. Strong turning point. That is exactly Malle, in there, striking again. Contrast, antagonism, emotions, brute emotions. The rest is craft and mastery. But emotions. That is what he aims for. That is what we get."