"It’s funny, this list, I’ve actually met a lot of the people I’ve chosen! Rufus came on tour with us in 2003, it was the first time we’d got on a tour bus and the first iPods had come out. Tim had an iPod, and I checked it out, I put it on and the album he had on there was Want One and I was completely blown away. He sounds a bit like Radiohead-does-classical, particularly on that record. I remember saying to him that he sounds a lot like Radiohead and he was a bit like, “Really?”, I don’t think he even knew their music. That album was written, I think, during the time he got clean from being really addicted to crystal meth. I mean it sent him blind and stuff, it was really serious. So the album tells that story, with just beautiful songwriting, and I don’t know if he ever got close to that album again in terms of song-writing, it’s such a phenomenal record. And I like orchestral arrangements if they’re done well, or else it can sound like Il Divo or something but he did it so well, mixing pop and classical."

"The lead singer for Deerhunter, Bradford Cox... I don’t like saying people are geniuses or whatever, but I just think that dude is so good at every single thing he does. He stays within his genre, but I think he does so well experimenting with stuff. He has two different bands. It’s just amazing how much he can expand over the one genre and make it radical. It’s a band I stumbled on and I was just pleasantly surprised by them. I really love all of Deerhunter’s stuff and they’re not afraid to get experimental which is really cool."

"This was my grandfather’s first cinematic gift to me. He was a filmmaker who made commercials in Italy in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and he loved Visconti, who was always his favorite. So he would make me watch films regularly, and this was one of the few that could have felt like homework but didn’t. I love where the film comes from, in terms of the evolution of Visconti’s career. I like that he started off making this pretty dogmatic neorealism and then went on to make this operatic film. The difference between the two approaches is a really beautiful manifestation of his ability to grow as an artist and also to just do multiple things. His cinematic language changed based on the people who populated his frames, and this movie feels grand because it’s got cinema royalty in it, like Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale. The frame feels like it’s the right size and scope and weight for people of that stature."

"Next, I would go Old School. Again, I think I was in high school when that came out, early in high school, and it was just one of those movies that I remember… I still very vividly remember the theater I was in and where I was sitting and who I was with, and I remember going back to see it in theaters, like, two more times, and then watching it over and over and over. Just one of those movies that I have memorized from front to back. Obviously being a huge Will Ferrell fan, and have now got a chance to meet him and work with him too, so it’s been pretty awesome."

"I’m cheating; I’m saying the Before trilogy. They’re just so real. You kind of check in with these characters, and each time, they’re sort of different, but it makes sense from the people that they were. You could see that these people, every ten years, would sort of become like this. Of those three, the one I’ve watched the most is Before Sunset. The ending of that movie just really gets me emotional every time. Oh my god, maybe I changed my mind. Maybe the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Who knows? It’s either the Before trilogy or the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it’s different based on when you ask me during the day."