"The first one — I would say Badlands. I caught Badlands in college for the first time. They actually had a film screening of it at my film school. I’d just never seen a film like that before. I’ve never seen a film that was paced that way, that was structured that way, that felt that honest. But also at the same time kind of dreamy and transportive. I remember immediately going home to my dorm room and I called my older brother — who’s kind of my bellwether for cool interesting things — [and asked], “Have you seen this film?” I tried to explain a theme to him, which was nearly impossible of [Martin] Sheen‘s character giving his comb away to the National Guard soldiers at the end of the film. My brother: “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” You realize that’s kind of how that movie is — you can definitely revel in it and share with it when other people have seen it. But it’s such a beautiful anomaly that when you try and tell people about it that haven’t seen it it’s kind of impossible to categorize or just explain. Badlands — it touched upon a stylized truthfulness that I wanted to do in my film."

"It was on the radio, I was just getting it, I was thinking, 'Fuck, what is that? Who is that?', it was so different. I would say 'Black, Brown and White' is my favourite song. It was played on BBC radio, and at the time - he said it himself - that he couldn't record it in America, so I think he recorded it in France, because they said it's too controversial. Even black friends of his said, 'Don't you stir up the shit here! We could get repercussions.' But I thought he put it... He was just stating a fact. He wasn't saying 'you white bastards' or 'the whites won't let us', he wasn't saying anything like that. It's just 'me and a man was working side by side, this is what it meant, they were paying him a dollar an hour and they were paying him 50 cents'. You know, he said, 'If you're white, you're alright, if you're brown stick around, but if you're black, get back.' Which I thought was tremendous."