"Again, it's all about the outsider and making the ugly beautiful, which John Waters is very well placed to deal with. It's also about a very particular place, which is Baltimore, and about a particular pop culture moment: the early sixties, just before The Beatles hit, which is a forgotten time and much more interesting than everybody thinks. People often go with that Nik Cohn line that there's nothing interesting before The Beatles, which is absolute bullshit: I love all those songs like 'The Bug' and 'The Madison'. It's got Debbie Harry in it and it's got Divine of course, who's as wonderful as ever. What's not to like? It has a lot of charm and is fascinating on a number of levels."

"Although I have been doing plays since I was eight-years-old, it was only when I started doing Shakespeare at age 19 at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival that I felt like my career started. I learned from master teachers at the University of Evansville, at Juilliard, at Shakespeare festivals all over the country, eventually landing at Shakespeare in the Park in NYC. That show transferred, so I got to make my Broadway debut doing “The Tempest” with Patrick Stewart. I owe so much to Shakespeare. Nothing is more humbling and more exhilarating than taking ahold of those sacred words and riding them like a wave. If I could only take one book to the island, this one would do just fine."

"The structure of 'Let There Be More Light' is not conventional. It goes through different things - you think it's going to go one and it goes the other. But much more than this record, before Bill and I started playing together in Body/Head, I found this 1968 live footage of Pink Floyd on YouTube. They were playing and it was almost like people were dancing to abstract music. There were visuals and it was amazing. In 1968, they were doing stuff that we're just doing now. Syd Barrett was sitting down and playing prepared guitar, like Bill does when he does his solo stuff - and other people who play prepared guitars do. That was all really inspiring, originally to the band, I think"

"Let’s start with Withnail and I. That’s gotta be pretty much up there. I adore that film. I can quote it at great length. Many of my great friends love it, too. It’s a film about two overindulging actors who go on holiday by mistake. What’s not to like? It’s wonderful. There’s so much I would like to say about that film. It’s this sort of beautiful eulogy, really, but a very, very funny one. It’s probably got as many quotable lines in it as any film, really. Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann just… I don’t know. I adore it. That’s the problem with a film you love so much, is I don’t know really what to say about it. I completely love it."

"Finally, we’re going to go with a film that is so culturally relevant that as soon as I say it you’ll be able to quote at least one line from it. We’re going to go with Dirty Dancing. Because, come on, nobody puts Baby in a corner, right? Of course it’s been acted out, it’s been referenced in numerous films. It was in Crazy, Stupid, Love. This is the move that Ryan Gosling does to get the girls, right? And he and Emma Stone reenact this scene. So, you want to talk about a film that just had an amazing soundtrack, the performances were great, and it speaks to the confusion of teenagers growing up, but not in a, I feel like, a “loner” teenager way. There’s been a lot of teenage films where they feel like a loner. This is someone who liked her family, and she was a little irritated with her older sister as siblings tend to be, but she liked her dad and her mom, and when push came to shove at various points, she ran to her dad to help. There was something striking about how all of that worked together in a film that just made you feel good and want to dance and want to take someone to see, and then, how many years later, that film still holds up. And if you don’t believe me, go watch it. It still works."

"Some people would say that The Smiths never really recorded one great album and that they were more of a singles band and I kind of see what they mean. I do really like Meat Is Murder, which is a weirdly psychedelic record with really long tracks. They really did the legwork with that album. But I remember before The Queen Is Dead came out it was an event… they were about to release their first album as a big band. I remember hearing the first single, ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’, and they had moved on. And then I got it and… the cover was awful… just a piece of shit. But then I played it and it starts with that sample: 'Oh take me back to dear old Blighty…' And it was, 'Fucking hell…' Just astonishing. One of the best openings to an album ever. And that’s before you get to ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’. They could have had the photograph outside of Salford Lads Club as the front cover but then Morrissey is wearing a really daft jacket. It’s brown with black love hearts on it. Very strange. I remember seeing them on that tour when they came to the G-Mex. They came on stage to 'The Queen Is Dead' and Morrissey was carrying a placard that said, 'Two pale ales please'. He had a white blazer on and shades and, fuck me, he looked like Elvis."