"I remember the impact Lucrecia Martel’s debut feature had on film students, critics, and fellow filmmakers. It was released on one single 35 mm print in Brazil, and that was shredded over a period of a year after playing in just about all noncommercial movie theaters around the country. I love everything about this film: the obliqueness of it, the fresh and bold take on sexuality, the use of sound, the faces and bodies. It was also quite a reference for a filmmaker like me, who like Martel believed films could be about people interacting with a certain feeling of space and time, mediated by cinema itself."

"It made a huge impression on me as a kid and I still have all my little action figures. In fact, my mom was too cheap to buy me the actual Star Wars case to hold them all in, so I have a case, but it’s called “Star World” and it has all these knock-off characters — like, there’s a Darth Vader who’s all in black, but just not quite the same. And there’s a hairy character who’s sort of like Chewbacca, but not — which is probably a collectors’ item when I think about it because they would never get away with that now. There’d be copyright infringements."

"I love altered tunings, and guitarists who use them like Michael Chapman, whose Train Songs album was great. To me, this is like a lost film soundtrack, full of soft beauty, powered by this overdriven electric guitar against found sounds and synths. It makes me think of this trip I did to the Joshua Tree National Park: I hadn't known what was there, and I'd thought the Joshua Tree was just one tree! But walking in the high sierra, the quietest place I'd ever been, the idea of cars, planes, city noise, feeling so far away…there was this silence. This reminds me of that.
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"I love William S. Burroughs, and if anybody could do an adaptation of his work, it’s Cronenberg, who made this movie very true to the book. But the movie makes sense, and the book really doesn’t for me—the moment you think it’s starting to make sense, you lose it again. The movie is very cheap and kitschy at certain points yet very sophisticated at others. Naked Lunch is one of the few movies to depict hallucinations that are actually very close to how they really are. It’s not like when you see something like Inception, where the dream sequences are just the Hollywood idea of what a dream could be."

"Elvis Costello changed everything for me. I had to have everything he made and I had to hear it all. I loved everything about him and I think I modelled myself after him a little bit. He was a solo artist and I loved the way he incorporated a band like The Attractions, it was a cool concept. I thought his whole vibe was so cool - this cool guy in the shades, kind of goofy looking and awkward, but it was all part of his aesthetic. "Red Shoes” is a great example of how he could write an instant classic, that song sounds like it’s been around forever. I really started getting into the cracks of songwriting when I heard it and it opened more technical doors for me as well. I’m definitely a fan, though, not just a scholarly fan. A lot of people I know don’t like him or don’t get it, and maybe that’s true in a grander, bigger scale - either you like him or you don’t. I love his voice and he’s a singer that I’ve tried to emulate a lot, even though I have no business doing that. He’s inspired me to write so many songs of my own and that’s helped to motivate me."