"First is Say Anything…. In terms of protagonists it doesn’t get any better than Lloyd Dobler, and John Cusack is kind of like the Holy Grail in terms of awesome ’80s protagonists that are kind of lost and don’t know what they want to do. That great speech where he says “I don’t wanna sell anything… bought, sold or processed” or whatever — you know that scene? — it’s just kind of a genius way of describing what a character’s going through. Quite frankly my character in this movie is going through a very similar thing: clearly a smart guy, probably kind of paralyzed in life because he’s done it to himself. He’s kind of over-thinking everything, so the only thing he can think of is to do nothing and work at Sun Coast video."

"This is another song that we started listening to early on in the studio, we wanted to create a universe similar to 'Hanky Panky Know How'. It's a beautiful song, it's another one where the production is like Death of a Ladies' Man. The chorus is so strange, what does that mean, you know? But somehow he still finds a way to make it beautiful and for whatever reason, that influenced us. “There's also something about the way he delivers it. When he sings it, you feel something - ‘Oh, that's so good! but what's he saying?’ And then you look it up, ‘Hanky Panky Know How’ and you have no idea what it means! Sometimes it’s just about the way things sound and feel. You can say anything as long as it feels good."

"It’s another one of those movies that just feels so real. You watch those scenes and you’ve got tanks and armies, you know. It’s the first film I saw, as far as docudrama film style — you know, hand-held, very real, in the streets, in the world. And if I’m not mistaken, he only made a couple of films; the filmmaker made it and then he disappeared. He stopped making [fiction] movies. He made one with Marlon Brando and then that was kind of it. But the fact that he pulled off this movie — it’s a masterpiece. I remember watching the movie and feeling like it was a documentary, it felt so real. It’s so amazing. The performances of the actors, everything — it’s mind-blowing when you watch it."

"When I was in college, first year, I saw it and I really hadn’t been exposed to a lot of European filmmakers. It’s such a ‘film’ film. It wasn’t required viewing, it was just a film playing on campus and I hadn’t been interested in film before then. Nowadays people are deciding to get into film at age five when they’re sitting, watching the Oscars. I really didn’t come out of that culture — I was pretty much a John Wayne fan and that was it. Zabriskie Point was a time when I was in a lot of change and flux and these incredible visuals hit me like they had rearranged the organs in my body. The ending and the free-floating debris and everything is an image that burned itself in my consciousness."