"Rocket To Russia is a great record and that was kind of my entry point, my first experience with the Ramones - then I got to go back and discover the first two. Leave Home is great too. Fuck, you could just say the first Ramones record or any Ramones record but Rocket To Russia was my first introduction to Johnny Ramone’s guitar playing. We would read about the Ramones in Punk magazine and see these pictures of Johnny Ramone downstroking and I got to finally see them in like ‘79. That was a great year for me as I saw the Ramones and – and this will take us into the next record – The Clash."

"I just got this in the mail one day. Some stranger in Brazil sent it and wrote, "You'll like this". Because it's a thin book, I read it. If it had been a thick book, I would have discarded it. I was shocked by how charming and amusing it was. I couldn't believe he lived as long ago as he did. You would've thought he wrote it yesterday. It's so modern and so amusing. It's a very, very original piece of work. It rang a bell in me, in the same way that The Catcher in the Rye did. It was about subject matter that I liked and it was treated with great wit, great originality and no sentimentality."

"I should do something that’s a little more contemporary, maybe. Some Like It Hot. Marilyn Monroe in that film was one of my first memories of film. That’s why I love it. I remember watching it when I was really young and singing along. Well, those are really artistic choices, but I also love modern films. I love Chaplin films, and I love French films… But off the top of my head, those are the five. It’s quite a pretentious list in hindsight. [laughs] I mean, they’re not my favorites; I could go on for ten hours. That was just off the top of my head. But I’ve never been good with favorites."

"For some reason, Maurice Pialat doesn’t get the same attention here in the States as his contemporary Cassavetes. But I feel he deserves just as much. Without this film, we wouldn’t have Sandrine Bonnaire, and the complexity of the family dynamic is like nothing I’ve ever seen before on film. I’m proud to be neighbors with Tom Stevens, the actor who played the young American tourist. We were speaking in our New York City apartment building stairwell, and Tom told me that he had been in “a little film that you probably never heard of called À nos amours”—I nearly fell down the stairs. The extras are fantastic on the release, including an interview with Catherine Breillat."

"A fascinating character study of how another rebel raccoon Meeko manipulates a buncha useless fleshbags into arguing over a buncha Earth units that weren’t even real, just to feed his bottomless appetite — FOR POWER! I always say there ain’t no thing like me, ‘cept me, but Meeko’s pretty d’ast close. He’s even got his own talking tree sidekick, Granny Willow! And look, Groot’s great, but he ain’t got the powers of persuasion that this barky broad had. But Meeko and Granny, they took it too far — they almost started a WAR! Me an’ Groot, we’re all about protecting our galaxy (YOU’RE WELCOME, BY THE WAY). But trust you me, Meeko is the greatest antihero of Earth cinema. Five stars!"

"Probably some people will go, “Huh?” But I love the film Wag the Dog with Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman, and Anne Heche. It’s a really good movie — sort of political parody I think, that sort of played on what Clinton went through and how they have to sort of trouble shoot, and try to spin the story in order to get him, the president, re-elected and things like that. And even though it was a fictional story, to me it rang really true. And that’s another one that’s very character-driven. I loved every one of them, from Denis Leary to everyone, Willie Nelson… I just thought it was very well done."

"I remember the gatefold cover and I remember clearly the first time I heard it was summer and my parents opening up the doors and having friends round when I was younger. He was just the ultimate pop star and the music... it's weird when you heard something like 'Billie Jean' for the first time, that the combination of sounds - soul, electro, etc - then sounded so fresh. How he'd go from funk soul on one track, then into something really poppy. 'Thriller', the song, isn't actually my favourite. I prefer the rest of the album to it, funnily enough, but I think he made such a massive mark with this album. For me, that was his definitive statement."