"Another all-time favorite would be Cuckoo’s Nest, which was particularly interesting from my perspective because a year or so before the film came out, I had seen the play. I was in college, and I was studying music. I wasn’t into acting or theater or any of that at the time, but a friend of mine was in the play, in a little black box production of the play at the theater department at the University of Montana where I studied music. And I went to see it, and it was, in many ways, an interestingly cast production, but it was brilliant. It was one of the first pieces of theater I saw that had that, you know, that real raw kind of Steppenwolf vibe that really blew me away. So when the movie came out, I kinda felt like, “You know, I don’t think I want to see this movie,” because the play was really so well done. But then I saw the movie, and obviously, [director Milos] Forman and the entire cast, down to people that didn’t even speak on camera, that movie was just so wonderfully done."

"I’m skippin’ past all my movies right now in my mind, just so you know [laughing]. You know what? I’m going to go with Boomerang. Yeah. It was either going to be Boomerang or The Color Purple, but I feel like I’m trying to pick movies that not everybody picks. So I’m going with Boomerang. It was Eddie at the height of Eddie. It was a movie that was different than you had seen him do. The romantic comedy genre, and of course Halle Berry, who was still a fresh face at that time. I really enjoyed the construction of that movie. I’m a fan of the Hudlin Brothers [Warrington and Reginald]. They actually gave me my first internship in this industry. Absolutely. Straight out of college. My first internship was on a movie they made for Miramax, called Ride. I went down to Jacksonville, Florida and I was a camera PA on that movie. I learned a lot about Hollywood production. At that point I had made a movie, but it was an independent film that I made while I was still in college. This was my introduction to Hollywood filmmaking."

"I heard this through a journalist, Michael Azerrad, he's a good guy. We started direct messaging on Facebook or I met him, I don't know what happened, and he said, ""You should listen to this"" and then I got it. He said that you're either going to love it or it'll feel like you're getting punished by having water dripped on your head! And I said, ""Perfect, I'll do that!"" It's incredible; once again, I watched it on YouTube, him performing in Japan, like, ""Fuck, really?! You can do this live?!"" Also, I just like the atonal thing of it and what they get from composing. It's very neutral. I actually used it, it's a total influence, you can totally hear it, on 'Birthday Video', it's on Weeds. I layered a lot of guitars and to my surprise, a lot of these noises start coming through, these sympathetic notes, and I was like, ""Wow-whee! This is cool!"" Totally taken from him, I hear it plain as day. I also got his box set, it's great. He's always got some kind of concept to it. He wrote one for what it would be like on a train ride to the Holocaust [Different Trains], to reach finality. He's got all these studies, drums, all sorts of percussion, but ...18 Musicians, I love it, I listen to it in my bunk in the bus!"

"He's known in the indie rock subculture as the other half of a band called The Folk Implosion that he was in with Lou Barlow from Sebadoh. They did most of the songs on the Kids soundtrack and their song 'Natural One' was a single in the 90s. John was also a member of the Palace Brothers which was Will Oldham's band from before he became Bonnie "Prince" Billy. So he has a little bit of history collaborating with other great people, but he also made a series of lo-fi home recorded records in the 90s. It is a strange, outsidery folk record. It's psychedelic and a little reminiscent of things like Syd Barrett and Skip Spence's Oar, but it also has this really interesting British folk, Incredible String Band type of 12 string guitar playing. The lyrics are very free associating, somewhat improvised, very intimate and very quiet. His records are so intimate that he broke down a wall between himself and the tape recorded that had never been broken down before. It makes you feel like you're in this tiny little space with him and his singing you this craziest record. I discovered this album at Kim's Underground, a record store in New York. I just bought one of his cassettes off a rack because it looked interesting to me. I'm really lucky I grabbed that tape because Leave Home was the most listen to record of my early teenage years. The style was so inspiring to me growing-up, that all I wanted to do was make John Davis-like songs. A lot of the early Moldy Peaches songs like 'Lucky No.9', 'Lazy Confessions' – all these things on the first album – are me trying to copy John Davis' stuff."