"Gone With the Wind, and The Wizard of Oz, were two movies that I grew up with and had a lasting effect on me. Scarlett O’Hara was a huge influence, unfortunately [laughs], and I had to break myself out of the habit of the sort of “fiddle-dee-dee” kind of thing. As I’ve gotten older and watched the movie, I love the cinematography; it was just such a groundbreaking movie. It’s interesting now to see, in looking back, how we approached race in Hollywood, and how it’s changed so much. It was just epic and romantic and sweeping at that time in my life — usually I pick the movies because of the time I watched them in my life and what they meant to me then. I saw Gone With the Wind when I was about 13, which is a dangerous time to show it to a young lady. [laughs] I was obsessed with it. It was so romantic: the gowns, the drama, the war? and I loved American history, as well; it was my favorite subject. I was a freak on Gone With the Wind."

"Jaws is the next poster on my wall, I’m staring at it right now. You are about to be introduced to, in my opinion, the greatest craftsman storyteller the cinema has ever seen and with a vehicle that had literally the perfect balance — and he brought that. It was [Steven Spielberg’s] balance of humor and artistry and the genre. It was the culminating of that balance. I screened that movie for my crew — I forgot which movie, two or three movies ago, and it’s just incredible to watch the balancing act of the humor. Roy Schieder’s trying to understand about what’s going on in the town about the shark and there’s this lady complaining to him about the kids that are karate chopping the fence. It’s genius because life moves on, and this is like real life. It’s the collision of a perfect story from the book with great sensibilities for entertainment and humor. Spielberg gets the precision of the craft and thinking about the shot with the me lieu of the time, and does in that docu-1970s style, which is my favorite time period in cinema ever."

"The Marble Index is a record that sounds like no other in the history of rock. It has a dark, European, stoic atmosphere with an intensity with Nico's singing and songwriting. You have to remember that with the Velvet Underground, she had to rely on Lou Reed writing songs for her. She wasn't exactly Lou Reed or John Cale either. She wrote a song with Jim Morrison, whom she described as her soul brother, and he said she should write songs and lyrics. Nico was a very cultured lady, she worked and hung out with the Stones, she was older and had been around. In fact, I think The Marble Index is a line from a Wordsworth poem. John Cale said that nobody was quoting Wordsworth in 1968. It's one of the first art rock albums and I think that there's an intensity of vision and focus on that record, unlike any other record I've heard. I mean these are the first songs that she wrote! Where did these come from? It's so otherworldly. This album was a huge influence when we were making Screamadelica, I listened to The Marble Index all the time."

"Mizoguchi is one of the greatest masters who ever worked in the medium of film; he’s right up there with Renoir and Murnau and Ford, and after the war he made three pictures—The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and Sansho the Bailiff—that stand at the summit of cinema. All of his artistry is channeled into the most extraordinary simplicity. You’re face-to-face with something mysterious, tragically inevitable, and then, in the end, peacefully removed. I love all three of these pictures and many other Mizoguchi films as well (including Princess Yang Kwei-fei, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, and Miss Oyu, to name only a few), but Ugetsu has the most powerful effect on me. There are moments in the picture, famous ones, that I’ve seen again and again and that always take my breath away: the boat slowly materializing from out of the mist and coming toward us . . . Genjuro collapsing on the grass in ecstasy and being smothered by Lady Wakasa . . . the final crane up from the son making an offering at his mother’s grave to the fields beyond. Just to think of these moments now fills me with awe and wonder."

"The thing that blows my mind about Fela's records is that he can just write two 15 minute songs, and they don't feel at all indulgent. It's all in one key but it never bores you. The tension is like slow, tantric sex, it just builds and builds. He knows how to capture a vibe and hold it tight so the intensity keeps building before it explodes. I don't know why 'Lady' is my favourite track, but personally it hits me really hard. I listen to it all the time, and I find the lyrics really entertaining too. It's his version of a feminist album I guess, he's talking about how 'the woman eats the meat before the man…' I guess that's a symbol of liberation. Meanwhile he has his nine wives singing the backing vocals. He's more than a musician, he's a superman. He almost took over Nigeria and his compound was a separate city, he had his own laws, it's amazing that music can be that powerful. I'm a huge fan of his, He's an example of how music can almost start a revolution."

"The Lady Vanishes is one of the great World War II films. I honestly might have seen it two dozen times. I adore it, each and every scene. As I adore almost every Hitchcock film. And, in passing, I have to mention the greatest book on Hitchcock, which is also one of the finest on film and on the creative process in general, Truffaut’s marvelous work called Hitchcock, in which he interviews Hitchcock about his films. As for Mike Leigh, he is one of my most treasured filmmakers. I love his subject matter, and I love his actors. I shouldn’t admit this, but part of the reason I love his actors so much is that I can think of no other director, no one, who works with his actors in ways so similar to my own. We could sort of be the same person as directors. And Topsy-Turvy is one of my favorite of all Mike Leigh’s films because, except for the actors who appear in it, it resembles no film he had ever shot before. The style is different. The content is different. And it’s about the theater!"

"In high school, I worked at The Video Room in Oakland, California. It had the largest selection of laser discs in the Bay Area. One guy owned all of them. I was smugly aware that most people were watching movies entirely wrong, and would tell them so. I’d explain aspect ratios and assure my friends they’ve never even really seen Jaws until they’d seen it at my house on the Pioneer, hooked up to my dad’s concert amplifier and massive stadium speakers, my own rig. I watched more movies during that time than I did in film school. The Manchurian Candidate was one of them, and it was just [on a] different level. I went in thinking it would be a masterfully directed political conspiracy thriller, which it was, but was also completely bananas. I couldn’t believe some of the choices made. That film gave me permission to get a little bit weird in my storytelling. Once you’ve seen an old lady execute a Korean POW while Frank Sinatra looks on in complacency, you know you can go to crazytown and the audience will stay with you. It’s not easy, but it’s possible."