"I think a lot about Martin Scorsese and how heavily influenced Paul Thomas Anderson was by him. I feel like he learned so much from Scorsese in Boogie Nights, and so I feel like picking Boogie Nights is somewhat accounting for my Martin Scorsese love. But I’m also being very honest about a movie that I can watch over and over. Just the epic nature and the grandness of it, and some of the shots and the style of it, and the music — my God, the way he uses music — and that great shot where somebody jumps into the pool and you hear the muffled soundtrack. It’s brilliant. I never get sick of watching it. And the acting is just some of my favorite actors at the top of their game. I love doing impressions and one of my earliest impressions of an actor was Philip Seymour Hoffman in that movie, when he’s saying how much he loves the name and he’s chewing on the pen."

"I listened to Joni so much when I was like 15, and later also. Is this one my favourite? I don't know. Probably. I love For The Roses and I love The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. But Court And Spark is also a little… rock? Not rock, but it's very '70s. When I first heard it, it sounded grossly '70s in an uncool way. When I was in high school, it was a new sound for me and for a while it almost wasn't something I would be comfortable saying that I was into. It was folky vibes and '60s stuff that was cool. It's slightly jazzy, slightly funky and those sounds began to actually be very exciting for me despite what everyone else might have thought. The songs are very relatable for someone of that age, even though they were written by an older person. You take a song like 'People's Parties' and the psychologies and the stories within the songs: it's fascinating to me."

"Like Melville, Michael Mann is a master of silent storytelling, but he is also one of the best writers of dialogue I know. There’s a scene between James Caan and Tuesday Weld in a diner that goes on for ten minutes, but you never get bored for a second. They go from being virtual strangers to lovers in the course of a conversation, and you don’t question it. Not only do his criminals feel authentic when they talk about their profession but their inarticulate attempts at declaring their love feel just as true."