"Again, I love absolute everything that Ronnie did, from Elf to Sabbath, but it's his voice that drew me to this record because it's so magical and so unique. He was a very accomplished all-round musician though. When you look at his body of work it's just tremendous, but this is certainly one of his best. I love singers that mean what they're singing and have power behind them, and Ronnie meant it. This album is proof that you don't always need to just scream your tits off to make a point. The title track is the standout song on this album for me. If you look at any artist who has had the grace and fortune to be successful for a long period of time there are certain songs that stand out even on greatest hits compilations, but I own a Dio compilation and every song on it is as good as the last. I was involved in a tribute record after Ronnie's death to raise money for his charity. It was a great thing to do, and there were so many talented people involved in it. It just proved that everybody loved Ronnie. Not only did he create some amazing music, but he was a fantastic human being. People were lining up to do that record and by the time I agreed there weren't that many songs left to choose from."

"Well, obviously, I would have to say my dad’s movie, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is one of them, for sure. You know, I was lucky in that case not only to see the film and see the first movie where an overtly empowered black power character goes up against the system and survives. That was the first of its kind. But also to see my father insist on working with a multiracial crew. He had women on it, he had hippies on it, Hispanics, Asians, you know, and really bring all these folks together. That was super inspiring, to see that you could take sort of a multiracial, sometimes ragtag crew and make the first overtly revolutionary film in America and win and change the game. Because after that, Shaft came. Shaft was written for a white detective by a guy named Ernest Tidyman, and when my dad’s film Sweetback made money, they rewrote it with a black guy, and they got a young guy to do the music from Stax Records named Isaac Hayes. My dad, when he did Sweetback, had used Earth, Wind & Fire. So that was a super influential movie on me.Easy Rider was one I remember that just seemed to be the Peace and Freedom Party movement, in a way, reflected on screen. [Editor’s note: the Peace and Freedom Party was an organization founded in California in 1967 with the goal of ending the Vietnam War.]"

"Requiem for a Dream is a really interesting film. It changed my idea of what people really wanted to see. Because I came from the UK, as a European film director, it was interesting to see how American studios or financiers were really into European cinema. They would always quote certain movies that I made that nobody else had seen — like Gangster No. 1. I was amazed, like, ‘Wow, you’ve actually seen that movie?’ And it dawned on me that people in America aren’t that dumb after all, you know? They’re kind of smart — much smarter than I was about movies. And when I saw Requiem for a Dream, I understood it. This guy got cash, he got money, to make this movie. It’s quite a hard movie to actually sell — can you imagine trying to sell that movie? And for that alone I think Aronofsky is a genius. I like what he does. I even liked The Fountain. The Wrestler is a great movie; I think Pi is a genius piece of work. I think he deserves a lot of praise. For people like me, who come from Europe and go to America and think nobody’s going to know what I’ve done, I’m a struggling filmmaker, and then suddenly you go into a studio and the head exec is like, ‘Gangster No. 1, I loved that film, it had this and that person in it…’ They see everything. I was quite cheered by that."