"This record convinced me that no matter what anyone said about making music as a career that I had to try. I didn’t know if I’d “make it” or if I will yet, but I knew that when I heard this record I had to try. I’ve always heard Born to Run in my mother’s car, but it wasn’t until my late teenage years and early twenties that I understood what was being said here. To me, this was my ticket out. Born to Run gave me the permission to leave everything sensible and practical behind and go for my own dreams. It still makes me pause when I hear those piano intros on ""Thunder Road"" and ""Backstreets."" In the same way Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. spoke to me as a teenager, this record spoke to the guy in his twenties who really wasn’t very good at much, except maybe music, and that was a big maybe. It also comforted me in times of great heartache and self doubt. This is an encouraging record. It’s a masterpiece. I would take this record over almost any other “classic” album by any artist."

"Next movie, I have to put a [Takeshi] Kitano film in there somewhere. I get torn between two, but it’s always between Sonatine and Hana-bi for me. They’re both incredible, but I tend to always veer towards Hana-bi, because as much as I love Sonatine, what Hana-bi has is heart. The emotional resonance of that ending is probably one of the most subtly heartbreaking moments in cinema. I just think the film’s an absolute masterpiece. His nonlinear storytelling in that movie, I don’t think he’s ever kind of done that better. It’s just so incredibly well put together. The fact that he can go from these moments of horrific, brutal violence, but then, within a few minutes, have a scene as playful as when he’s playing “guess the card” with his wife in the car, and he can see the cards in the rear-view mirror. To have a scene that’s as playful and as funny and as contemplative as that… I just think he’s a master filmmaker, and I’ve pretty much watched everything he’s done. So, that’s high up on that list then."

"I have to mention this as one of my favorites. I’ve been lucky enough to work with [producer] Joel Silver. It rewrote the rules on the modern thriller. It set the stage for the expectation that every question needs to be answered, and it has to be big, fun, and emotional, and a movie that can do everything. I try to do Die Hard in every movie that I do, by fulfilling that promise of delivering from the first frame. Obviously many more movies have done that — like Hitchcock — but as a movie that potentially could have gone many ways, it became a masterpiece. Before this movie, you could potentially believe that the bad guys are just bad guys; they don’t have motivation or are dumb. This guy had smart plans and dialogue, and set the bar high. Other movies have met it, but this was one of the first ones and I was blown away when I saw it. As much as I’ve liked other movies, at that time, Die Hard has had more of an influence on my work than the other ones of the time."

"A magnificent example of European filmmaking, totally undramatic and hypnotically watchable thanks to the extraordinary visual beauty of the photography by Giuseppe Rotunno, the set design by Mario Garbuglia, and the costumes by Piero Tosi, all under the superb control of a great director, Luchino Visconti. An extended time-travel visit to another world, the film is comprised of two major events are a family’s trip from the city to a summer residence and a forty-minute attendance at a ball. It’s probably the finest physical production ever filmed anywhere in Europe or America, a relic of a time when taste, intelligence, and artistry were still in operation, but perhaps even then only in Italy, and only with Visconti. The undisputed master of the costume film (he made only six), this is his masterpiece, dominated by the extraordinarily majestic performance of Burt Lancaster. The tall, athletic, handsome Irish American from 116th Street in Manhattan brought a dignity, strength, and reserve to the part of a Sicilian prince that no one else could have played better. Without him, it would be hard to imagine the film as good."

"I am a huge Nicolas Roeg fan and consider this and his 1973 masterpiece Don’t Look Now to feature some of the best editing of all time, with visual and audio juxtapositions that wow even now. Walkabout is cinema as poetry. Images rhyme with one another in a truly hypnotic fashion. Scenes are as vivid and intense as they are unreal and lyrical. There’s a phantasmagorical array of images, but also a rigorous, genius sense of structure. Both this film and Don’t Look Now open with sequences that encapsulate the movie like thematic overtures. Walkabout’s first five minutes tell you everything while saying nothing: images of the city overlaid with aboriginal music, breathing exercises at a girls’ school that complement the native sounds, an oasis of parkland in the urban sprawl, a lone tree in a concrete square, a patch of swimming-pool blue in an apartment block contrasted with the white-hot nothingness of the outback. It’s a completely stunning collage, one of the greatest openings in all of cinema. And what’s even better? The rest of the movie lives up to it."

"Why? Well, I think it’s an act of freedom, the whole entire movie, practically. They didn’t have a script. In 1962, which is the year when the movie was shot, I thought it was unbelievable that somebody would just go into an experiment like that. It’s still a very experimental movie, very emotional in a way. I like what he says about the human spirit and creation; in a way, crisis of a man confronting life, his past, his present and his future in a very formal way. I mean formal in terms of format, how the movie was told, not only in the content of the movie, which is amazing. Also in the way that he decided to just do it absolutely free, inventing new rules for telling a story and not going in a traditional way. I thought it was the masterpiece of Federico Fellini that most attracted me; I feel very proud that I know [what it’s like for] a guy like Federico Fellini, who got the balls to just jump into such believable, reflections of mirrors, you know, inside the movie."

"This 1990 masterpiece is very much a travel album. It has all the hallmarks and some of the pitfalls of a life on the road: the single 'I Left my wallet in El Segundo' is a case in point. The advice lyric 'I don't eat no ham'n'eggs cuz they're high in cholesterol' in the classic cut 'Ham'n'eggs' is another highly unusual call and response rhyme - but again paints a true picture of the perils of a road life spent in diners. Over the course of the album we visit Lucien in Paris and traverse around the world of music with a zillion samples of classic sixties and seventies rock and soul albums. It's always optimistic and wide eyed - the best way to travel. I was talking to my friend Ben the other day about how this is my favorite Tribe album - (most people seem to prefer The Low End Theory?) - but I learned so much about music through this record - The songs are great and it's one of those albums that drags you into a different universe and world view and changes you for the better."