"I guess the next one would be Naked, by Mike Leigh. Mike Leigh might be my favorite living filmmaker. A lot has been said about his working method, you know. He spends about six months with his actors basically finding the characters and improvising and building these relationships. Then after that, he’ll go off and write a script based on the improvisations that took place over those six months. It results in some of the most vivid character work I’ve ever seen. The relationships in his films are so rich, and you just feel so much history there. That’s because the history has really been built. It really exists. But what people don’t really talk much about is just how wonderful a craftsman he is. His films are gorgeous and they’re beautifully made. I mean, his work with Dick Pope is just incredible, and they’re all so impeccably structured. So, I just think he’s made so many masterpieces. I toggled between Naked and Topsy-Turvy and Secrets and Lies being my favorite. But right now, Naked is the one that is coming to me."

"If you were an American kid, then Aerosmith was a huge influence. They were probably what T Rex was to the English fans - whether you were a punk or a metaller, anything, Aerosmith was cool. I’m choosing Toys In The Attic just because it’s a great entry level album for someone checking out Aerosmith. They did this tour a few years ago where they just played stuff from the early records and, fuck, the songs were good. And I just saw them again with my wife, Mike from Pearl jam and his wife, and it was great; there were mistakes and they jammed and there was no... you know, maybe they went through a time where they were playing too many ballads, but there was none of that and even the mistakes made it seem more real. I mean how do you write songs like that? Mike and I went backstage to meet Joe Perry and we’re still those young American kids we used to be when we meet the band. I mean, what do you say to Joe Perry? Those guys are classic, every guy has their own thing."

"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!"