"The Girl Can't Help It isn't about the status of teenagers, but it had huge impact on teenage audiences. On one level it's like one of those terrible Don't Knock The Rock films - just a compendium of performances. But it's got a more sophisticated plot that alludes to mob involvement in the music business. And it's got Tom Ewell, who's a very fine comic actor, and Jayne Mansfield, who's a fascinating and fated character as well. You get Eddie Cochran and Little Richard – neither of whom played in the UK for another few years – so you can imagine what it meant to The Beatles when they went to see it. All that early rock & roll period is so un-self conscious, people didn't know what they were doing and The Girl Can't Help It showed British teenagers the American lifestyle. America is the thing that everyone aspired to at that point. Glorious Technicolor in every way."

"I guess I’d have to say This Is Spinal Tap. I don’t know that many movies made me laugh as hard as that did — the first few times I saw it, anyway. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I know that at some point I will watch it again and laugh anew at it. That movie is just so brilliant. It captures something from a period in rock and roll that, even though I wasn’t there, it just feels so right. It feels like, “Oh, yeah, this is based on something real.” That time in rock and roll, and these guys are not that far off from real rock and rollers of a certain band. And it’s just brilliant. I mean, it’s just so well done, and just so funny. I mean, they were such an amazing team: Michael McKean, and then Rob Reiner directing, and Christopher Guest. You know, it’s a masterpiece, a comedy masterpiece."