"In 1962, I was still listening to my parents’ records and vaguely aware that there were other things out there. Jean Redpath, a Scottish folk singer, sang in a kind of clear, quavery voice. They were traditional Scottish songs, but very simple arrangements, like folk versions. The Scottish influence was a big part of my parents’ record collection. They didn’t have Scottish bagpipes or anything; they were more interested in Scottish roots music: Woody Guthrie, Ewan MacColl, and different people from that era, who were writing folk songs that were vaguely political but also beautiful. I realized that this sounds very palatable and pretty on the surface, but there's something darker going on underneath."

"I saw The Wild Bunch on a double bill with Mean Streets, midnight at the Waverly Place Cinema on Bleecker Street in New York [in the 1970s]. Those two played on a double bill; I was in New York, I had a studio and I was basically a practicing artist, working with various art groups — Art & Language, kind of conceptual arts, political arts. We were doing environments, we were doing installations, performance pieces…and I stumbled into this incredible double bill. And it was a life-changing experience. I thought they were just extraordinary. [Sam] Peckinpah for his muscularity, his immediacy, his sheer genius in his storytelling and characters. I was knocked out."

"Probably some people will go, “Huh?” But I love the film Wag the Dog with Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman, and Anne Heche. It’s a really good movie — sort of political parody I think, that sort of played on what Clinton went through and how they have to sort of trouble shoot, and try to spin the story in order to get him, the president, re-elected and things like that. And even though it was a fictional story, to me it rang really true. And that’s another one that’s very character-driven. I loved every one of them, from Denis Leary to everyone, Willie Nelson… I just thought it was very well done."

"A young John Hurt plays a bitter art school drop-out who forms his own fascist political movement, the Party of Dynamic Erection. It’s very proto-Withnail & I, and it’s not lost on me that George Harrison was involved in producing both Little Malcolm and Withnail. So it’s cool to think that my favorite Beatle helped make the best two movies about crazy assholes in trench coats screaming at each other in shitty apartments. Mike Leigh directed the original production of the play of Little Malcolm and I can also see how the Scrawdyke character may have informed him in creating Johnny from Naked, another misogynistic, visionary crackpot trying to assert his manhood."

"That movie for me was my Marlon Brando experience before The Godfather, before Streetcar. It’s weird to be living in a modern world where acting has changed. Movies have changed so much, and yet you can still see what defined [Brando] and his performance. If I told you that so-and-so was the first person to do something 30 years ago, you’d be like, “Well, I don’t care, because people do it now all the time.” There’s still nobody doing what he does in that movie. And so that really changed everything for me. Also, there was something really exciting and sad about the whole political aspect of that movie. The whole blacklisting thing."