"Ultimately, there is ambition in the Apu Trilogy – he’s leaving his village and he marries into a different class. But there’s also that incredible friendship that runs through the Apu Trilogy. I return to the Apu Trilogy constantly. I saw it first in art school and I felt overwhelmed by it; as someone coming from Miami and who hadn’t seen anything of the world, I was just like, India, it’s too much for me. But for some reason it really resonated and I have returned to it so often. I find Satyajit Ray’s filmmaking so lyrical and there’s a real economy to the way he shoots the film. It’s all just pans; there’s no kind of dual camera movement ever going on. [Cinematographer Christopher] Blauvelt and I had a similar rule, except for when we’re in the Chief Factor’s house, when there’s like this more expressive kind of filmmaking going on and it feels a little grander. We had this really economical way of shooting; people moving in the frame and we pan one way or the other. But there were no parallel moves happening at once."

"Of course, I love Raging Bull. And I love The Godfather. [Laughs] Maybe I need to find something a little fresher. But Raging Bull, you can always feel when an actor kind of goes into — I don’t know Robert De Niro, but I kind of get this feeling that he went really deep into it, and that the character and he melded together. I can feel like he’s not pretending. He’s actually living it. That’s always something that hits me, and I forget about the outside world; it’s almost like the movie I’m watching takes over and becomes my reality. I’ve seen Raging Bull so many times and it feels so pure and real. It’s beautiful and sexy and rough, and there’s so much pain in it at the same time. I think it always attracts me, you know, with people struggling and people fighting and people wanting to become something, wanting to change their lives or change who they are; people fighting with their own demons. For me, that’s such a beautiful example of that — someone who was really focused on being something, and becoming something, and how hard it is and how much you need to fight."

"My number one favorite film is All the President’s Men, by [Alan] Pakula. All the President’s Men is a movie that has a very personal place for me because it made me want to be a journalist, and then it made me want to be a filmmaker. I think that it has a level of realism that’s really unparalleled in the world of thrillers which, inevitably, this film actually is. There are moments of naturalism in it that are extraordinary. I remember there’s one moment in it where [Robert] Redford is speaking to someone on the other line who’s speaking Spanish. And he turns to the newsroom and says, “Does anyone here speak English?” And then he laughs at himself and says, “I mean Spanish.” It had this very real feel, and I asked Bob whether or not it was improvised. He said, “No, it was actually planned. It was in the screenplay.” And there’s that sort of attentiveness to human mannerism and the frailty of our diction is rather beautiful in a film. It’s also supremely cast. There’s nothing about it I don’t like."

"This was after a trip to Brazil when I went down there with my mum and my sister and we did some shows. It was an intense moment in my life because Kate had been diagnosed with cancer and her health was pretty precarious. We saw there was a fairly decent run for the next couple of months – the treatment was kind of working and she was feeling relatively okay – so I booked some gigs in Brazil. We proceeded to have one of the most beautiful, decadent, life-affirming trips I ever took in my life, and it was during that little working vacation that I discovered Tim Maia's music, and I've been a fan ever since. He sadly passed away in the 1990s. I love that he represents a real amalgam of so many cultures, as a lot of great Brazilian artists do: African, Spanish, Portuguese, he's just this melting pot of great culture and music and also tremendously individual at the same time. He is certainly well known in large sections of the world, but is a bit of a kept secret in the West."