"The Shining. It was the first movie that I saw when I was a kid that, like, really traumatized me. It was mostly the two little girls as well as being in room 237. That was one of the movies that I remember really, after watching that movie, having a problem sleeping. But as I’ve sort of grown up with that movie, what’s been so inspirational about that movie… if you watch that movie, like everybody watches that movie, it’s terrifying, it’s one of the scariest movies of all time. And what I think’s great about it is that it’s not only a horror movie, it’s more a movie about an alcoholic man who hates his family, and then it’s a horror movie. To me, all the best horror movies are a regular movie first and then they’re a horror movie. That’s true with the The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby as well as The Shining. But what’s most exciting to me about The Shining, and there’s a famous quote from the Vivian Kubrick documentary, from Jack Nicholson, where he says he’s been spending his whole career trying to make his performances real, like no one’s ever seen realness onscreen and he’s going to be the one to make it real and he’s going to do something no one’s ever seen before, this quest to make it authentic. And then he’s like, “Then you get someone like Stanley who says, ‘Yeah, Jack, it’s real, but it’s just not interesting.'” After I heard that conversation, if you watch The Shining and don’t get sucked into it just being a great scary movie, if you walk into it and just watch the choices that are being made, it’s an insane movie. Like, everybody’s performance is, like, the stakes are so high, as if every line they say is the end of the world. Every shot is so grandiose. The locations are so unbelievable, and they’re all built, which is also totally insane. It’s like this constructed movie that’s so hypnotic because every time Shelly Duval comes on the screen and screams, “[falsetto] They’re trying to kill Danny!” and it’s like, in any other movie that would just be like a joke. Or Jack Nicholson, if you look at every take of his in the movie, [it] shouldn’t work. It’s all so extreme with his performance. But it’s consistent and, I guess as Stanley Kubrick said, it’s interesting. Because it’s consistent, the movie has this very hypnotic tone to it and it’s something that Kubrick is obviously very known for. It not only is an amazingly terrifying movie and one of the best horror movies of all time, it also is just this really unique approach to filmmaking that I’ve always found really fascinating. It seems to, across the board, raise the stakes and make everybody just operate on this much higher level, and that’s always been very hypnotic to me."

"The Associates were a huge band in Scotland; they certainly had some success in the rest of the world, but they were ours. Certainly when I was growing up I hadn't yet really discovered too many Scottish bands at that point – this was to change of course but these were one of the first I discovered. 
 
 The Associates struck me because I was aware that they were Scottish after I saw them on Top of the Pops and suddenly I made this connection between, 'Oh, you can be from Scotland, where there's no music industry, and be successful. You can get on Top of the Pops, you can be heard by an audience'. It was just a peculiar lesson and a sudden revelation for me of the possibilities that existed for musicians. 

 When you come from a country where back then there was no real established record industry, per se, they stood out. We had a couple of great record labels, you know, 53 & 3rd and Postcard Records and so on, but it was rare to get signed to those two labels, and they were still very small and independent; it was difficult to have the clout of a major London-based record label. 

 The Associates really captured my imagination. I loved them musically and I was really interested in their style. I was obsessed with the 'Gloomy Sunday' cover that Billy Mackenzie did. He had this extraordinary operatic voice; I'd never heard anything like in my life before. 

 I used to go to this club called the Hoochie Coochie Club in Edinburgh, which was big in the game for me, like I spent every weekend at this club. I was introduced to Billy Mackenzie and we really hit it off; I just was kind of obsessed by him. I just thought he was brilliant and really funny, irreverent, rebellious, and fascinating with the voice of an angel. He was so tortured and he had such a sad story in the end. 

 When I heard that he had taken his own life, I was so gutted: the whole of Scotland felt like they had lost a son. He had so much to give – he wasn't just sort of average, he wasn't an averagely successful musician: he was this extraordinary talent, a great interpreter and, again, a great communicator. He was able to make his own brilliant music but to also re-interpret classic songs that had been done by the greats and still he brought something of his own to that. 

 I think 'Gloomy Sunday' by The Associates is by far the greatest version of 'Gloomy Sunday' I've ever heard, and I've heard some amazing versions, like the one by by Sinéad O'Connor or Billie Holiday, but he brings something really special to that.
 
The Associates helped build Scotland's musical confidence to then start really exploring the music scene on its own terms, as opposed to going through London."

"This came out in late 2018, only I saw it in January this year in Budapest. I’m going to sneak it into this list, as it was ironically and frustratingly overlooked by many film writers when it won a FIPRESCI award in Cannes despite the abundance of articles complaining about the dearth of films from women in the festival that year. Zsófia Szilágyi’s micro-budget debut film about motherhood in present-day Budapest deserves all the praise it can get. At first, I didn’t regard the kids in the film as that much of a handful. No industrial-strength tantrums, nothing spilt or broken, no fussiness at dinner and so on. But maybe the focus is more on the logistics of parenthood rather than especially difficult moments with one’s children. I was initially too focused on what was missing from the film and in the process overlooked many other great qualities – the beautifully naturalistic acting, the relentlessness of getting three kids from different sets of A-B and back within a busy city and the sound design that teased out the various everyday noises we’d normally cancel out. Also, the kids do give the parents a run of sorts for their money, but more of a jog than a run. The acting really is first class and all across the board. I have no idea how Szilágyi got such great performances from kids so young. The dad isn’t around much and it’s pretty much a solo show for the mother struggling with work and kids. There’s a wonderful shot of her at the window of an all-night pharmacy buying painkillers for her son and looking beyond exhausted. There’s also a brilliant altercation between the mother and some typical alpha male in a car park. My favorite moment was with the “orrszi porszi,” which is a vacuum adapter that goes up toddlers’ noses. It’s the kind of gross-out contraption that you’d expect to find in an early John Waters film, but Hungarians swear by it. The Brits think the Hungarians are crazy vacuuming snot and the Hungarians think the Brits are crazy not doing anything about snot and maybe that’s why the film wasn’t picked up for distribution in the UK. The film’s strength is in showing us most of the moments that are glossed over in more regular fare such as the time it takes to dress young kids, the repetition and the complete lack of time for oneself. Although it’s very different from Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman,” it still shares the dedication to a perspective and experience that is normally deodorized from cinema. I have to confess to being confused by the protagonist’s use of a mobile phone whilst driving, but then again, should all protagonists be perfect or is this an example of how pushed she is with all the multi-tasking she has to do with work and parenthood?"

"And then after that I got into Good Old Boys, which is a more refined thing, and at first I was like, no, I like Sail Away better, but Good Old Boys: he'll be singing like a love song, like a song like 'Marie', best love song ever, but then if you listen close, he's like, ""I love you the first time I saw you, and I will always love you Marie"". And then you realise, y'know, ""I don't listen to a word you say, when you're in trouble I just turn away"". You realise it's a love song from an asshole, a Southern asshole basically! There's another song on there, called 'Guilty', and that killed me. You've got to listen to the lyrics on that song. He starts out: ""Yes, baby, I been drinking, and I shouldn't come by I know, but I found myself in trouble, and I had nowhere else to go"", but then the production's amazing, it just kicks in with the drums and he's like: ""Got some whisky from the barman, got some cocaine from a friend"", and then it builds up and builds up, he's talking to his girlfriend. He's obviously a shit and he's shown up drunk at her doorway, and the punchline at the end is: ""You know I just can't stand myself and it takes a whole lot of medicine for me to pretend that I'm somebody else."" It's incredible! He always mocked the singer-songwriter thing, even though he was inspired by it. I say that in his moments like 'Guilty' and 'Marie', he says it better than Bob Dylan or anybody, or even Neil Young; obviously they're still talented at being real, they're both clever, they can put you on psychedelically any time they want and say [their lyrics] mean something or not and give a very cool response - not too cool, they can just answer any way they want, just be immortal. But Randy Newman has the concise moment that hits you in the gut; sometimes, I think, he's nailed it better than Bob Dylan. I totally think it's important to have humour in records. That's my personality anyway, but that's the best thing you can do, really. Because I was sometimes sad or melancholy, but I think the people that just ran that home, like in the grunge era, fucking like Smashing Pumpkins - I liked them when I was a kid - or even Eddie Vedder - no offence on them really, but at the same time they're victims of thinking there was this movement, like in the '70s, that there was this utopian dream that they'd change the world, like Crosby or something. But it's too one-sided after a while. Like fucking darkness in grunge - I don't know, no relief whatsoever? It's bullshit, it's too one-sided, it's not the way life is: life isn't that fucked, but it is. I just think that people, when they get too dramatic, it comes off like a bummer."