"I remember hearing ‘African Bombaataa’ by Planet Rock and at the time time I was way into breakdancing and that was my whole life at maybe 9/10 years old. But those sounds for those records were so futuristic and I was way in into robots as a kid and science fiction and that music completely sounded like it was from another planet. And at that point I knew I wanted to make and create music and do something futuristic of that sort. Obviously I took another path or different style to the music we ended up creating as my job but even to this day electronic music I’m still very passionate about."

"Andrei Tarkovsky. Again, incredibly… I mean, all these films are extremely influential to my own moviemaking, and they were the kinds of movies that just spun me around. I couldn’t compare them with anything else I’d seen at the time. And Stalker was definitely one of those. There was a sense of pace that I’d never experienced in a film before, such a wonderful sustained atmosphere, and then just this incredible metaphysical story. I think it’s still one of the great science fiction movies, and it’s so philosophical and yet so visual. The philosophical ideas are conveyed in terms of pure cinema and visuals as opposed to people talking. Quite a skill, I have to say."

"Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of meeting Richard Gordon and his brother Alex (who passed away a few years ago) knows what a rich vein of film history the brothers represent. A conversation with either might include stories of producing films with the likes of Ed Wood, Gene Autry, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and B-movie director Eddie Cahn, to name just a few. As a producer, Dick’s best-known work is the fondly remembered low-budget science-fiction staple Fiend Without a Face. It’s a great tribute to the Gordon brothers that Criterion has released not only Fiend but also the four films included in the Monsters and Madmen box set."

"This is one of my favorite science fiction films ever. It feels like everything in Solaris is transcendent and so deep. It’s hypnotic. It has so many sequences that are unique and unforgettable, like the part where the characters float in the library or when the wife comes back to life and then breaks apart as if she were made of glass. And there’s the idea of this spaceship floating on top of a strange ocean that seems to have some form of consciousness. All of those ideas are so strange and beautiful. It’s remarkable that Tarkovsky was able to make a film this spiritual in the Communist era. I don’t know how he did it."

"Star Wars reminds me of my mother, who didn’t let me see color movies until I was 12. I was raised on Alexander Nevsky and Chaplin and all of these insane movies that would just put a 10-year-old to sleep quicker than a shack of sheep. But Star Wars was my first departure from that rule, and it just blew my mind. It was the first color film I saw, and it just knocked me out. I don’t think I ever forgave my mother after I saw that film. But also just the kind of iconoclastic myth retelling that combined with science fiction, which has always been huge to me."

"Again, I think chronologically, is Blade Runner. It was the movie right after Raiders. And Harrison Ford is, you know, my favorite actor. He just has this… He’s just such a likeable guy. He’s obviously been one of the biggest stars in the last 20, 30 years. But he’s really been underappreciated now. And Blade Runner, to me, was such a cool film. And I know it didn’t do well at the box office, but I saw it opening night. People were expecting a lot because Raiders was the film that had just come out before. I just thought it was so ballsy, you know, especially for Harrison Ford to do this, because it wasn’t an action film, it was more of a noir/science fiction movie. And just that opening sequence of going over Los Angeles and those big fire plumes, and the spinners and the angelic soundtrack, it was just, it was religious. It was like a religious experience. Again, I really got into how they made it. I had already been a fan of Ridley Scott but this really solidified him as one of my favorite directors. Just the mood of that movie, it’s just beautiful. It’s one of those weird movies where I’ve seen all the versions and I actually like the original studio version better. I really love Harrison Ford’s narration. To me it was just kind of classic noir, crime/mystery film, you know? But it was set in this frickin’ crazy science-fiction future and I just loved it."