"I have Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown”. I just think it’s the best R&B song ever created. And it’s just always been one of my favorite, not just Motown songs, but just a perfectly crafted pop song. It gets kind of lost in a shuffle of a million great Motown songs, in a bygone era, but listen to Smokey Robinson’s voice, listen to the arrangement of the song and tell me if you can find one that is better."

"And number five, I’m going to say Smokey and the Bandit. I’m back on the comedy. It’s between Smokey and the Bandit and OSS 117, which is a French movie — it’s sort of like their version of the Naked Gun movies, but their agent’s really good; he’s actually very good at many things. He just happens to be a complete moron. But he’s a lover, he knows many languages… Anyway, Smokey and the Bandit, Jackie Gleason’s performance and Sally Field’s; she was amazing. It’s also a good snapshot of America when being a truck driver was cool. [laughs] Being an 18-wheeler truck driver was like, “That’s a good job.” I mean, they were badasses, and you don’t really think of that now; they don’t have that same mystique. But Jackie Gleason as Buford T. Justice… He has his own f***ing entrance music; every time he shows up, they’ve got this tuba playing, he’s there on the scene, and he’s doing his schtick, doing the best stuff. He’s another character, like the Joe Gideon character in All That Jazz, who’s despicable. He’s a racist, he’s a terrible father, he’s a sh**y cop, and you just can’t wait for him to get back on the screen. He has a line in there, talking about Sally Field, who runs off, and she’s a dancer, and he says, “That’s what you get for poontangin’ around with a bunch of hippie show folk.” [laughs] That is the quality of stuff he’s doing in that movie; it’s just so brilliant."

"I remember seeing it at the time and thinking it was fantastically irritating. It was the post punk period and I didn't really like that woozy American liberal culture of the time. Then I re-watched it a few years later and really enjoyed it. It's so amoral and horrible and of course there's the kind of post Vietnam thing of all the people who are against the ROTC and the militaristic guys. The end scene where they totally fuck up the parade is just amazing. It's very entertaining and now it looks really great. That American liberalism looks like an endangered species these days. Something like Animal House or Smokey and the Bandit couldn't be made now – smoking joints and breaking the law – America's gone a lot more right wing since then."