"It’s just awesome. What is there not to love about this movie? Donna Reed was amazing! My brother wants to marry Donna Reed. I’m like, “Dude, she’s a little old for you now.” I love the way he (George Bailey) was a happy guy but then can get cantankerous sometimes. Jimmy Stewart was just fantastic in that. I love the magic feel of it and I love the whole idea at the end of this person who did so much for everybody else and really stood on his own and sacrificed so much, that when he finally gave up and needed (help), everyone was there for him and I just cry every single time. I cry every single time. My brother actually says that I am that character in real life. I AM George Bailey. He’s like, “That’s you. You are that guy,” and every time I get ticked off when finally the pressure gets to me — because I do take care of a lot of people — he just yells at me, “Why do we have to have so many kids,” which is of course a Jimmy Stewart line. I even did It’s a Wonderful Life on a thing called “Fake Radio” where we did the entire radio version, on radio. It was great! So, I love that movie!"

"I still listen to ‘If You Want Me To Stay’ with great pleasure, it never diminishes. I first heard it when it came out, or close to it; I think I was 9 years old or roughly there. Somebody had the single of it in the neighborhood where I was living, which was Connecticut at the time. I liked it, but then over the years whenever I would hear it I kept liking it more and more and more. “It was the overall thing, I think it’s his phrasing, it's so wild and so groovy - I’m trying not to say the word 'funky', but it is! It's his vocal delivery and how he’s singing, Sly Stone had these little jumps or big jumps going way up high or dropping way down low. It’s kind of crazy, but it’s all making sense. And that bass line is such a hook, it’s the whole way through. The whole tune starts off with that bass playing a beautiful, very melodic and funky groovy line. “I love this song. It was probably my first time hearing music like that, and to me it’s still one of the greatest tracks, the bass line on it, just the way he sings it and the song itself. It’s still one that I’ll put on sometimes late at night. I love everything about it"

"Oh, this is brilliant! And the sound George Martin got on it! I love the opening drumbeat and the bleed with all the drums leaking onto the guitar mics and sometimes onto the vocals if they did the whole track live. The sound of it, to me, was real, raw excitement. They were a great group, they really were. From their days in Hamburg, they were so tight and on that record it really shows how brilliant they were. I think ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ was probably the greatest ever English rock’n’roll song. I would imagine that it’s a good as any old American rock’n’roll song, like the real thing. The real stuff. As good as a Chuck Berry tune or something. It was as solid as anything I’d ever heard or better. With the rock’n’roll records I’d started playing a bit by then – not bad, but a bit – and this song was nice and simple but don’t let that simplicity fool you. Some of the hardest stuff to do is the simple stuff, to make it effective and make it real and make it worthwhile. I thought it was unbelievable and I still do. Today, I still think, ""how the fuck did you do that""? It was like giving it back to the Americans: ""'ere y'are – we can do this as well!""

"What I love about Culture Club is how they took inspiration from reggae and made it into this beautiful pop that didn’t sound like much else at the time. Boy George was one of the first pop stars to come out and showcase that side of himself publicly, and in a time when it was more frowned upon than it is now. He’s always been so outspoken too, which is incredible. “I got the opportunity to meet him when he was a judge on The Voice Australia and to work with one of the artists that he mentored, Sheldon Riley. He auditioned with ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’, but it was a really dramatic version of the song - it was so powerful. It was really encouraging to see Boy George work with an artist who chose one of his songs to cover, which would be a challenge for a lot of people. “Boy George is such a great frontman, with all his flamboyance - his outfits and his makeup. I would be jealous sometimes when I would walk in the room and be like, “Man, who made that?” and he would say, “Oh I made this outfit”’ And the fact that he’s still doing it and works so hard, I have the utmost respect for that."

"The notion of making a fiction — meaning you look at it and you think it’s all documentary footage, but it’s all shot. And the reality factor of that is something that makes you able to escape into the film; the fabric of that fiction is so believable and completely knitted together that you buy the proposition of the film — even when you see people getting shot and there’s no blood coming out of their bodies or whatever. There’s something about shooting something [in black and white] — and I’m talking about two movies that are in black and white, we should say, except for the part [in Andrei Rublev] where they show the color of the fresco of the Russian icons. I really like movies that are in black and white, because you feel like you are watching a movie. We associate it with things that were filmed at that time, that would have been filmed in black and white. So there are different concessions and commitments to make to a limited palette for a reason. When I make a movie like Miral, there’s a kind of reversal stock that I’m using outside and sometimes it really feels like Technicolor, like a movie like Exodus, and there are other moments when it’s rougher and it feels like The Bad Lieutenant, or something like that."

"This is a very important album for me. When John Peel was alive, before he went off on the holiday that he didn’t come back from, he asked a few of us to look after his radio show for him – Siouxsie Sioux, Robert Smith – and he said that Rick and I could do anything we wanted, which was very generous of him. So Rick asked him if there was anything he wanted us to play and he handed us Tripper and said, “this has just come in and I really like it.” As somebody who grew up with John being my most important musical teacher, especially his philosophy around cross-collateralised ideas between musical genres – this was important because it was the last album he ever gave me. The last record he asked to be played on air. But I loved the sound of the album – again, they have a whole other structure for writing songs. They have this filmic quality. It’s a very panoramic sound. They were one of the first bands I ever heard using that glitchy, cut-up electronic vibe and yet incorporating it with traditional instruments. And when I go and see them live, sometimes they’re a three-piece, then a seven-piece, or they’ll have an orchestra with them – they defy definition. They just make beautiful music."