"Around the time that this album was released I was driving my car and I heard 'Man In The Box' [from 1990's Facelift] playing on the radio. To me it sounded like another style of music that was completely out of the leftfield. The incredible combination of Layne [Staley]'s voice and Jerry [Cantrell, guitarist] is just so cool. They were making music like a lot of these bands that was getting played on the radio, and even today in America you need to have songs that can make it onto the radio. They knew that, and they got played all the time. Their vibe was entirely different to KoЯn, and KoЯn's was entirely different to Nirvana, who were in turn different to Pantera. All of these bands were coming out at the same time but they were all making their own unique impressions. It's incredible really. If you look at the history of rock & roll, the beginning of that decade was one of the most exciting times. There was never really anyone with a similar vocal style to Layne though, and that's important too. I think a lot of it is always down to the singer to some extent."

"I’ve been directing television for almost twenty-five years. In that time, one thing that I have learned for sure is that Douglas Sirk is the godfather of all dramatic television. It all comes from him. The best of television is redolent with his sense of ironic and knowing melodrama. He piles on the conflict in each and every scene. Bad things and disappointment stalk his characters, but always with style. The first ten minutes of Written on the Wind are literally drunk with this style. Robert Stack drinking from the bottle in an intensely yellow sports car, hundreds of leaves that blow through a Texas mansion, pages of a calendar that flip through time, and, above all else, Dorothy Malone. Nobody mambos like Malone: the sequence where she drunkenly mambos in her room while her father dies of a heart attack is choreographed for the camera like a Minnelli musical. Sirk blocks a scene with such dynamism and artfulness you can turn off the sound and know exactly what’s going on. All That Heaven Allows got me into Sirk, but Written on the Wind is the poster on my office wall—it’s a touchstone, a timeless piece of popular art."