"Dirty Mind is the first one where I feel Prince became the Prince we all know and love. There had been somewhat suggestive lyrics with 'Soft & Wet', which came out earlier, but this is where he went full force with songs like 'Sister' and 'Head'. The record cover, the whole package, really says something to me. Instead of looking like a black guy from Minneapolis, he looks New Wave and you can't really tell what he is. He's got bed springs behind him and the album is called Dirty Mind, the first song is called 'Dirty Mind' and it just hits you over the head with this new direction. Maybe my favourite song on the record is 'Partyup', the last song on it. I understand there's rumours that he sort of traded that song with Morris Day. He said if you give me that song I'll record an album for you or I'll put together The Time For You. It's just an amazing song. Spoon covered it a long time ago for this Prince compilation."

"OK, but guess what? It doesn’t matter that you’re Australian. You need to watch it, because you’ll be completely sucked in. First of all, it’s Gene Hackman. Need I say more? Gene Hackman is the best American actor living today, in my view. And it is a sports story, but it’s so much more. It’s about an underdog team and beating the odds. It’s about teamwork. And I am a basketball fan, but I will tell you that before I was a basketball fan, I was a fan of Hoosiers. That’s why I’m saying I think you should watch it, because you’ll really, really enjoy it. Dennis Hopper kills it. It’s heartbreaking, his performance. And there’s a scene at the beginning of Hoosiers — it’s going to sound crazy, but Gene Hackman is driving and he’s drinking from a takeaway cup of coffee, and the way he’s drinking the coffee is so real and so authentic. He just gives an accurate… such appreciation for every gesture… every movement of that man."

"I don't know how I came across that album to be honest. But again, some of the lyrics, oooh! Have you seen them live? Brilliant. Fucking brililant. Like a punk rock & roll trio with stand up piano, bass and drums. When we saw them, it was Shepherd's Bush and I wasn't expecting it to be so full on. But the way they create what they do on stage and live – it's almost like three jazz kids who ended up writing quirky pop songs. Their drummer is phenomenal, they all were. The bass player uses distortion at times and Ben bangs the hell out of the piano. I remember that gig really well. Remember when Matt Lucas had the character George Dawes? He was in the audience at that gig. And everybody in the room knew he was there. Everyone was locked into him and someone shouted out 'Tell us the scores George Dawes' and I felt really sorry for him! But it was just a really amazing gig and it's a great record. Rough but brilliant."

"The Age of Innocence has always been one of my favorite Scorsese films—it’s one of the most painfully beautiful unrequited love stories ever. It’s Scorsese’s Max Ophuls movie, and the best Ophuls movie that Ophuls never made. 45 Years and The Age of Innocence strike me as two sides of the same coin. Most filmmakers would tell the story of 45 Years from the perspective of the husband, the man who followed convention and married the woman he didn’t love and then lost out on the grand romance. But 45 Years is like The Age of Innocence as told from the point of view of Winona Ryder’s character fifty years later. She’s the woman who never questioned convention or the institution of marriage and then realizes later that she doesn’t recognize her own life. This illusion comes crashing down on her. I think the last shot of 45 Years is one of the all-time great shots—I feel confident in saying that even though it just came out a few years ago."

"The Age of Innocence has always been one of my favorite Scorsese films—it’s one of the most painfully beautiful unrequited love stories ever. It’s Scorsese’s Max Ophuls movie, and the best Ophuls movie that Ophuls never made. 45 Years and The Age of Innocence strike me as two sides of the same coin. Most filmmakers would tell the story of 45 Years from the perspective of the husband, the man who followed convention and married the woman he didn’t love and then lost out on the grand romance. But 45 Years is like The Age of Innocence as told from the point of view of Winona Ryder’s character fifty years later. She’s the woman who never questioned convention or the institution of marriage and then realizes later that she doesn’t recognize her own life. This illusion comes crashing down on her. I think the last shot of 45 Years is one of the all-time great shots—I feel confident in saying that even though it just came out a few years ago."

"This song was a sonic influence on the record. The vocal sitting on top of things that aren't a conventional band, with some electronic instruments, some keyboards and some beats. The voice is still the main focus, but there's stuff happening around it that isn’t conventional. It was definitely an inspiration to some of the songs on this record; it was like a sonic headspace. “I’ve been a fan of Arthur Russell for a long time. I don't remember who showed me him but maybe it was on a highschool mixtape. Sometimes you just hear somebody; you can tell that it's unique, it's interesting and you want to know more about it. “With 'Nothing Sacred / All Things Wild' for example, which is the third song on Oh My God, I first tried it with an acoustic guitar and it wasn't really working, but then when we used just an organ and my vocal and that seemed to really work. Something like that would be really influenced by something like Arthur Russell."

"Spike Lee’s finest movie. One of the movies that made me want to get into the movies as well. I knew I was never going to make Do the Right Thing, to do what he did with cinema and tell a story comedically but also dramatically. Very intense. That movie goes from a fun comedy — I don’t know if you can say fun comedy, but it’s a funny comedy — to a dramatic shift in tone. It’s a slow burn. You don’t notice it when it happens. It comes out of left field but it’s keeping in what has come before. You realize how masterfully it’s put together. That movie informed Clerks to a large degree: it takes place all in one day, in one particular block, in one very specific city. So that was the model I used for Clerks. So much so that the original version of Clerks Dante gets killed because I was like, “I want to do something like that.” Then I realized I’m not Spike Lee."