"Taxi Driver. Martin Scorsese. Growing up, most of my friends were interested in becoming bankers or working in a company. I, however, wanted to become a movie director. This was something that I couldn’t be open about with my friends and oftentimes I felt lonely because I couldn’t share those aspirations. I lost my father when I was quite young. My mother was working and I was a latchkey child. Even if I talked to a lot of people, I always felt a little lonely. I thought maybe I’m sick, maybe I’m ill. There was no counseling, or there were no therapists. It was not a trend at that time. So I thought maybe I’m really strange. After watching Taxi Driver and seeing Travis, I felt this immense similarity between the character and myself. He lives in New York, surrounded by so many people, but he still felt lonely. This surprised me, and I thought “Here is this guy, living in America, who is like me.” Seeing his character, I felt relaxed and realized there are others like me. I felt I was okay. And I wanted to put that feeling in Death Stranding. Like, you’re all alone, trying to connect the world. Everything has been connected by the internet recently. In so many ways, everyone is battling each over the internet. If you play online, you get head shots, but, like, you don’t know who you actually shot, right? To connect is a very positive concept. But there are people who don’t want to feel connected anymore, and I think a lot of people play games that don’t offer human connection. I can’t tell anyone that I feel lonely or I’m in solitude, and I have this big problem which I couldn’t share with my friends. It’s a big load to carry, just like Sam Bridges. And you’re kind of traveling, you’re sent orders, you go to this place, you trip over, and drown in a river. But at one point, you have this indirect connection system where you know you’re not alone. It’s not an isolated, lonely planet. There is someone who creates a road. There is someone who has made the coffee. It’s not just me, and I wanted to put that in a game. This is the same feeling I got from Taxi Driver."

"That first album, that sounds great to me. The first one we heard was ‘Heartbreak Hotel', because I don't think they ever released the Sun records - the RCA records came out first. We had a great friendship - I met him in 1965 the first year I went to the States. He was doing a movie at Paramount Studios, and I was at Paramount to talk about a song for a movie and they said 'Elvis Presley is filming here today, and he heard that you're coming over, and he'd like to meet you.' Like to meet me? I tell you, I didn't even know he knew I existed. I had three singles out at the time: ‘It's Not Unusual', ‘What's New Pussycat?' and a ballad called ‘With These Hands', and he had the three of them. He was walking towards me singing ‘With These Hands' - [impersonates Elvis] 'with these hands'. And then he said, 'How do you sing like that?' And I said, 'It's your fault, you were partly to blame!' He said, 'Well, you know, I come from Mississippi, I was born there, I was brought up with this stuff. What's it like in Wales? Are there any black people there?' I said, 'Only when they come out of the coal mine! No, it's listening to American music on the radio - that's where I've got it from.' He couldn't believe that somebody could sing like me not being influenced first hand, like he was - the gospel thing, listening to gospel groups and blues clubs like that. He preferred a lot of the later things that he did. I said, 'That early stuff on Sun Records, man, I mean jeez'. He said, 'Ah, it was very primitive - we didn't have very good equipment and it's a lot better now."" And I said, 'But there's fire there', and he said 'I'm glad you think so."" But he didn't do them on stage. I said, 'You want to open with them, open with ‘Blue Suede Shoes'.' But no, he wouldn't do it. Then one time, on his own special, he starts to go into some ‘Whole Lotta Shakin'' and then he goes on into another, and he said, 'We could do this all night', so you could see he was really wanting to do it. But he wasn't thrilled with those early recordings, he thought he made better records later on.#"