"Forrest Gump. What I appreciated about that — I believe it ended up winning the best picture and an Academy Award for Tom Hanks, both of which were well deserved — but I just loved the interplay of putting him back into actual historical footage of meeting the presidents, and at the time it was so much fun to see that play out on screen. It captured entire eras and major issues, everything from racism in the south to the horror of the Vietnam War — the protests of the Vietnam War — to AIDS toward the end. And, of course, the theme, which is right up my alley, which is, “Hey, it’s about a guy who loves a girl forever.” [laughs] That’s a little bit like The Notebook in this regard. And yet, it was done in a way that I never would have considered doing. I believe it was Robert Zemeckis who directed that. It’s phenomenal."

"I guess I am an Anglophile. It's probably in the same way that it's a little bit exotic - you don't have as much context. I think context is probably the reason you are inclined to dislike something. Chris Keating definitely introduced that movie to me and I love that the songs are so well integrated into the story - they are as important as the story to setting the tone. Probably more so than Bugsy Malone I'd say. It's a mood film. It's a classic horror story but the way the songs are integrated is really seamless. I've definitely told people before that The Wicker Man is one of my favourite musicals and they've said, ""Woah wait a minute - that's not a musical"" - there's this idea that it's above a musical. That's the kind of tone I love - it has a dark ending - the stuffed-shirted, conservative pious guy who's just there to save a lost girl gets burned at the stake at the conclusion."

"We didn't watch many films in preparation for Teenage because licensing features is incredibly expensive. Also because there weren't that many specifically about youth culture as something different from adult culture. On the other hand there were some significant films that were about the problems of youth that were taken up by the youth audience. One of them is It starring Clara Bow, the original 'It Girl'. Clara Bow is the most amazing screen presence, a huge silent star. She was fantastically sexy but also very alluring. One of those people that just lights up the screen when she's on it. A lot of people thought It was rather scandalous and tried to ban it. In the film she's a working girl but beautiful and cheeky, who marries a rich guy, so it's a classic Hollywood fantasy fulfilment role, one of the first times it was done. There was a whole moral panic about the movie and Clara Bow, so it was very popular amongst kids. There are earlier teenage films like Flaming Youth from 1923, but we don't know if a print still exists, we tried to find one and couldn't. There's a whole phase of college movies from the twenties and they've all disappeared."