"My first one is 12 Angry Men. I remember I watched it at school, I think I saw it at fourteen for the first time. And when you’re that age, you kind of want to watch big blockbuster movies and all that kind of stuff. And I just couldn’t get over the fact — basically it doesn’t leave the room for the whole movie. And it’s just these guys sitting around discussing this crime, and whether or not they’re going to find the guy guilty or not. I just found it so engaging and stuff. You know the cast and stuff was just incredible with Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb, and all these incredible actors. I just thought it was mind blowing, you know? I think it was based on a radio play — I don’t know. And then I figured it was a theatrical play, and then they made a movie. That’s the other thing, I was also just beginning to start to want to be an actor. Or join the theatre group in my hometown. It all sort of happened at the same time, and I was beginning to understand it a little bit more about how they’re engaging, and how you can hold people’s attention for that long just by the performance itself."

"Probably everybody has that on their list. [Star Wars] came out and I just finished my sophomore year at CalArts. The May of ’77, saw it opening weekend at the Chinese Theatre. It worked in so many ways, but one of the things personally [that] was so inspiring [was] how it entertained an audience to a new level. I was there with a packed audience. I waited six hours. Towards the climax, when Luke is in the X-Wing and he’s going down the trench, I was just shaking I was so excited. And I’d never seen an audience so excited. First of all, it was everybody, from kids to adults, teenagers. Everybody was going crazy for this film. The quality of the storytelling, where it’s one foot in sort of the past and one foot in the future, I was so impressed by that. I came out and said, “That’s what I want to do with animation.” Many of my friends left animation [because of Star Wars] and went to actual special effects. At that time, animation was thought of just for kids. I saw this and said, “No, no, I want to entertain audiences.” That’s all I think about when I make my movies."

"Last year I arrived in San Diego at the beginning of a tour, where I was playing the Thick As A Brick material. I ambled down to the theatre in the morning having arrived the night before, where the theatre manager said there was a note for me in my dressing room, left behind by Alfie Boe who they’d had a couple of nights before. I recognised Alfie Boe as a hotshot, super popular opera star who played at the Queen’s Jubilee Concert in Hyde Park. They crop up from time to time, these people who cross over from a more insulated music into wider popular culture, and Alfie Boe has certainly done that in the last couple of years with opera music. You might think he’s just another of the usual not-quite-authentic people who just find themselves singing the odd aria at working men’s clubs, and getting a record deal and a ton of money. But Alfie did his apprenticeship by studying at the Royal Academy of Music, worked with the D’Oyly Carte Opera and spent ten years of his life learning his craft. And he was a man born with enormous natural talent. Rather like Lou Gramm he has this very assured level of control – he knows what he can do. I read his note to me, wishing me a good show and leaving me a phone number. So a few weeks later in England I called Alfie and we had a few chats on the phone, and though we haven’t met we were due on two occasions to have lunch, but he had to cancel because of his mother’s illness. But I hope I do get to meet Alfie because I think he’s a very fine singer. I understand that while his desire is not to leave classical music, he wants to demonstrate he’s got the cojones of a Tom Jones or a Robert Plant or whoever - he wants to be a rock and roll singer. Far be it for me to say that might be mistake, you’ve got to give it a go. So Alfie’s branching out into rather middle-of-the-road pop and rock at the moment. As a classical singer, I think he has the gravitas and vocal expertise, perhaps more vocal expertise, than Pavarotti at his relatively young best. If you listen to Alfie’s ‘Nessun Dorma’, I think you’ll hear something that is sung with enormous technical ability, control, authority and with the right amount of gravitas, it has a weight to it that I think is really great. I hope he doesn’t sell himself short in the realm of middle-of-the-road pop music."