"Number four is the documentary American Movie. The reason I like this movie so much is I’m a big fan of sort of vérité documentaries and, while this is not exactly a vérité documentary, it’s a movie from the late ’90s and it’s sort of the end of the 16mm personal documentary era. I suppose there are some that exist after that, but for the most part, as someone who really likes movies like Grey Gardens and Seventeen and all these great sort of authentic… Filmmakers went and experienced their experiences with their subjects. American Movie is really like the pinnacle of that for me in that it’s a movie that took two years to make and two years to edit. It’s the kind of movie where when you hear Chris Smith, the director, ask a question, you almost get excited because it’s like, “Oh, the guy from behind the camera is a part of the story also?” Or the boom dips in. It’s charming because you know they’ve been there for two years living with these people. The movie’s amazing because it’s an incredible critique on filmmaking that’s both funny and also sort of sentimental and inspiring in that the Murphy’s Law of filmmaking is that anything that can go wrong will go wrong and, you know, in the case of [subject] Mark Borchardt, it really does. But you’ve never seen someone more impassioned and more determined to sort of accomplish… I don’t know if I want to say something as silly as “their dreams,” but he’s dedicated to doing this and that. To me as a filmmaker or as someone who’s trying to do any sort of artistic endeavor, it’s really amazing to watch, and the movie is very sincere and very honest and very charming and very funny. It gives you an idea of, like, what to avoid when making movies, but it also gives you an idea of what movies are going to be very hard — I would say that making movies is very traumatic — and you’ve just sort of got to stick with it, and this movie is a great example of that. And it’s a great example of getting to know the characters personally, or the subjects personally, and it’s the kind of movie that, when it’s over, you feel like you know everybody in that movie. It’s incredibly charming and it’s one of those movies that I think, as a filmmaker or just a film fan in general, it’s a very essential movie to see. I always try to watch it or show it to people right before we make a movie to say, like, hopefully it won’t go like this."

"The Blue Nile was another sort of national treasure that I was drawn to and then thrilled to discover they were local. I can't overestimate what it meant to fall in love with bands from Scotland who enjoyed success. It just opened up windows for our minds, because there's a certain particularly being a 70s baby and London just felt so far away – success of any kind, or glamour, felt far away. Whenever a Scottish band would succeed on a national level it felt really immense. 

 What I also just loved about The Blue Nile was how evocative and sad they sounded. I loved the sorrow in their records, because up until hearing them, I'd hadn't really heard sorrow. I'd heard non-conformity, I'd heard rebelliousness with Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Clash, but I'd not heard sorrow. 

 Depression and sadness have always been a part of my language and my family all sort of thought or considered me a complete freak as a result. They just thought this whole darkness and my gloominess was an annoyance and at best, an irritant. But to me it's always been part of my interfacing with the world. Sorrow, sadness and depression – it's just existed in me and it's part of, I think, human nature. 

 When I heard Blue Nile, I was like, 'Ah, old friend, I recognise you, there you are. Somebody else feels the same as me'. I loved the sort of expansiveness of their sound. It felt very sort of like a modern Frank Sinatra to me, in a way. It's an obvious comparison but the sweeping, Nelson Riddle-esque type of sonic landscapes just really captured my imagination. 
 
 Paul Buchanan's got this ache in his voice that's, again, very unusual. You don't really hear a lot of people sound like Paul. I loved the sort of ordinariness of the lyrics too – it was very much sort of relatable, simple, and unglamorous expressions of love; I just really identified with that. 

 Pop music has always just alienated me for one reason or another – I just don't identify with it or understand it. So somebody like Paul Buchanan and the Blue Nile literally speaks my language. It's a language that isn't often used or utilised in day-to-day culture. I think we're all encouraged to hide our mental health issues, or encouraged to hide our depression, our sadness and our griefs. I believe in the expression of grief: I think it's imperative for a joyful life, and why live if you can't live joyfully? 

 To live joyfully one must express negative emotions. It's really, really important. And those people who shirk from so-called negative expression, I think, are cutting off an entire part of their own happiness and existence."