"Let’s go with Elephant Man — no, I’m going to go with Blue Velvet, for my David Lynch pick. I’m going to go with Blue Velvet because I love Roy Orbison so much. He was a great influence on me musically, and still is. That’s when I kind of put two and two together — with Blue Velvet — and thought, film is a great way for your music to be heard, without radio. It’s a great way for your music to be heard."

"I revisit this book all the time because it’s so laugh-out-loud funny and stars two totally unique main characters. A grad assistant heroine trying to move on from the past finds herself at odds with a stubborn, ex-army student. (He’s also an amputee, and I love seeing disabled main characters in romance.) Their enemies-to-lovers snark has me screaming every time. And when they finally do get together…whew. Approach with caution and consider wearing heat-resistant equipment." """

"A group of teenagers, led by Cliff Richard, rally together to stop a theatre being demolished. They succeed by putting on a show there. The Young Ones is a gorgeous fantasy, so optimistic and beautiful, about the potential of pop music for young people. It made me want to join a youth theatre, which I did a few years later, and it introduced the six-year-old me to the thrill of both pop music and theatre. They’re still thrilling me today."

"Okay, I’m going to do a hybrid again. Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle and Playtime; I’m going to put those two together. One’s sort of spun off the other, in a way, but you could put either, because it’s really about Tati himself, and the conceptual art of his films. The film that has almost no dialogue, just gibberish and music and human behavior, and staging. Competition is staging, which I found fascinating. They seduce you into paying attention to the simplest of details."

"Okay, I’m going to do a hybrid again. Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle and Playtime; I’m going to put those two together. One’s sort of spun off the other, in a way, but you could put either, because it’s really about Tati himself, and the conceptual art of his films. The film that has almost no dialogue, just gibberish and music and human behavior, and staging. Competition is staging, which I found fascinating. They seduce you into paying attention to the simplest of details."

"I put these two films together because Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort is a light and airy musical with sherbet-colored costumes and a painted town, while the other, Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, is a dark, grimy, semi-autobiographical show-business story about a man who makes musicals. These two classics remind me that music and dance can say more than any other kind of action, and that life is a stage whether you are on it or directing it."

"I put these two films together because Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort is a light and airy musical with sherbet-colored costumes and a painted town, while the other, Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, is a dark, grimy, semi-autobiographical show-business story about a man who makes musicals. These two classics remind me that music and dance can say more than any other kind of action, and that life is a stage whether you are on it or directing it."