"I first saw this film in my early 20s, while on a month-long nannying job in Pittsburgh. Having my nights free, I watched movies to while away the time. This movie descended upon me like an intoxicating cloud of nostalgia and bittersweet regret. Paul Newman‘s soul-crushing beauty, Piper Laurie‘s frank intelligence, George C. Scott‘s lizard-like alertness — this was the powerhouse cast of my dreams. While ostensibly a showdown between two very different pool players — Jackie Gleason‘s seasoned veteran, Newman’s distracted con-man — it’s ultimately a searing portrait of ambition run amok and the failure of the American Dream to deliver on its many promises."

"My dad introduced me to cinema when I was a kid, to watch old films and foreign films, and so I think I was just touched by the idea of a young kid getting to know the projectionist in a village and falling in love with the world of cinema. I kind of related to that. And then I related to the idea of a kid’s passion for movies and eventually getting out and making movies himself. I like the idea of that. And the pacing of the film, and the beauty of the cinematography, and the relationship between the boy and the projectionist is very, very sweet and very touching."

"I love altered tunings, and guitarists who use them like Michael Chapman, whose Train Songs album was great. To me, this is like a lost film soundtrack, full of soft beauty, powered by this overdriven electric guitar against found sounds and synths. It makes me think of this trip I did to the Joshua Tree National Park: I hadn't known what was there, and I'd thought the Joshua Tree was just one tree! But walking in the high sierra, the quietest place I'd ever been, the idea of cars, planes, city noise, feeling so far away…there was this silence. This reminds me of that.
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"Let’s start with the most modern one, I suppose. La Grande Bellezza [aka] The Great Beauty. Paolo Sorrentino‘s movie. There’s a million different reasons. I think it’s the elegance of Toni Servillo‘s character. I think he’s almost like Dante going through the three stages of Paradiso, Inferno, Purgatorio. I used to live in Rome, so it’s a beautiful imagination of what Rome is. It’s the furious bacchanal element of the night life. The overzealous, religious conservatism of the daytime. It’s so beautifully done, and it’s elegant and dangerous. It’s intellectual. And buffoonish in all in the same breath. It’s an incredible movie. He’s a wonderful director."

"This is a journey of a film, which ends where we couldn’t have imagined it would. A lesson in complexity, pain, fun, and beauty. Karen Black comes off as a worse actress than she is, and Jack Nicholson comes off as a better actor than he is. I think I saw this on VHS in the mid 1980s and then again at the Cinema Village in New York City in 1989. Throughout both viewings, but more so during the second time, I felt: grateful, grateful. This movie keeps on giving. A month or two ago I remembered the scene between Nicholson’s character and the mute father. I’m grateful for that."

"This novel is cited by many of my author friends as the best in the English language. I, too, am awed by its beauty and intelligence, so much so that I sometimes feel I should stop writing. (I won’t.) The narrator of this story has been bestowed with telepathic powers by virtue of the time of his birth. This proves useful in recounting his life, which is coincidentally wrapped around historical events in India. Rushdie injects much political criticism of the powers that came to be, and this trait in his writing recalls for me George Orwell’s treatise on why we write: politics has much to do with it."

"There are two versions of this that I’m aware of – if you don’t include Atlantic sessions and stuff like that. There’s the version on Let There Be Rock and the version that’s on this live album. And the one on If You Want Blood You’ve Got It is the definitive, mega version, because of the audience. Part of the beauty of the recording is the audience’s contribution to it. It’s hard to tell how much of it is a sound effect of a crowd added afterwards, but when they’re going ‘Angus! Angus!’ it’s hard to not suspend disbelief and really enjoy it for what it is – a great rock moment."

"This relates to my Maggie O’Farrell obsession. She recommended Lucia Berlin in an interview I read a few years ago. So, like any good stalker, I checked it out. These stories feel very contemporary. I suppose if I’ve learned anything from reading, it’s that people don’t change very much through the ages. Our personal problems and our joys are entirely relatable, whatever the era. The women Berlin writes about seem entirely real. You can feel them in the room with you. There is humor and real beauty in her words. If I was the underlining type, these books would be heaving with biro. But I’m no vandal."