"I remember going in, this was back when they had VHS, and you go to the movie rental place, and that was probably the last time I saw it, and ET was playing on the TV. I had to finish it there. ET came out and it would stay in the theater for, like nine months. Remember those days, you pay like two dollars, God I’m dating myself, but pay two bucks for an afternoon movie, and go see ET, and it would be there for, like, nine months. I saw it, probably 10, 15 times in the theater. Let alone the rentals afterwards. It’s just one of those things that encapsulates a time period in my childhood, when I had a lot of freedom on my bike and was allowed to go to the theater. It certainly is a throwback to a really good time in my life. Being a young man, coming of age. And, come on, it’s a classic Spielberg movie. It’s beautiful and the music, it’s great. Fantastic."

"It's just fucking mental! I saw it in the cinema at the time and I remember getting up to leave and then the hand coming out of the grave! So great. It goes back to what I was saying about a lot of teen films being about the different kid, who stands apart from their peers. That always resonated with me. I wasn't unpopular as a teenager, I was fine. I wasn't bullied or anything, but I did stand apart from my school mates, because I didn't want to go along with the peer culture in every single sense. I didn't like people telling me what to do, I was too independent. So films about outsiders are always tops in my book. And of course poor old Carrie is a text book example of evangelistic religiosity turning sour. It's the most amazing revenge film ever. I interviewed Kurt Cobain and he said 'I'm the guy that would be most likely to kill everyone at a high school dance' and I said, 'you mean like Carrie?' He really liked that."

"The reason I love it is it’s the ultimate adaptation. You know, memes coming out in your films. This guy makes a film every two, three years, is making, making, making, and all the money goes away and they come to him and they say, “Okay, you can make it for TV. You can make whatever you want,” and he walks up to a building complex and he goes right, The Ten Commandments in that building. How do you do that? He makes 10 movies in a year — three of them I think they released later on as features. And you look at them and they have the balls of a student movie, like a short film about killing. It’s just all about the process. It isn’t about hanging the guy or not hanging the guy, it’s just what it takes to hang a guy. And just stuff like that, that I just think, “How do you do that?” I don’t think it’ll ever happen — at least in my lifetime."

"What I love most about this film is its scale, its claustrophobic shots, its intensely glamorous women coming in and out of a single room, and its acute exploration of a single woman’s downfall. We’re seeing a pattern here in these movies; I struggle with anxiety, I struggle with depression, I often feel crazy dealing with my own emotions and the emotions of others, and I am continually fascinated by cinematic representations of women dealing with the same things. Petra von Kant scrapes at the bottom of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a successful woman, what it means to be a woman in love and have all of these things and yet feel worthless. It’s also about a life in fashion, which is something that I’ve lived. There’s just a tension in that film between interiority and exteriority, embodied so well by those hyper-stylized shots and the cinematography. The film articulates a very specifically feminine kind of anguish that Fassbinder captures so well."

"This was what my sister was listening to in her room and when I heard it there was a defining moment. We all have these pivotal moments where there’s a sense of clarity where we can recall what we were seeing at the time, we can remember what things smelled like and their color and I remember walking through the hallway of our house and hearing ‘Heartbreaker’ coming out of her room and the world stopped. I was stunned because it struck such a nerve and had so much energy. Then when the solo came on I discovered another dimension of music. I was probably ten or eleven. I hadn’t picked up a guitar by this point but that’s when I knew I had to play. I had seen guitars since I was in kindergarten and was obsessed by finding photos of guitars but after hearing Led Zeppelin II I crossed the line between just liking guitars and wishing I could play one, to saying, ‘Ok, I’m going to play…’"

"That’s another one for me that, basically it’s stunning how — it’s an incredible watch. And I think it’s the performances, again, I find riveting. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are just incredible. It’s just such a beautiful film, I think. The story is incredible, it’s so well made. I think Frank [Darabont] dialed in on the direction — I love all of his movies. They have a style that I really like. Anytime I think of this movie, it’s just a sweeping shot coming over the prison while Morgan Freeman is narrating his — it’s such an incredible sense of memories. I went to see it with my parents; I guess I was thirteen when it came out. I think I was — or fourteen — and I remember just being absolutely blown away by it. I mean I know it’s one that’s on nearly everybody’s list, but for me it was also — it was kind of like the first sort of grown-up movie that I went to see with my parents, and that we could have a proper conversation about."