"That was another record I probably found when I was 16 years old. I'd heard of Brian Eno, but didn't know what he was. I found that album in a cut-out [discounted, end-of-line albums] bin of a hardware store that happened to selling music, for reasons I don't understand to this day. Among the Kenny G and New Kids on the Block cut-outs, I saw Brian Eno. 'I've heard of Brian Eno. I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be cool. What's he doing here?' I bought the tape, because it was only $2.99, took it home and just had my little domepiece blown. Again, here was this really weirdly beautifully produced record, where I could barely understand where the sounds were coming from. But he sounded like a refugee from theatre world, because the songs were so rich and dramatic and theatrical, and painted such vivid lyrical pictures. It was right up my fucking alley, and it hit me at the perfect time."

"No matter how much my vibe changes I think this one probably stays on [the list] consistently and that’s Midnight Express. That one is always in my top five. I think it goes through all the emotions. It puts you on the edge of your seat, it breaks your heart, it scares the crap out of you. I even laugh a little when they do that yoga scene. That’s the one thing I’ve never really understood. Do you remember that part? When they do naked yoga together? I understand what they’re conveying, that these two people find companionship and peace inside of all the insanity going on around them. The blond guy and your main character, Billy, have this, like… it’s not romantic, but it’s very… it is sensual in a way, this yoga scene, together, and the way they shot it with the light coming through the window. It always makes me chuckle. But yeah, Midnight Express, man, it’s always on the top five."

"This is a really obscure one, but there’s a really weird French-Canadian movie called Leolo. Roger Ebert loved it. He gave it a four-star review when it came out. The filmmaker, Jean-Claude Lauzon… He made two movies and then he died. It’s a really tragic story. It’s this surreal, messed-up story about a kid whose family is going insane, and so he comes up with these fantastical stories to escape from his world. I saw that movie when I was in high school, and it just made such an impression on me because of the way it balanced humor and absurdity, and surrealism, and then just tragedy. It’s great. I should probably see it again. I haven’t seen it in a couple of years, so I want to make sure it still stands up. That movie is another very particularly strange coming-of-age movie that will always be a reference for me."

"I’m going to go with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s amazing. It’s just one of those films that, if it’s on — I have the DVD too — but if it’s on, I just can’t not watch it. A lot of times, that’s how I know that films are my favorite, if they’re on and I just can’t change the channel, and just have to watch it, even though I’ve seen it a million times, and it holds up and it’s still fresh, and it still feels good to me. That’s one of those films. I love everything about it. Again, it’s just one of those movies that makes you think, and it’s inspiring, and it just feels good, and it feels magical. I love Richard Dreyfuss as well, and Jaws is also one of my favorite films. But just the performance, and the whole tones at the end with the aliens, as they’re coming out, it’s just a feelgood film.#"

"Then there’s another documentary that I saw last time at Sundance, which is called Position Among the Stars. This is a Dutch-Indonesian director who has made a portrait of one family over the course of 12 years in Indonesia. His name is Leonard Retel Helmrich. I talked to him for a few hours on the last day, before he won the award in Sundance, about what he was doing and how he was doing it, because the way in which he conducts his camera is completely different. He said, “I wanted to make a very simple portrait about a very poor family in Indonesia and see if I could find a link to the bigger picture, so to speak, and the alignment of the stars above their head.” And he succeeded. It’s an awesome documentary. It’s just a portrait of a small family, with a universal theme coming out of it at the end."

"I, as a child, loved Mary Poppins. Something about these misunderstood kids who couldn’t catch a break, and this fantastic woman coming into their life and showing them this other world, and yet also being so coy: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What world do you mean?” I just really liked escapism as a child, I guess. The time element of Britain in another era, and then this fantastical element of going into pictures and cartoons and flying and laughing. It’s like it was so exciting to me, even though it came out 30 years before I was born. Something like that. It was a real go-to as a kid. In the last two and a half decades, it still works. It doesn’t drag. It’s still like the magic is still there. Whereas maybe other films from that era may or may not have aged quite as gracefully as Mary Poppins has."

"I only heard this for the first time about six years ago. It was just like this culmination of melody… like the way he… Why do I love it? I don't know. What I love about his music is the playfulness, the way he plays with words, his sense of humour. There's no clear obvious harmony, no clear obvious arrangements. It's very individual: it doesn't sound like a particular style. It has, actually, a little bit of a jazz style, because he was coming out of jazz: that was his love. It's like he's this poet who's finding the music that will fit for each song. It's kind of how I approach my music, too. You're not looking at it like, "This song is going to be this kind of song"; it's more like: "This song is about this and so maybe I'll make these sounds with it." It's a much more playful approach to music. I like that. I identify with that a lot."