"Look, X-Ray Spex is amazing, I could talk about them all day, but I put The Slits, because sonically nothing sounds like them and nothing will ever sound like them again. Their harmonies, the drums, Budgie, Palmolive, oh god, where do you start with The Slits? I mean their name is The Slits. To be 14-years-old in that scene, just to create what they made? If you look at The Sex Pistols at that time, they were a prefabricated band, but not The Slits. The lyrics are so good. They're another one of those bands where it's on every level. Every single layer is so creative and interesting and incredible. It's really multi-faceted. From their personalities, to their feminism, to the politics, which were wishy-washy in this crazy way, but sonically, nothing sounds like that. It was primitive. It was really provocative, it really provoked society and it was so cool. You can't compare anything to The Slits."

"I’m going to put in a strange one now, Any Body Can Dance. This is my favorite movie for the last two years. It’s a Bollywood musical dance movie, and I don’t watch enough Bollywood movies. I watch them on the plane sometime, and you know because I travel a lot from place to place, and this one has been my favorite Bollywood films. It’s nearly unpredictable, you know if you’re coming from a Western point of view, but I _____ the same way Bollywood has a different theater role. So for me it’s always surprising what happens in the story, at least it still is, and this is amazing music and dancing in it. It’s like 20 Indian Michael Jacksons. I’ve seen it twice, and parts of it I’ve seen three times. It’s crazy. It’s unusual for a recent movie for me. Yeah, it’s a weird one. It’s not going to be for everyone, I know."

"I saw it at BAM in Brooklyn when they were doing a Schlöndorff retrospective, and I didn’t previously know much of his work but then got super obsessed with him. What’s cool about him is that his films are all totally different. The Tin Drum is a crazy epic story told through the perspective of this young boy, and the voice-over is incredible and takes you through his experience. A lot of people think the voice-over in We the Animals is a reference to Malick, but we’re actually referencing The Tin Drum. What I love about this movie and Ratcatcher is that they show an understanding of childhood sexuality, which you only really see in European films. The other thing that’s really important about The Tin Drum is the color palette. It has this incredibly vibrant, almost Technicolor palette. I showed the film to my DP and everybody that we worked with."

"A phenomenal slice-of-life family drama directed by the late Edward Yang from Taiwan that exemplifies some of the great realist cinema that was being made in Asian countries during this time (see Ang Lee). And despite the films having very little to do with each other, I always personally associate this film with In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai. Both films were released here in the U.S. at the same time, and I watched both on the same day. That was a crazy day. I still remember how the air tasted after stepping out of the theater that evening. Also—and I feel I have to mention this—I watched a third film that amazing weekend, After Life by Hirokazu Kore-eda, and it was my favorite of the three (and is one of my all-time favorites). Kore-eda has a nice movie called Still Walking available from Criterion, but I am hoping for a nice edition of After Life someday."

"When I first heard Ariel Pink, I was very homesick for LA and was kind of depressed and miserable in the Midwest, which I love, I should add. It had nothing to with the Midwest: it was just the circumstances. This record was one of many things that reminded me that I needed to come back home to LA. There was something about the sound, the love for moving around, both physically and within the music, the sense that you could go wherever you wanted to go in terms of melodies and harmonies. I totally related to the freedom, the crazy characters that are in the songs. I had started recording and I found myself really interested in his passion for building characters in songs. I love his music to this day because he does that so well. Again, it was important for me at a particular time and it continues to be."