"I saw this movie for the first time at the Elgin Theater on Eighth Avenue as part of a double feature with The Tenant a long time ago, when I was young and scared. I didn’t like it. But I was young and scared. Eighth Avenue used to be scary. I honestly don’t remember why I didn’t like it, but just a few years later I would be mocking my younger, uninformed self. I absolutely love everything about this movie, from its cheesiness (camera as murder weapon) to its sheer profundity (camera as murder weapon). Anna Massey should be a household name."

"The next one I was going to say, which is Lawrence of Arabia, I actually just saw for the first time last year. I saw it projected at a theater with the intermission and everything. It was just so awesome, and I loved that it’s “introducing” Peter O’Toole. The character’s so complex and interesting and perverse and heroic and everything in a huge movie and it’s never going to happen again to have a character in front of a movie that’s that big, that’s that complicated. The scene where he’s getting, like, whatever is happening to him… It’s wild. I love that movie."

"Eastern Sounds is historically a very important record for me because it contained a riff, which I stole for what was to be my first hit single, ‘I Love My Dog’! I just couldn’t get that melody out of my mind! Eventually I wrote my song based on this record and thought nobody would find out. Later I owned up to it and paid Yusef his royalties for that song. Interestingly he also took his name from the Prophet Joseph/Yousef. We both embraced Islam, but he converted much earlier than I had, I didn’t think about religion at the time."

"Full disclosure: Samantha Irby is my real life actual friend, but that’s only because I was so rabidly obsessed with her perfect, brilliant, peerlessly funny writing that I flew to Chicago and forced her to love me, so I think that hardly counts as a traditional conflict of interest. I was a fan FIRST. This book doesn’t come out until March, but I was lucky enough to read an early manuscript, and it’s exactly the collection of new Samantha Irby essays you’ve been yearning for, the perfect spring promise to keep you trucking through the winter."

"Probably my absolute favourite. It's very influenced by American Graffiti - It's all in one day, it's the end of school, you've got all the teen cliques – but it's not a standard Hollywood feel good-fest, it's tough and quite sharp. You've got those first experiences of drugs and sex and fights and drinking, all to that great soundtrack. And I love all the stoner stuff, it's just really funny. Again, it's that extraordinary seventies American super liberal moment, which is a completely lost age. It recaptures that: 'Lets all hang out. Politics is over, disco is just around the corner."

"Already their second studio album, they had scored hit singles with 'Denis Denis' (I first heard that on my Grandad's window cleaning round) and the sublime 'I'm Always Touched By Your (Presence Dear)', still one of my favourites to this very day. As a whole album, it sounds like a spy movie soundtrack with 'Contact In Red Square' and 'Kidnapper'. Highlights for me include 'I'm On E' and 'Love At The Pier'. The very definition of late 70s New York pop art and punk glamour; Deborah Harry, for me, will remain forever the Queen of New Wave."

"I was obsessed with the video Spike Jonze made for the Björk song “It’s Oh So Quiet.” When I heard he had made a movie, I couldn’t wait to see it. I fell in love with the world he created and all the unusual rules that came with it. I was so on board and wanted to go wherever he and Charlie Kaufman wanted to take me. Watching this movie was the first time I became aware of Catherine Keener (I was slow to discover Walking and Talking). I could not take my eyes off her."

"The Royal Tenenbaums. The style of the movie is so brilliant, and it just had so much character and intrigue, and the characters are all so specific, and funny, and heartbreaking, and as heightened as the world is, everybody’s so grounded. There’s just so much going on in that movie, and it just keeps moving. When you sit through it, you’re never bored through any of it, and I just think that [Wes Anderson] is one of the best directors of all time. I love pretty much everything with Bill Murray in it, so yes, that would be the first one."

"I’m going to put Hitchcock’s Notorious on there — the Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant film — because I think that was one of the first films that I saw as a child where I felt like, “Ok, that’s my favorite movie.” I thought it was the most romantic movie I had ever seen. It’s impeccably written, impeccably constructed, and her performance in it, I think, is really peerless actually. She’s so simple and detailed. It’s a kind of perfect spy movie. I really love that genre and I think she’s incredible in it. I actually think she’s a really under-rated actress."