"The Nutty Professor. So Jerry Lewis, I met Jerry once. We became friends later, but when I first met him, he knew what a fan I was of The Nutty Professor, particularly the Buddy Love performance, and [inaudible] I said to him — and I meant it — I said, “Jerry, it’s just you and Brando,” and he took about a two-minute pause, and he went, “Well, Brando’s good also.” It was hilarious. He was wearing a kimono, if you believe that, a Japanese kimono and tennis shoes. Something about Jerry Lewis’ direction, he believes in the total filmmaker. He felt that you weren’t really a filmmaker unless you starred in it, composed it, edited it, directed it, all of it, and that’s what he was, and I think that The Nutty Professor has also had a huge impact in terms of my own tone, performance style. I’ve borrowed from the Buddy Love character a million times, and so much so that I’ve had directors tell me I need to get new material. I put him in City of Angels, and I got the good fortune of having him play my father in The Trust before he passed on, so Nutty Professor was a big influence."

"I think this is the first Byrds album I owned. I bought it because it had all the singles on it. When I was a kid I didn't have a lot of money so I'd probably go and buy a band's greatest hits album, just to give a taste of the band – I love singles and greatest hits albums. I love this record because every time I hear it, it's joyous, it's transcendental and it makes my spirit soar. Whenever the Beatles and Byrds released 45s, they were all in mono because they were more powerful in terms of mixes. I watched repeats of Ready Steady Go! in the mid-'80s and was entranced by performances of 'Mr Tambourine Man', and also when The Beatles covered it too. The Byrds helped us dream away the greyness and bleakness of Glasgow and the repressiveness of Thatcherist Britain. The Byrds are better than The Beatles for me. I'm more of a Stones guy myself, but The Byrds just portrayed this image of beautiful Californian transcendent sound. That run between '65 and '67 in this compilation of A-sides and B-sides is unbeatable. I almost don't want to use this word, but it's a perfect record and basically formed the foundation of Primal Scream."

"This is a record I love so much. I remember the first night that I heard this I put it on and I was working late on some visual stuff and I left it on for about seven hours and I just didn't want to change it, and I had it on random shuffle so it just kept coming up with surprises. Track two ['Keep The Dog Quiet'] starts with the oddest note that any song could start with. It really is an off note. The main thing about this album is that I'd never heard anything remotely like it – when I heard it I just thought that it was really one of a kind. Still is, actually. This harmonic danger that he puts himself in, of just creating a world that is sonically so tense or dangerous. It's the opposite of secure or comforting but it's not the dangerous of someone like Boulez where, to me, it's sort of contrived danger – "Ooh, wouldn't it be original to put this like this?" It's not that. It's got something that's more intuitive and organic than that. It's having a taste for the other side and a feeling of, "Wouldn't it be nice to be in a place like that?" I love the darkness of it."

"A Man For All Seasons is basically porn for people who love dialogue. Paul Scofield’s brilliant performance. Robert Shaw’s equally brilliant performance as Henry the VII. It’s always appealed to me. I was 13 years old the first time I saw it. Absolutely fell in love with it because it’s wall-to-wall language with compelling performances. And [it’s] about something to me, in terms that I was raised Catholic. So Thomas Moore’s decision to not sign the oath of succession appealed to me as I was growing up because this is a dude who’s martyred for his beliefs and whatnot. And people will always compare that movie to The Crucible for some reason. But I never felt the same connection to The Crucible because in that instance John Procter is just going to great lengths to try to keep his name. Whereas Thomas Moore went to great lengths to keep, what he felt was his soul, intact. By taking that oath it would’ve been selling out on his soul, it would’ve been lying. He couldn’t do it and I always found that insanely admirable and the life one wants to emulate to some degree, without being crazy Catholic at the same time."

"The first time I saw a Bergman film—it may also have been Wild Strawberries—I was a very young man, and I couldnt believe I was seeing what I was seeing. It was as if Moses had brought down the tablets into the movie theatrer. I mean, I’d been staggered by On the Waterfront, but when I saw Bergman—he was so bold, so experimental, doing things no one had ever done before. And now I’ve seen each one of his films so many times . . . I love the fact that the story of My Dinner with André actually begins with a Bergman film. The André character has gone to see Bergman’s Autumn Sonata and has run out of the theater in tears at the moment when Ingrid Bergman, who plays a concert pianist, says, “I was always able to live in my work, but not in my life”—the very dilemma from which André felt he was suffering at the time. Remember? And then a friend finds him leaning against a wall twenty blocks away, sobbing, and the friend tells Wally about it, and that’s what leads Wally to call André, which leads to the dinner. I love so many of Bergman’s films—Persona . . ."

"When you see A Constant Forge, you realize that Cassavetes was living his films at all times. That’s something I definitely tried to do with my past two films—I wasn’t just going somewhere to make a film, I was really living it and making it a lifestyle. There’s sort of an inherent sloppiness that comes with that, but I love it because it feels like the result of just trying to capture what’s happening as opposed to constructing what has happened. I love Cassavetes in general, but Faces in particular has to be one of his most honest and real films, and it definitely feels like it has a maturity to it that you don’t find as much in Shadows, even though Shadowsis incredible. Rossellini always said the shot doesn’t need to be pretty, that for him the first thing is to keep the audience close to the characters and to follow the characters. And in Faces, there are a ton of out-of-focus shots, and it’s anything but pretty. It’s not a film that strikes people because of the magnitude and beauty of its images. It’s more about the relationships and the real life that you feel in it."