"For number five, I’m just going to say Big Fish, which Tim Burton directed. I think that’s one that sons and fathers can connect to. So that’s a real tear-jerker, but also I just love the acting in it. I love how it looks. I love Tim Burton movies. And, yeah, that one was pretty great. I will sit and watch that when or if it’s on, even though I’ve seen it like two dozen times."

"Preston Sturges at his best. This was the first of his films I ever saw, in a revival at the Regency in New York, and it was a revelation. You’ve never heard dialogue so funny or move so fast. Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda are hysterical, and it has maybe my favorite line ever in a movie—Fonda asks a fancy old society lady at a dinner party if he’s missed anything. She says, “The fish was a poem.”"

"This was the first in a series of books that feature a mouse, a vain cat, and a wombat. Everything the wombat says is nonsense (“Oh wonderful, fish—my favorite fruit.”), and it made me howl with laughter as a kid. I was brought up in East Africa, and was at school with all the international kids. We’d all been given our copies of A.A.Milne and Dr. Seuss, but people know those books. The Muddleheaded Wombat deserves a place among them."

"A late-night friend right up there with Cosmos and Hearts of Space. I’m sure I wouldn’t like this series as much without the Matt Dillon segment (episode three). The camaraderie in the other pieces is great, but the tension of that segment is built in real-time improvisation. The story unfolds right before you—one of the coolest, most magical feelings you can get. I still get really uncomfortable at the fish/trousers part in the Tom Waits episode, though."