"For me, it is the most alive and electric filmmaking. [Martin Scorsese is] obviously one of the greats, but he brought that ’70s filmmaking to 1990, which… I can’t believe it’s a 1990 film. I love gangster films and I love The Godfather, but I am a Goodfellas girl. I thought there was just so much captured in the masculinity of it and the relationships between men, the family dynamic, the structure of it, the mafia, that sort of hierarchy and camaraderie. I just think it’s one of the most exciting films ever made, of course. The writing is extraordinary, as is the improvisation of it. And seeing what he puts in a frame during a scene, like Joe Pesci telling the story, and you think it’s a funny scene when you realize it’s really just like these two setups over and over and that these… You sort of see the layout of the guys in the background who’s listening and the tension that he’s able to create by just hanging on something. That was something that I was trying to bring into [Hustlers]: in terms of how he treated violence, that was something that I felt about how to treat the nudity, in a way. So it was a touchstone for me in how to, not just approach anti-heroes or an underworld, but also just… What’s the difference between the gun and a body as being used, being weaponized? And an outfit, a bandage dress, being weaponized, you know? And the role that each of them play in that hustle and in the group."

"I was already into the game and I already knew Cube when this came out. I already knew Public Enemy too because I worked with them with my first band, The 7A3 and they produced one song on our album. At this time, I was hip to the game and when Ice Cube released this record I was just like 'This is fucking dope.' I knew a little of what to expect [from hearing mixtapes] but he was taking the best from two different coasts and just putting them both together; you knew this shit was going to be special – there's no way it could not be. With his time in NWA coming out of the West Coast, it was the first time you heard a great rapper coming out of that area: not a good one, but a great one with power. Now you had a West Coast MC with a New York based production unit, a New York sound which was something revolutionary in the game and I felt that the power that he brought was incredible. Ice Cube brought what was going on in certain parts of LA to the world. He left NWA, he did his first solo album with Public Enemy's producers. The storytelling, the self-centric lyricism of Ice Cube was phenomenal: that shit just took over. It was in many ways like a gangster Public Enemy and it changed the way people viewed and listened to this music, including me. Previously, you thought there were limits to how far you could go when you listened to this type of music but he just shattered every fucking limit that you thought there was: Ice Cube shattered your perception of music."