"Many years ago I was boarding a plane to Las Vegas, planning on doing two things I really enjoyed: gambling and reviewing All-You–Can-Eat buffets (I was young. Thankfully, I got both habits out of my system.). Also boarding was a large passenger sneezing and wheezing. Here was someone who desperately needed a bowl of chicken soup and a flight refund. While he squeezed his way down the aisle looking for his seat, everyone on the plane was thinking the same thing I was—I hope he doesn’t sit next to me. As he settled in next to me, I imagined the worst. Needless to say, by the end of the flight, we not only became friends who still keep in touch twenty years later, but he recommended a book which changed my life. During the flight, he sold me on In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. I asked my mom for this book for Christmas and as my Vegas friend promised, the book was extraordinary. So much so, it convinced me to write my own. Up until that point, I wrote comedy pieces and columns in publications but never anything long form. Speed up to today—20 years later—In the Heart of the Sea has been adapted into a movie and now that I’ve finished my current project (Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores), I plan to publish that illustrated novel inspired by my favorite book. Called The Sea Below Us, it’s a black comedy about the missing Sir John Franklin. I sent a manuscript to Nathaniel Philbrick—whom I have also met and kept in touch with over the years—and thanked him for the inspiration his book provided. He loved the manuscript."

"I can say that, in thinking about it, I was thinking five favorite-ish movies that seemed to be relatively inspiring to me as a filmmaker or something like that. One is a movie called Bad Taste by Peter Jackson. The reason that movie is one of my favorite films is because… two things. One, I saw it when I was very young because it had a very sort of provocative box cover of an alien giving you the middle finger, in the video store; that was very charming to me. It seemed like something that needed to be rented for a sleep over. It’s one of the grossest movies ever, so it was always the benchmark of, like, “Is there a more disgusting movie than this?” And also not a lot of people had seen it so it was like a badge of honor. But more importantly, when I decided that maybe movies was something I wanted to do, that movie was actually the first movie that I think made me think I could maybe do this. Because it was the first time I’d ever seen a movie where I realized how the movie was made. And I realized, “He’s just putting a camera on the back of the car;” “Oh, that’s just him with his friend doing this;” and, “I can see how he built that effect” or “I can see how he used ketchup for blood” or whatever. It was so rough around the edges, yet still compelling and well-made that it kind of gave me this sort of inspiration and confidence to be like, “All I have to do is go do it, like this guy just went and did it.” So that movie is, like, the number one movie that made me think, “Maybe I can try this.”"

"I have to include a Woody Allen film in the list. I’m not sure which one, though. I love him dearly. I mean, he’s such an inspiration to me. And again, this list could change — and particularly, his movie choice could change tomorrow or this afternoon. The one I always love rewatching for pure comedy, for just gags that really resonate with me — which he didn’t direct, but it’s based on a play that he wrote — is Play It Again, Sam, which just has a couple of comic set pieces that really amuse me. I can watch them endlessly. And it’s sort of one of those movies that I always make other people watch or I loan to people. If they take as much joy in them as much as me, then I know that we’re going to be friends for life. [Woody Allen] plays a film critic, funnily enough, and he is sort of given romantic advice by the ghost of Humphrey Bogart, and Bogie appears throughout in places to offer him love advice. But as he sort of points out, you know, “I’m not you.” It’s him trying to sort of romance girls and meet women after his marriage falls apart. But it’s very, very funny, and it just — a bit like After Hours, in a way — it sort of captures the desperation of single men, single men who don’t feel comfortable chasing girls. It has loads of very funny set pieces. It has a sequence where he’s setting up his apartment for a blind date, which is just, to me, one of the most inspired comic routines I’ve ever seen. It’s physical, but it’s verbal as well; it’s sort of him at his most charming, effortless. It’s really good."

"I had an English teacher in high school. You know how every high school has a super hip teacher? Mine was this guy named Leonard Krill. I had been a big fan of David Bowie, and I think Talking Heads had just put out Remain In Light, and of course I knew Brian Eno because he he worked with Bowie and produced Talking Heads and Roxy Music. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts came out and I couldn't afford to buy it, but Leonard Krill loaned it to me so I could tape it. It was again one of those records that I didn't fully understand, because all the vocals come from these weird, disparate sources. I kind of thought because I was listening to a David Byrne and Brian Eno record I would hear David Byrne and Brian Eno's vocals, that it'd sound like one of the records they'd made. On the first listen I didn't quite get it, but after that it became one of my favourite records. In 1999 when I put out the album Play, I was doing some interviews and people were asking where did I get the idea of putting other people's old vocals onto rhythmic music, and I said 'it all started with My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. Without that album I would never ever have had the idea to sample old vocals and put them on my tracks'. It was a direct inspiration - in a really simple way I was copying my heroes. I can't think of any person who has affected modern music more than Brian Eno. If you invented a fictional character like Brian Eno it'd be almost unbelievable."