"“This surprising spoof autobiography is not only hilarious, but also tender and insightful. Cheeta recounts his days working with Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan’s chimpanzee sidekick, but it’s more than that. He also recalls his capture from the jungle and arrival in America. I can honestly say that I laughed, I cried, and I learned a lot. Why this baby has not seen a movie screen yet is a mystery. It’s another that I read and reread.”"

"I am mainly obsessed with the 1920s and 1930s. A lot of this record is inspired by the art, music, and film of that time, like Aelita, which is this 1920s sci-fi Russian film about a woman who lives in space. Their version of sci-fi in that time period was so elegant, beautiful, and minimal because they didn't have the same kind of imagination yet. It didn't become sci-fi in the way we see it now. "

"It was our second record and we'd gotten considerably better, and were gelling a lot more organically as a group. Soul Food was essentially meant to be a compilation album and we had stumbled upon our own strange brew, and then with Still Standing we went into business together. We totally defined Southern hip hop for what it could be; it could be impact and nationwide. It's still a record I'm proud of to this day."

"I was in fourth grade when it came out and it was the first type of music that I liked, that my dad thought was dogshit. Before that, I was just like, ‘AC/DC is cool, I don’t know.’ When I heard Weezer I loved it and my dad was like, ‘Uh that’s dogshit.’ I was like, ‘You’re fucking wrong, Dad.’ I cursed a lot as an elementary schooler. ‘Surf Wax America,’ ‘Buddy Holly’ all are just classics."

"I can’t leave out Kubrick. I think my favorite Kubrick movie is kind of tied between A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. The Shining meant a lot to me. It was the first movie that made me really want to act. I love Jack Nicholson in that movie. I didn’t know who Jack Nicholson was at the time — I was like 11 when I saw it, but something about what he was doing in that movie just fascinated me."

"The way that the little girl listens to the song she sings again and again really influenced how I try to use music. It’s music that comes from within the story and somehow resonates with the territory that the film is exploring. I was so impressed by that when I saw it for the first time. The way I used music in Gloria, even though it is quite different, somehow owes a lot to this film."

"Now, my favorite films as a more mature person, when I was learning about what the director is and does, probably a lot of them were Howard Hawks movies, like Only Angels Have Wings and Rio Bravo. In Hawks’ world, Only Angels Have Wings and Rio Bravo are his visions of adventure stories with male groups, and men and women’s relationships, and life and death and danger. He’s developed that idea throughout his career. Those are just his beliefs."

"I was turned onto this record—and to Firecracker Recordings in general—in London at Kristina Records, the best record shop I’ve been to in a while. The Panoram record rules. Really abstract and minimal like a lot of stuff coming out this year, but has this very melodic, positive, clubby, acid/’90s vibe to it as well that I really love. The subtle club vibe reminds me of when I was a kid. Super nostalgic and musical."

"The next one would be Dead Alive by Peter Jackson. Again, another animated cartoon with live actors, and this is a film that really showed me how you can take a violent, dark situation and make it comic. Lots of blood, lots of decapitation, lots of violence, and yet it’s a comedy. That was a big influence on me when I started doing I Married a Strange Person!. I really referred a lot to Dead Alive."

"Before the Rain is one of my favorite movies of recent years. I think, in a very interesting way, there is a lot of spiritual thought hidden in the movie. When I saw it, the structure of the movie was very new, how it works with time. In my opinion, “time” will be one of the big topics in the future of telling stories, and how we approach it narratively will change in the next twenty to thirty years."