"This song is really important. I fell in love with it when it was released about ten years ago and we played it at our wedding. It’s really bittersweet, about wishing someone you’ve left high and dry the best of luck, wondering what went wrong and hoping that wherever they are, they’re going to find a path and be OK. There’s a lot of question marks in the song and it’s absolutely beautiful. I think I heard it on a radio station in Los Angeles, it didn’t get Top 40 radio play but one of the public access stations, KCRW plays a lot of new music. It struck me as a beautifully well-crafted song and again it’s a song I wish I’d written. He hit the nail on the head, there’s a lot of questioning going on, regret and searching within yourself, trying to reconcile what happened and trying to move forward. We did play a few upbeat songs at the wedding post the ceremony itself at the reception, but my wife and I also wanted to play some songs that meant something to us. Some of those songs are dark and sad, but sometimes those kind of songs make me feel good. We played ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ as we came up to the altar, it was in a park, so it wasn’t really an altar, it was a non-religious wedding. We left the spot where we got married and played this as we walked up to the reception, with these outdoor tables for us and our friends to hang out. Some people might have thought it was an odd choice, but I was deeply moved by it and still am when I hear that song. This song moves me to tears every time I hear it, I swear to God. It’s probably in my top ten songs of all time. I have a list on my Mac that I call my ‘bummer songs’, because when I listen to bummer songs they make me feel good for some reason and this is the first song on the list."

"[Anything in Ashby’s] body of work is always recognizably him, but it’s pretty elastic. Like Being There is very different than Shampoo in a lot of ways. There’s a little bit of the surreal that can enter in, but at the same time, they’re very grounded and very of their time, and have a certain gritty feel to them. They’re not so clean. There’s a naturalism there that he marries with some very bold moves and even magical realism. [The Landlord] is this movie that not too many people have seen, didn’t have a big release originally, and it’s hard to find on DVD, and doesn’t have the reputation of Harold and Maude and Coming Home. But I kind of think it might be his best movie. Maybe it’s just because it’s so screamingly brave in a lot of ways, and it hits so many issues. There’s so few American movies that touch on class, and this just comes straight at you like a train, talking about class issues, race. [It’s about] this young man who’s born into privilege, struggling with his place. “He is to the manor born,” you know? He has money in his blood, and he can afford to go buy a building where people are living. Just a young man, Beau Bridges, and it’s probably my favorite thing I’ve ever seen Beau Bridges do, too. It’s sort of startling to see him in this role as the golden boy, and you can almost see Jeff Bridges playing it, too. And the fact that this white guy, automatically, just by the color of his skin and the place he was born and the family he was born into, has the ability to be responsible for the lives of all of these far less fortunate or privileged people. [He struggles] with that sense of responsibility and [tries] to reject it and give up that control, but [also] do right by these people. I don’t know, it’s so complex. But [Ashby’s] not afraid to have some very broad comic moments. You know, there’s a few people who can do it since. Like Alexander Payne or David O. Russell, a few other people whose work you can see owe a lot to Ashby."