"I remember seeing it at the time and thinking it was fantastically irritating. It was the post punk period and I didn't really like that woozy American liberal culture of the time. Then I re-watched it a few years later and really enjoyed it. It's so amoral and horrible and of course there's the kind of post Vietnam thing of all the people who are against the ROTC and the militaristic guys. The end scene where they totally fuck up the parade is just amazing. It's very entertaining and now it looks really great. That American liberalism looks like an endangered species these days. Something like Animal House or Smokey and the Bandit couldn't be made now – smoking joints and breaking the law – America's gone a lot more right wing since then."

"Also based on a book. Coming from a super, super anal place as a filmmaker, the idea that the greatest hands-on auteur [Alfred Hitchcock] in cinema history made a movie with his hand buried in there perfectly–a lot of his movies, his hand is on top, and in this one, his hand was buried perfectly in there. Again, I’m not sure what genre it is and I love it because of that. Is it scary? I’m not sure it is. Is it a drama? For sure. Is it a romance? Yeah. And I love it, so elegantly done, I so fell in love with those characters, the performances were amazing. It was epic and haunting, and it was just its own perfect little gem that will never be re-created."

"I love this album. We used to play these tunes in The Idle Race; about two or three songs off that album. For about a year we did them and they were so good to play. That big, rough r'n'b sound. I’ve actually recorded ‘Mercy, Mercy’ on my new album, Longwave. It’s a version like we used to do it – just two guitars, drums and bass and background shouting. It sounds like the old record, really. I think that sound was important back then. There was a lot of r'n'b going on. Obviously, you had The Spencer Davis Group with Steve Winwood, who I love – he’s a brilliant guy. He’s one guy I’d like to work with one day. I haven’t seen him for a few years but we used to hang out a bit."

"It’s one of the most perfectly produced albums ever. The songs are great. It’s definitely Lou Reed at his best. I listened to it thousands of times when I was growing up. It was the must have record when I was at college. Everybody that got into punk had it in their collection at some point. It was a celebration of New York City – a writer writing about their hometown. It was quite a dangerous record. Visually he looked OK, but the music was far more subtle than all the glam stuff that was really in your face, like T-Rex and early Bowie. I was also a big Andy Warhol fan. I’d listened to the Velvets a lot, but it was quite a jump from that to the quality of this record."