"For me, this is the best guitar fuzz sound on record; it’s absolutely brilliant. I’ve been trying to get that sound and I’ve never got close, I’ve no idea what it is, apparently The Music Machine made their own pedals. They’re well-known to people who are into garage, psych-y stuff and I discovered them via Nuggets or Rubble compilation, or something like that. It’s strange, I love that song - I’m not hugely keen on the vocal but it doesn’t really matter to me on this song, it suits its purpose. It’s like the opposite of The Zombies’ Colin Blunstone’s voice. It’s not sweet and melodic, it’s gritty and punky and not my usual sort of thing but it screams attitude to me. It’s the sleaziest thing I’ve ever heard and it’s very, very inspiring for production. It’s the whole groove of it, the whole thing, but it all comes back to that guitar fuzz sound. With bands like The Beatles there’s so many books that go into the recording techniques, but not so with The Music Machine. Personally, I’ve learnt that the problem with fuzz tones is that, for example, people say you can get the fuzz sound from The Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ by buying a Maestro Fuzz-Tone pedal, but I’ve seen countless demo’s of them and it sounds nothing like it, because it all depends on all the elements, like whether the guitar went straight into the board or if it was played through a broken speaker, or any number of things. There’s no way of knowing for sure. Maybe it’s because it was the ‘60s. Things weren’t documented but I still do it now, I get a sound and I won’t make notes on it because it’s like, “Why would I sit there and make notes on exactly what I did?”, so it becomes kind of lost and when people ask, “How did you get that sound?”, I don’t remember. Maybe it’s something that’s meant to happen - almost like you’re not meant to know, for ‘Trouble’ maybe it was the sound of the leather gloves they wore. The Music Machine had a very strange look, I think the singer wore a single leather glove and the rest of them wore roll necks and medallions."

"When we were fourth-graders, Phil wrote and performed a parody of Mr. Rogers. It’s a common enough reaction for a budding culture vulture: to make fun of the sincerity of the gentle TV icon’s work. An approach so easy, a fourth-grader could do it. We first met Mari Heller 20 years ago, hanging out in our circle of similarly sarcastic comedians — and then, as now, she was interested in more than just undercutting earnestness. Her insightful, incisive, curious and, as always, confident new film makes us laugh, but it’s all part of the con. The laughs start with Rogers’ refusal to conform to the expectations of Lloyd, the flummoxed cynical guy who can’t believe Rogers is for real. We begin to laugh instead at Lloyd’s frustration, and before long we are left exposed, without an off-ramp, leading us irrevocably to getting what we secretly came for — to cry our eyes out. Fitting that her film about our fear of emotion is delivered with a fearless emotionality that moves us even as it mystifies. Where are the deflecting jokes that protect us from thinking too deeply about what scares us? Is she just going to like, let us cry? Is Tom Hanks just going to stare into my soul and make me grateful for my family? The least she could do is provide every audience member with tissues. We could write 10 paragraphs on her playful use of miniatures, how she always seems to bring out the best in her cinematographers, how she continually finds a way for the form of her film to surprise while never forgetting to reflect its purpose. We could compliment her knack for getting great actors to give some of their greatest performances, how under her care, Tom Hanks roams the movie with inspired playfulness, genuine caring, and private struggle to be his best self. We could even reflect on how a Brooklyn feminist has chosen this maddening, radicalizing, spine-pretzeling cultural moment to make a film about simply being good, and being good simply. But we would rather focus on her warm, disarming way of letting Rogers’ idiosyncrasies — like his snapping of personal photos or his silly puppet voices — first baffle us into a laugh, the way they did when we were smart-aleck adolescents, and then inspire us to grow up (or not!) and accept his loving embrace."

"When we were fourth-graders, Phil wrote and performed a parody of Mr. Rogers. It’s a common enough reaction for a budding culture vulture: to make fun of the sincerity of the gentle TV icon’s work. An approach so easy, a fourth-grader could do it. We first met Mari Heller 20 years ago, hanging out in our circle of similarly sarcastic comedians — and then, as now, she was interested in more than just undercutting earnestness. Her insightful, incisive, curious and, as always, confident new film makes us laugh, but it’s all part of the con. The laughs start with Rogers’ refusal to conform to the expectations of Lloyd, the flummoxed cynical guy who can’t believe Rogers is for real. We begin to laugh instead at Lloyd’s frustration, and before long we are left exposed, without an off-ramp, leading us irrevocably to getting what we secretly came for — to cry our eyes out. Fitting that her film about our fear of emotion is delivered with a fearless emotionality that moves us even as it mystifies. Where are the deflecting jokes that protect us from thinking too deeply about what scares us? Is she just going to like, let us cry? Is Tom Hanks just going to stare into my soul and make me grateful for my family? The least she could do is provide every audience member with tissues. We could write 10 paragraphs on her playful use of miniatures, how she always seems to bring out the best in her cinematographers, how she continually finds a way for the form of her film to surprise while never forgetting to reflect its purpose. We could compliment her knack for getting great actors to give some of their greatest performances, how under her care, Tom Hanks roams the movie with inspired playfulness, genuine caring, and private struggle to be his best self. We could even reflect on how a Brooklyn feminist has chosen this maddening, radicalizing, spine-pretzeling cultural moment to make a film about simply being good, and being good simply. But we would rather focus on her warm, disarming way of letting Rogers’ idiosyncrasies — like his snapping of personal photos or his silly puppet voices — first baffle us into a laugh, the way they did when we were smart-aleck adolescents, and then inspire us to grow up (or not!) and accept his loving embrace."