"Talking Book blew me away when I was going through a dry period in my writing. I heard Stevie Wonder and thought that I couldn’t improve on what he’s done, he’s such a genius! I just fell in love with it, it was black soul music from that era, but sounds totally, totally now. One of things he developed was the protection of funk through the electronics of synthesiser, keyboard and singing. I think Sly had a lot to do with influencing Stevie at the time as well."

"Psycho is a wonderful, elevated horror film, and it doesn’t necessarily have monsters or ghosts,” Simmons says. “You ever see Psycho? I’m embarrassed to say that there are people out there who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Shame on them. It’s interesting to note Psycho had murders and all this kind of wacky stuff but you never saw a knife go into a body. You never saw a body actually bleed. I think that made it even more horrific. Sometimes the scariest things are what human beings are capable of.”

"Breakfast Club. That movie is awesome. I love it because it really gets to me, especially Anthony Michael Hall‘s part. When he’s talking about how he feels lonely and how he feels pain, too. He calls out Molly Ringwald. He’s all, “You don’t think I feel this way. F— you, Claire.” I love that. I love that. That part gets to me so hard because I had his spirit in high school. Even though you can relate to everyone in a certain way, I feel like I related to him the most internally."

"I kind of felt like it was just so complicated, finding yourself torn between a girlfriend and the mother was just so shocking to me, and so complex. I remember watching it, just being jealous I wasn’t involved in something so complicated and real — things that were never talked about. It felt so taboo at the time. It felt so brave. And I wanted to be in movies like that. That was a long time ago. I need to re-see that. Talking to you is making me want to revisit these movies."

"This movie came out when I was at film school, and everybody was talking about it. However, I resisted seeing it, because it sounded pretentious to me, the idea of a movie made up entirely of single-take scenes with black in between. It wasn’t until a couple years later that I saw it and realized it’s one of the oddest, most sincere and funny movies I’ve ever experienced. Entirely human and completely unique, it’s a movie I’m pretty sure I could watch every day of my life and still enjoy each time."

"Preston Sturges — Lady Eve, with Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, and that’s just a brilliant film. I could have had any number of Preston Sturges films. He’s the funniest director I think. When I was working with Bridget Fonda, we were talking — we were mucking about doing double-takes and she said, “My grandfather did a quadruple take in the Lady Eve.” I thought, “Your grandfather? Oh, your grandfather! Oh, you mean Henry Fonda. Oh, for God’s sake.” So I went back and she’s right. He does a quadruple take."