"Star Wars, the first trilogy. Obviously Star Wars is one of the landmark films of all time, being ahead of its time with special effects — the overall scope and perspective of that film being what it was at that time; not to mention the ingenuity of the story line and the character development of all of those films. I really like the fact that not only are we dealing with great characters, great storylines, great special effects, and all of those things, there’s the extra added element of spirituality, which a lot of people seem to either not recognize or ignore. But the fact is you’re talking about the dark side of the Force and the light side and what’s good and evil, and the Emperor, and the politics; there’s a lot of politics involved. I think it’s a great reflection on life as a whole."

"Star Wars, the first trilogy. Obviously Star Wars is one of the landmark films of all time, being ahead of its time with special effects — the overall scope and perspective of that film being what it was at that time; not to mention the ingenuity of the story line and the character development of all of those films. I really like the fact that not only are we dealing with great characters, great storylines, great special effects, and all of those things, there’s the extra added element of spirituality, which a lot of people seem to either not recognize or ignore. But the fact is you’re talking about the dark side of the Force and the light side and what’s good and evil, and the Emperor, and the politics; there’s a lot of politics involved. I think it’s a great reflection on life as a whole."

"Star Wars, the first trilogy. Obviously Star Wars is one of the landmark films of all time, being ahead of its time with special effects — the overall scope and perspective of that film being what it was at that time; not to mention the ingenuity of the story line and the character development of all of those films. I really like the fact that not only are we dealing with great characters, great storylines, great special effects, and all of those things, there’s the extra added element of spirituality, which a lot of people seem to either not recognize or ignore. But the fact is you’re talking about the dark side of the Force and the light side and what’s good and evil, and the Emperor, and the politics; there’s a lot of politics involved. I think it’s a great reflection on life as a whole."

"I don’t know if it’s too early to say it, but I’m really in love with Creed. It made me cry… It touched me when Rocky was talking to Adrian and Paulie at the graveyard and he said, “Everything’s good. Bills are paid.” And I was like, ‘Wow.’ I loved his peace and his contentment. At one moment, you wanna take over the world, and the next minute, you just want the essentials. Him reading the newspaper there at the graveyard — it just felt right to me that he was finally content. I like the entire Rocky franchise and this brought it full circle for me. I love the Philadelphia theme and the music from Meek Mill. And instead of climbing to the top of a mountain, Michael B. Jordan was running with the motorcycles. He was doing the new things Philadelphia people are doing."

"And then just, even like comedies of the 1980s, I mean the Three Amigos, I grew up with… It’s such a great movie. I was just talking to someone about it actually and I haven’t seen The Jerk before and we were both saying… she’s a director I just worked with and she grew up watching Three Amigos and loved, obviously, Steve Martin and Martin Short and Chevy Chase. It’s such a simple and ridiculous storyline that it just works. It’s like from the off, you’re just in on this little joke, you know. It’s so great. So I loved that when I was growing up. She was telling me The Jerk, I’d never seen The Jerk before, and I watched it a couple of weeks ago for the first time and it was, again, just really great, kind of like, SNL humor that I really love."

"Watching silent films and seeing how difficult it was to come across without actually voicing stuff was such a different process. Then I started to think about Sunset Boulevard. It's a movie about an old silent movie actress who lives in the Hills on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. and she has a butler and this guy who's having a little bit of trouble. She's just nuts and alone — similarly like Cleo [in 5 to 7] — talking about how she used to be the number-one film actress. She's so desperate to get this man to stay and be her partner. He's so much younger than her. This movie is so insane. I was thinking about that when I made the video for "All Mirrors." The staircase and the grandiose Art Deco feel of that is very related to the isolated feeling the woman has in Sunset Boulevard."

"I love that album because it’s in two parts. The first part is mostly him recording everything himself and doing like a print thing where he’s exploring the studio. He’s a great producer – he did Bat Out Of Hell and loads of other stuff as well – he knows studios and studio techniques and trickery. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, and I always enjoy listening to people who are like that because they often approach their second and third instruments totally differently to an accomplished drummer or bass player. But the second part is with his band, who are also great. It ticks both boxes really! I think of these as classic rock songs even though English people never know who I’m talking about. So I feel like I’m part of some little exclusive club, even though everyone in America knows everything about Todd Rundgren [laughs]."

"I think this song is an early example of me hearing something and realising that a song doesn't just have to be guitar and bass and drums - a song can just be whatever you want to make it. I actually first discovered Suicide through Bruce Springsteen; he spoke about how much they had been a big influence on his record Nebraska. The song ‘State Trooper ’is very similar to it and he said in an interview that he was trying to do what Suicide does. This was a reference because of its sonic palette. In the back half of my song ‘Savannah’ there's this spoken word moment that happens in this underlying low bass tone that I'm talking over and it was definitely influenced by this song. It has a tremolo on it and the song’s shaking in this way that ‘Ghost Rider’ does."

"I’m sort of torn on my last film between Badlands and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. I’m on the fence — I love both of those films. Badlands, for me, is a very important film because I feel like a lot of the time it’s the kind of film I would love to make, if I could just make one. It’s so small, but really perfect. I think another great example of a film, which is like a second film, that people don’t think about, is Days of Heaven, which is again another flawless film. His use of voice over is the best out of any filmmaker. Linda Manz, her voiceover, nothing can beat it, you know. I always think that if there’s a voiceover in a film, it’s gotta be like that, where it?s not telling you what’s happening, it’s talking about completely different things. It’s incredible."