"Kubrick has always been my keystone filmmaker. It was when I saw 2001 at age seven on opening weekend in New York that I first had my mind blown by a film. (And yes, I got to see the infamous nineteen minutes before they were cut!) I didn’t understand it, but I became obsessed with understanding it, dragging my poor dad back to it over and over. It changed my life . . . and I still have the Criterion laserdisc—my first Criterion purchase. The extras on the LD were—and still are—extraordinary, even if the picture quality has long been surpassed on Blu-ray. This film is why I’ve kept my rickety laserdisc player. (I’d love to see Criterion get ahold of 2001 again and what they could do with this greatest of all science-fiction films with modern 4K technology.) Paths of Glory was the second Kubrick film I saw, a couple of years later, when my dad took me to a revival house (I think it was the Carnegie Hall Cinema). He loved the film and its unflinching, humanist, antiwar stance, and it immediately became a huge touchstone for me. Its influence is all over my film A Midnight Clear, but I see it in other ways in almost everything I do. I was so excited when the Blu-ray was announced that I ordered two, so I could store one as a backup in case—God forbid—anything happened to my first copy and the disc went out of print."

"This is another great example of repetition, something simple and small that carries a huge resonance. There’s that line he keeps repeating: 'Don’t give up, 2000 man.' That whole record has got this incredible apocalyptic feel and the scene they paint over and over again is one of Earth covered in detritus from this era that’s become obsolete; something happened to humans and now all their crap is left everywhere, their computer keyboards and so on. “I’ve used that idea six times in my own band: the title ‘Qwerty Finger’ is about a qwerty keyboard that washes up on a beach and at the end of ‘NASA Is On Your Side’ you’ve got children climbing over fridges. It’s because that imagery is so powerful and I don’t think anyone really went there again. “I kind of believe that will happen and I don’t know if I believe it because of Grandaddy or because it’s a rational thing to think, but I do and I do still believe that our time will pass and all of our technology and crap will come to nothing. That’s a big influence for a band to have on a little boy I think. “This song is probably the best one on there and the way it just keeps on going is incredible, both in terms of its length and that churning message: 'Don’t give up'. It made me feel that I was the start of life around that age, the ‘2000 man’ and that’s very powerful stuff if you hit the right kid at the right time."