"Growing up in America in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s every Sunday evening there was The Walt Disney Hour on TV and before they played whatever Walt Disney movie or animation that was on, they would always begin with ‘When You Wish Upon a Star.’ This was probably the first embedding of music into your DNA outside of something that your parents might listen to on the radio, this was something that was wholly your own, because this was children’s music. “Your parents would plop you down in front of the television set on a Sunday night and this was your hour of music basically, so for myself, Grasshopper and a number of other people this otherworldly song was really the first music that informed you. Whatever music was to come in your life, this was the first information that was literally downloaded into your bloodstream. “Early on in Mercury Rev we were using feedback and Grasshopper was using guitar elements, because we’d yet to learn how to score orchestrally ourselves, we were just too young. Yerself is Steam was our early attempt at orchestrating but we were using feedback and noise and basically any note we could grab on the fretboard or the piano, because we weren’t really accomplished rock musicians. Like everyone, when you begin you sort of fumble around. “The idea of the layering and the dynamics that are in some of those very early Disney movies, such as Fantasia or Pinocchio was definitely in our consciousness. It was definitely one of the few things we could lean on as teenagers."

"I actually own a print of this. It’s one of those movies that was pivotal [for] me. I remember it screened in 16mm at my high school. The emotional power of that movie — it’s the first time I ever felt such intense emotion watching a film. I wasn’t that well-versed in film in high school, but I knew I was being hit by something incredibly powerful. What really struck me was Marlon Brando’s performance. And I know that’s easy to say, but that’s why I never get tired of watching the film, and why I really wanted to own a print because there’s a level of acting there that went beyond anything I had seen before. And it still ranks as maybe the best performance I’ve ever seen on film. I find it fascinating every time I watch it. Plus he’s surrounded by a brilliant cast and also the location — the way the film was shot on location — at that time, it had never been done before. All of that adds to the fact that I have a pretty lousy print of the movie but that’s what’s fun about it — it even feels more real. And then Criterion — to be completely geeked out — released it again last year, and I didn’t know it was shot in three different formats. Television was becoming popular at the time so they didn’t know if they would go widescreen with it, 1:85, or the typical way I think it was released, which I think is 1:66, but it’s fascinating to look at those versions as well. This is one of the greats."