"I’m a huge fan of those Richard Linklater films, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, which are kind of like one movie, I think — I’ll call those one movie, ’cause it’s of a piece, right? I don’t know, just something about watching Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy walk around European towns and fall in love. That movie taught me how active dialogue can be if underneath it is something dramatic. And I love Richard Linklater for that, because he loves dialogue and he lets his characters talk and I certainly want to let my characters talk. It’s not all quivering lips and, you know, weird angles. He really just puts the camera on people and lets it be dramatic."

"I’m a huge fan of those Richard Linklater films, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, which are kind of like one movie, I think — I’ll call those one movie, ’cause it’s of a piece, right? I don’t know, just something about watching Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy walk around European towns and fall in love. That movie taught me how active dialogue can be if underneath it is something dramatic. And I love Richard Linklater for that, because he loves dialogue and he lets his characters talk and I certainly want to let my characters talk. It’s not all quivering lips and, you know, weird angles. He really just puts the camera on people and lets it be dramatic."

"I’ve seen this movie more times than I can count. I think it’s the best movie about being a kid ever made. It’s a fairy tale and a nightmare and a totally believable portrayal of a Swedish family in Uppsala at the turn of the twentieth century, all at the same time. It has always reminded me of one of my favorite novels, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. It’s also a movie about the weird magic of theater . . . Both the opening sequence and the reading from Strindberg at the end kill me. And the way Bergman shoots inanimate objects . . . The statues and the toy angels and the clocks and the puppets and the lamps . . . They’re all watching Alexander, the whole movie."

"Okay, well now I’ve got one of two. Either The Muppets, the new movie, or a film called Monsters, which I really liked. I think I might put that one in. I loved the production design, which I gather [Gareth Edwards] did all himself, and the music by John Hopkins. I’m a huge fan of his music anyway, and his music is what introduced me to the film, which is weird. I look for anything that John’s done, and discovered he’d done the music to this film Monsters. I loved the soundtrack and I thought, “I wonder what this film’s like?” I loved the movie. I thought it was a terrific job."

"Most people know Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson album, but what's interesting is that in the early '90s, he actually went into a dark, weird phase that French people don't really like. They consider his music from that time weak. But for me, it's the best. It's porn, it's queer, it's rap before that was a thing in France. It's just him mumbling obscene things on drum-and-guitar heavy production, really raw and tough. At the same time, it's poetic. The contrast is interesting: it's beautiful but dirty. On this album, Gainsbourg is hiding behind nothing. You get everything: the obsessions, the lust, the weaknesses, the scars. You see everything ugly and everything beautiful."

"Come on, it’s common sense. Jaws is a fantastic film. Maybe the second film I saw in my life — I saw The Gumball Rally prior to Jaws — but Jaws is the first one that made a deep, deep impression. I saw it a drive-in with my parents when I was five, which is kinda weird in retrospective. It was PG at the time. My kid’s nine and my wife still won’t let me show her Jaws. I made the mistake of showing my kid Gremlins when she was six and I have heard no end of it from my old lady. She’s all, “She’s still afraid of Gremlins.” Gremlins is a harmless f–king movie."

"There’s so much great stuff in the Song Poems catalogue, but Rod Keith is a favourite of mine. Everybody has their own favourite catalogue, but ‘Little Rug Bug', that song was great. All the songs with Rodd Keith doing the chamberlain thing with a pretend orchestra on a chamberlain are amazing. It’s a keyboard with string samples built into it. It’s like a Melotron. You kind of hear it on ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Flying’ on Magical Mystery Tour. It just has an unreal quality to it, with an orchestra that’s just on some fuckin' weird boogie-woogie drug. It’s like Harry Merry in a way. It just sounds like a malfunctioning pre-set."

"I revisited this recently after telling some friends to watch it. When you think of the time this was made, and you realize this is a story about a pregnant girl who decides to get her own place and make best friends with a gay man, it’s pretty astonishing. Everything about her life and the morality depicted in it is so 1950s, but she’s this outcast, and is not even very likable. But you’re completely on her side. Can you think of another female role like that? It’s a really complicated portrait of a young woman who doesn’t want to get married and just wants to live in her weird house with her friend."