Vince Staples

“Robert Townsend, you do not get enough credit. We love you for your creativity. The Five Heartbeats, The Meteor Man, Hollywood Shuffle. We love it. The satire in here. The commentary here. The tongue-in-cheek delivery of the lines. The mustache and the haircut. We learned a lot from you. One of the people I wish we said his name more. So I’m saying it right now.”

“Videodrome. Now, the first five minutes are off-putting. I get it. But we live in this right now. You’re on the internet. You’re on the television. We’re imitating what we see through our art, through our lives, the way that we communicate. So shout out to Davy boy for doing this. I watch this on airplanes, I watch it with my family at the House and they tell me to turn my weird movies off. This is the one. Please, please watch this.”

“This right here with Nicole Kidman and the two– the two pale babies, excuse me, scared the shit out of me as a child. And then the discovery at the end – I won’t spoil it, because I don’t know how many of you children have seen this, but this is a hit, okay? Certified banger. Watch The Others.”

“And I’m going to pick up WALL·E. WALL·E’s in the Closet next to Lost Highway and Malcolm X. Animation has always been important to me. WALL·E being here is crazy. You will find me at the Disneyland, I promise you. If you thought that was me, that was me.”

“This is Jo Dancer, a film by Richard Pryor. And the weird thing about this is that it might not have been the most successful or the most critically acclaimed, for someone who was such a big star, but the way that he views the world is really, really close to the way that my parents and the people around me in my community viewed the world, as kind of a nihilistic, cynical thing, but still looking for light and hope and understanding of who you are.”

“Lynch/Oz. Now, the reason this is important is because I too steal from The Wizard of Oz at every chance I can. It gave me an understanding that “You’re not the only one that loves this movie.” Wizard of Oz. Not that I felt like I was the only one, but I felt like the only one that made some super dark stuff. But David Lynch, he had a lot of things that people didn’t understand and a lot of things that were off the cuff and weird.”

“Jean-Pierre Gorin, I think is how you say his name. This is a box set of documentaries. One of these is extremely important, it’s called My Crasy Life. It was filmed in Long Beach, California, Following members of the S. O. S. Community in West Long Beach. Me growing up in Long Beach specifically, I know people that have family roots to these people. I think it’s important that we tell our stories holistically. It’s a lot of heart in the characters.”

“Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films set. The two films I want to highlight in here are Watermelon Man and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. The reason I want to highlight these are that one leads to another: you get the studio, you get the budget, you want to tell the story that is unique and fun, and sometimes it might not be the right decision. And you learn from your mistakes... He’s a founding father, and that movie gave him the ability to create what he did later.”