George Pelecanos Quotes

I think I'm a very American director, but I probably should have been making movies somewhere around 1976. I never left the mainstream of American movies; the American mainstream left me.

I see wonderful films by Bertolucci, Visconti, and Fellini.

I was a young film student around the time of the new wave in film in the 1970s; old Hollywood was naff and over. For me, as a film student, I was going to see French and Italian cinema; American cinema was 'Easy Rider' and 'Taxi Driver.' Everything was gritty.

What always made me proud - almost blushing with pride - is that Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg all told me that 'The Conformist' is their first modern influence.

As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.

I don't think American independent films have ever really been particularly experimental, except for the original guys from the '60s who were huge influences, like Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, and Stan van der Beek. They were the true independents.

Experimental film by the '70s had become much more mainstream after 'Bonnie and Clyde' and stuff in the late '60s, when you were seeing bigger movies where people were exploring the medium a lot more.

If the purpose of the stumpy little NFT theatre under Waterloo Bridge is not to acquaint young audiences with Ozu, with Ophuels, with D. W. Griffith and with Agnes Varda, then what exactly does it exist for?

I'm kind of fixated with old Hollywood, like Marilyn Monroe.

There's no question that Whale's movies are classics. They were wonderful, and successful.

I don't really consider myself an American filmmaker like, say, Ron Howard might be considered an American filmmaker. If I'm doing something and it seems to me to be reminiscent of an Italian giallo, I'm gonna to do it like an Italian giallo.

I was watching Orson Welles and Jean Vigo films at a ridiculously young age.

'Sunset Boulevard' by Billy Wilder, it's one of my favorite films. I love all the movies from the 1950s.

I grew up cinematically in the '70s. I was watching a lot of Godard, Bresson, Dreyer, and all sorts of old films and the Czech New Wave.

I think my favorite, and Coppola and that whole thing. East coast Italian directors I guess.

Look at the movies of the sixties and seventies. They were making a different kind of movie then. Would 'Network' ever be made now? No. Would 'Kramer vs. Kramer' ever be made now? No. Would 'Tootsie' ever be made now? Probably not. Robert Altman films? Never.

I'm a big fan of Italian neo-realism and all of that stuff.

I was making a lot of independent movies before the independent movement.

Think of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges. They used the same actors over and over again.

'La Notte' is my favorite of the Antonioni pictures and my favorite work of the master cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, who also shot '8 1/2' for Fellini.

'Grand Illusion' and 'Rules of the Game' are routinely included on lists of the greatest films, and deserve to be.

I watch mostly independent films.

There's an excellent movie we have on TCM called 'It Happened on Fifth Avenue,' which was originally going to be directed by Frank Capra... but just before he was going to start working on it, he came across this story called 'The Greatest Gift.' And that turned into 'It's a Wonderful Life.'

My favorite favorites are people like Bunuel, Fellini and Charlie Chaplin.

I like a lot of classic movies, like, for example, 'Citizen Kane', James Dean movies, etc, etc.