Jacques Rivette Quotes

Stanley Kubrick was a big inspiration. People accuse me of never using my own material. But when did Kubrick? You look at his films and they are completely unique... completely separate entities.

From the moment I met Martin Scorsese in 1962, he educated me about the films that had taught him so much about filmmaking. He had been deeply affected, even as a child, by great films that stretched his mind and struck into his heart, and he was eager to share them with friends and people who worked with him or with actors who were in his films.

There are people who don't like to use other films as research, but I love it.

I guess that in this process of trying to incorporate or to be faithful to the films I admire so much, that's how I start to find my own voice. The admiration I have for filmmakers, this gratitude, perhaps that's my only way to become specific.

I didn't discover how music and film could work together until Jim Jarmusch had me do 'Ghost Dog.'

I've always tried to create music the way Kubrick makes film, just kind of mimicking consciousness. He has a way of mimicking this greater power.

I have been a long time fan of Jean-Luc Godard. It's my dream to work with him.

As a filmmaker, I always took my inspiration from a filmmaker named Marcel Ophüls, who said, "I always have a point of view, but the trick is showing how hard it is to come to that point of view."

The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.

The poet is he who inspires, rather than he who is inspired.

You become the movie you are making.

I get to study and I got to mimic and what I basically did was I stole from every person that I could steal from. I was an imitator. That's what I was. It was years before I could take all of these things that I loved about all of these different artists and put them together and find my voice.

Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing.

In my view, the plangent artificiality of a lot of creative work results from the fact that the people who write novels, direct films and put on plays tend to read too many novels, watch too many films and go to too many plays.

I'm not coming from film school. I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity. I say, 'Well, what if I make a film in this genre? What if I make this film like this?'

I don't think I really invented anybody. I have drawn on real life.

I mean, '8½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.

Sometimes I get an idea for cinema. And when you get an idea that you fall in love with, this is a glorious day.

My influences change all the time; they have to remain current, because they're the things that capture your imagination and make you want to go into the studio.

I start listening to something, or I'm seeing somebody a lot or seeing their art. And then I just really want to make a picture of them.

I don't look at other people's work because I don't want to be distracted by their ideas.

When people ask me what it is about Brazil and my work, it's not something that I can say literally. It's unidentifiable. It's like when you do research and things inspire you. If you're smart enough, then obviously you don't take it literally. The inspiration will come out later somehow.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

In the moment of making films, I want to share my observations of life, not of other films.

If you're a designer, there's got to be some films that you've seen that have inspired you creatively. There's no escaping that.