I was around New York at a time when independent cinema was at its peak and became kind of popular and mainstream. It got some hype, culturally. After that, studios started to have independent companies within their studio system, and they found bigger stars willing to do new material. That's kind of what it's turned into.
I really like dramas that have a tone of comedy in them or the opposite, and those are done by people like Alexander Payne and Jason Reitman but also Spike Jonze and David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers.
I am lucky to have had the opportunity to work with path-breaking directors like Karan Johar and now Amole Gupte, so early in my career.
When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.
I'm really drawn to European films.
We want to make a 100 million dollar movie that we have created, in the way James Cameron or Chris Nolan does. It's so inspiring when high-quality auteurs are writing and directing those movies. That's pretty cool.
I'd love to work with the people who really got the film industry going again through the '70s: Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong, Fred Schepisi.
Films like 'The Godfather,' 'The Exorcist,' 'Klute,' 'Chinatown,' 'Network,' and 'The Parallax View': They were drawn from the genre tradition, but they dressed down the stylistic telling of those traditions and genres.
There are a few directors as a young person where I was kind of like, 'Well, these are a sure bet.' The Coens, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson.
I think Marvel's incredibly supportive of young auteurs and really let them do their thing and support their vision. They give you a sandbox to play in, but it's a pretty massive one.
I was lucky enough to come in at the beginning of the independent film movement, and it's really shaped my life and my career.
I even think the commercial element of new American directors is really fertile right now. There are a lot of filmmakers with very particular visions, like Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson and P.T. Anderson and Alexander Payne and Peter Sollett and Harmony Korine and Vincent Gallo. At least they're making films that they choose to make, and they're on their own. That's positive to me. This is not a dead period for American cinema at all.
Danish film is spreading in a fantastic way.
Without the huge budgets, mainstream Bengali cinema falls flat on its face.
People know that I have a great love for cinema. Not just for commercial cinema, but for the 'cinema d'auteur.' But to me, two of the great 'auteurs' are actually actors and they both happen to be French. One is Alain Delon and the other is Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Thanks to multiplexes there are lots of experiments going on and we have some great directors like Sujoy, Shoojit, Dibakar.
