Cinematic Influences Quotes

I'm very influenced by documentary filmmaking and independent filmmaking, by a lot of noir and films from the '40s. Those are my favorite. And then, filmmaking from the '70s is a big influence for me.

For me, the '80s were like the drawing by Botticelli of the nine rings of hell.

My father always told me that story was first and foremost. We would watch not just his films but a lot of classic American films. My father was a great David Lean fan, and David Lean's one of my favorite directors. We would discuss films endlessly.

My work is better, maybe all filmmakers are better, for Polanski's imprint on cinema. He created language for all of us to use, there is no question about that.

I've worked with people from Fred Zinnemann, John Huston, through to Richard Fleischer, all of those boys from Hollywood and so on, and Sam Peckinpah and then the Mike Radfords.

Polanski's 'Chinatown' is a film that I have purposefully and consciously imitated, but 'Vertigo' is one that has got into my bloodstream. Every time I reappraise things that I've done, the influence is there, time and time again.

I was always raised on cowboy films, and then when I could start making choices about the movies I wanted to watch I found myself wanting to watch gangster films which were slightly more sophisticated than the baseline stuff that was in westerns.

I am sure I am one of 2,000 film directors in the world that Tarantino admires.

I got a chance to work with so many stalwarts from British cinema. Judi Dench, of course, who is a legend. Then there was my director Stephen Frears. He is the man who made some of British cinema's salient trendsetters.

I steal from every single movie ever made. I love it - if my work has anything it's that I'm taking this from this and that from that and mixing them together. If people don't like that, then tough titty, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal; they don't do homages.

I'd worked in Clockwork Orange with Stanley Kubrick and since Stanley was such a prestigious director this opened all sorts of doors for me - one of them being Star Wars.

My discussion is one that has gone all the way from Fistful of Dollars through Once Upon a Time in America. But if you look closely at all these films, you find in them the same meanings, the same humor, the same point of view, and, also, the same pains.

My films have a lot of historical context; I'm a huge fan of ruins. You see a lot of ruin work in my movies, I like ruins.

I like Soderbergh, Spielberg, Lucas. There's a lot of talented guys out there obviously, and if you're a fan of films, you have to look at that stuff and learn from them.

Wong Kar-wai and Ang Lee are two Asian directors I'm really fond of.

Looking back now, if I went to film school, it probably would have helped knowing what the best of the best of foreign films were, but that wasn't the case. In some ways, I think that led to my originality, because I hadn't seen anybody else.

There was a film class in my high school in Northfield, Minnesota, which was very unusual. I saw my first Buster Keaton film there, aged about 15. It made a gigantic impression on me.

I admire Akira Kurosawa. I have a deep admiration for him and I would love to make films like that.

I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood.

I'd love to work with the Coen brothers. And Steven Spielberg. 'E.T.' was big for me.

You grow up watching certain films or admiring certain filmmakers, and to write a love letter to one and have them validate it, it's extraordinary.

I like David Lynch; I like Stanley Kubrick. I'm a big fan of Kubrick.

I always loved Japanese movies. And they had an enormous impact in France - the Nouvelle Vague took so much from them. It taught us how the camera was placed in the centre of the action.

I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.

She was obsessed with French and Swedish cinema. I also remember our mother showing us 'Gone With the Wind' very early on. She absolutely loved Vivien Leigh, so it must have been a formative experience for me, thinking, 'Oh, maybe one day I'll be like Vivien Leigh.'