Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.
I'm a really huge fan of the old romantic comedies from the '30s and '40s... Huge fan. I love all that stuff.
I love 'Bringing Up Baby.' Anything that Katharine Hepburn's in. I'm committed to the Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn era of filmmaking.
There are many actors who have inspired me: Spencer Tracy for his incredible elegance and, of course, Cary Grant. But, there's also an Italian actor I admire a great deal: Alberto Sordi.
I was the kid that grew up watching Bette Davis films.
African Queen' is pretty darn great.
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.
I wanted to be Gene Kelly. Well really, I just wanted to dance with Cyd Charisse.
Gene Hackman is one of the great American actors of all time.
Writing is getting killed by too many chefs. Back in the Bogart days, it started with great scripts. You had a writer, and he wrote a script, and that was your movie. I think that's been watered down a bit lately.
When I was a kid going to the movies, we'd go because Bogart was in the movie, or Cagney, or John Wayne. We didn't know what the story was about or anything.
I long for the old days of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, stars who had real glamour and mystique. We only knew so much about their lives; the rest was a mystery.
I suppose they call me a woman's director because there were all these movie queens in the old days, and I directed most of them. But I also directed Jack Barrymore and Ronald Colman and James Stewart, to name a few.
You know, they just don't make big movie stars the way they used to, maybe because the system has changed, the studio system, but it's sad to see people like Jimmy Stewart go, all the giants of the past.
I always loved when James Stewart did roles that were not so dialogue-based, like 'Vertigo.'
As cliche as it is, I was a huge Audrey Hepburn girl growing up.
I'd been a fan of old film comedies like Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks movies - the fast-paced dialogue in movies like 'His Girl Friday' and 'Bringing Up Baby' and 'Twentieth Century' and 'Sullivan's Travels.'
'The Nice Guys' fulfilled my 1970s fantasy.
The first time I saw Douglas Sirk was in college. I didn't encounter him on the late, late, late show like a lot of people; people a little older than me, maybe. But I saw him already as someone to take special note of in an academic context in college. I was immediately in a state of visual splendor.
When I was a kid I really loved Humphrey Bogart. But when I was in theater school, Robert DeNiro was my go-to guy.
Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing - no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn't happen that much anymore.
I've always wanted to work in America because of those brilliant east-coast political movies of the '70s and '80s - great scripts, wonderful performances, gritty urban parable.
To me Vivien Leigh was a tragic heroine of classic proportions: chosen, blessed and abandoned by the gods. Obstinately she tried to control and defy her destiny and to know her story is to be inspired by pity and terror.
Hollywood style means classic glamour. My reference is the 1940s through the 1960s.
Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher.
