It has to be 'The Piano' by Jane Campion. It inspired me to pursue my dream to direct. It is not just my favorite woman-directed film - it is my favorite film.
The movie that made me want to make movies was "Blue Velvet."
I like how you can go back and watch David Lean and John Ford and see the influence that had on Steven Spielberg, especially David Lean, in the camerawork, and yet, you don't watch any Spielberg movie and think of David Lean. Once you're looking for it, you see it all, but it's not in your face.
I want to do literally everything. I think I was gifted... I inherited one of the best comedy visionaries as a director.
Really, what I'm doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore: Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved.
I go back to many films that I really love. Some Bresson, some Godard of the early times, the Cassavetes of those years I love. And the early Wim Wenders. But my own films I don't watch, unless I need them.
I'm a huge Hayao Miyazaki fan. He might be my favorite director of all time - the beauty that he sees in the world and the attention to detail. I try and focus on that while making music: trying to use as many real instruments as possible, have it feel as tactile and tangible as possible.
I have been very influenced by the director Maurice Pialat, who I continue to be in conversation and conflict with and get inspiration from.
I just realized that I need to be a director - for two reasons. One, directors were already my heroes at this point. I wanted to; when I wanted to be an actor I wanted to work with this director. Not work with this actor, I wanted to work for this director.
I often meet young directors who, you know, had a 'Ghostbusters' picture on their wall as they were growing up. And it's really nice. It just shows how inter-generational our industry is.
Akira Kurosawa, David Lean and Alfred Hitchcock were the main inspirations for 'Samurai Jack,' along with a lot of '70s cinema.
There's a big time influence Hrishikesh Mukherjee has always had on my work. I can watch 'Anand,' 'Golmaal' or 'Chupke Chupke' as many times as possible. I just really admire his kind of cinema.
I wanted to be Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Hitchcock. I'd wanted to be a director since 13, and horror and the suspense thriller were the most powerful genres to me.
Mani Ratnam is my biggest inspiration.
If you're a director and you pay homage to Japan, you're definitely going to remember what you've learned from watching the Japanese masters' films.
I'm a very eclectic person, and I enjoy multiple tastes; I'm like a bee who jumps from flower to flower. Before I die, I have to make a war movie, a Western, and a movie like Mike Nichols, because I love him.
I came to the cinema industry to become a director from the inspiration of Guru Dutt and Shantaram.
The director's who want to be innovative use the DVD as a tool to see what people have done in the past and you have other people who will actually take from better directors and that makes them better directors.
I think Woody Allen calls it 'anxiety of influence.' When you're in your formative years and you watch a movie that makes you want to make movies... For Wes Anderson, it's Truffaut. I'm sure for P.T. Anderson it was Scorsese and Jonathan Demme.
I think the other honest attraction was that I just grew up loving watching TV and loving watching film, and there's so many directors and actors that I dreamed of working with, I just really wanted to take a crack at it and see if I could ever work with some of those.
