Directorial Voice Quotes

If there's one thing that I've learned from both Spike Lee and Tarantino, it's that you can wear your influences on your sleeve but at the same time invoke new energy and new flavor.

I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.

If someone says Wes Anderson is an auteur, I'll believe it 100 percent. Fine. He's an auteur, but I'm not.

I'm trying to steal from everybody. So yeah, there's cats that I'm personally affiliated with - Carl Franklin, Paul Thomas Anderson - and others that I don't know personally but their work I'm a big admirer of, like Martin Scorsese. But I'm hoping to come up with a language that is mine, that's specific to my take on this material.

I want all my films to look distinctly different, like some other directors I admire. But in a way, I can't really take myself completely out of the movies I make.

Every director has his own syntax, his own grammar, his own words.

There's something about my films; they're informed by my sensibility. I have the same preoccupations, the same interests... there's just something in the nuance, and so you always know it's a film of mine whether I sign my name to it or not.

I think Woody Allen is Woody Allen, and no matter where he goes he still makes his Woody Allen films.

Different directors offer you different things, and it's not necessarily the most obvious things.

You have to nail the right tone because sometimes when you just see his films cold, you're not quite sure. It's the same in - I'm trying to think of other directors with a similar sense - David Lynch's films, Tim's films, some of Cronenberg's stuff.

Samuel Fuller pictures were both written and shot in such an unusual way that his voice came through loud and clear, and it made a big impression on me.