Robert Bresson, in his book Notes on the Cinematographer, wrote that life is fairly simple but making films is hard. I have to wonder about that. Both require endurance, patience, concentration, and openness from the individual, both thrive on the unexpected and unplanned. Whenever I start a new film, I feel like I’m literally starting all over again, going back to square one, learning everything once more. With life, I feel the same thing on a daily basis.
John Cassavetes once told me to stop wasting my time and get down to making the films I wanted to make, as opposed to the ones I could make. It was an excellent piece of advice, which led to Mean Streets. Film what you want to film, what you need to film, not what you can film.
“I grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City. I enjoy books, music, solitude…and movies.â€
All kinds. The ones I keep going back to - The Beatles, Cream (and all of Eric Clapton), The Band, Bob Dylan, The Stones of course - are all touchstones for me. I have a fondness for doo wop - you have to imagine what that music sounded like in the 1950's. Drifting into the night from the radio and from record players. I listen to certain pieces of classical music obsessively - Beethoven, Bach, Lully, Mozart, Mahler. I grew up on Swing music and Django Reinhardt and the Hot Club of France, Sinatra, Bennett...I could go on and on. If there's one regret I have, it's that I never learned to play an instrument.
When I’m asked for my ten best, I always name five, in no particular order: Citizen Kane, The Searchers, 8 1â„2, The Red Shoes and The Leopard. But there are so many more: Kubrick’s films, the Val Lewton pictures, Rossellini’s Paisà and Voyage to Italy, all of the Powell/Pressburger films, On The Waterfront and East of Eden, Breathless, L’Avventura, Eclipse…I could go on. There’s so much richness, variety, beauty, wisdom, excitement, so much life in the cinema…it’s exhilarating. It breaks my heart and it energizes and inspires me. Some recent filmmakers whose work I love: Tian Zhuangzhuang from China, who made Horse Thief and The Blue Kite; Hou Hsiao-hsien from Taiwan (I also love a movie directed by Wu Nien-jen, who wrote several films for Hou, called A Borrowed Life); Paul Thomas Anderson; Wes Anderson; many filmmakers, young and old, from South Korea; Abbas Kiarostami; Fatih Akin; Souleymane Cissé, Abderahmane Sissako and several other African filmmakers…again, a very long list.
Turner Classic Movies, history and documentaries.
I read a lot of history - particularly about the ancient world and I find myself reading mostly pre-20th century fiction.
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