I grew up on Shane Black movies, and I grew up on Joel Silver movies.
I love so many directors. I love David O. Russell. I love David Fincher, I love Alexander Payne and Jane Campion and my aunt. Spike Jonze. There are just so many amazing directors.
I was influenced by people like David Fincher and William Friedkin, and these directors who kinda paint their films with these dark shades.
When you first start out, you want to be Fellini, or you want to be Bergman.
Shakespeare has been adapted by Akira Kurosawa. 'Dangerous Liaisons' has been adapted into a Chinese movie. 'Blood Simple', the Coen brothers movie, was adapted by Zhang Yimou.
You can watch any Hitchcock film and be blown away.
My heroes are guys like Frank Capra and Elia Kazan and Coen brothers and Terry Gilliam, more so than a lot of bass players at this point in my life. So I've always been an old-film nut and have very much enjoyed doing videos over the years.
Music was a big thing for me growing up and Scorsese and Tarantino both use music brilliantly in movies. They're probably two of the best at using music.
I discovered Orson Welles in college; my freshman English professor screened 'Citizen Kane' for us, and I wound up writing a 20-page term paper on it.
The real achievement of Woody Allen was that he was making movies that felt very personal, and for a whole group of people, it spoke to them. Then he became an archetype, like Groucho Marx or Chaplin.
I'm a filmmaker, and I was most influenced by Hitchcock's films. How he could plant such deep enriched characters and then make us care both about the antagonist and protagonist was masterful.
I grew up loving Ridley Scott and Tony Scott and Michael Bay and Adrian Lyne.
There are a few directors as a young person where I was kind of like, 'Well, these are a sure bet.' The Coens, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson.
I like so many different directors: Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Woody Allen and the greats like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky and among current filmmakers von Trier, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai.
In terms of directing, there's a number of directors who definitely had a great impact on me, Woody Allen certainly being one of them.
I am definitely writing letters to lots of directors in my mind when I'm making a film. I'm chasing Woody Allen and Godard and Milos Forman and all these people.
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.
My favorite filmmakers are in the Kubrick, Polanski kind of mold. I just like that world. I think it's more cinematic and gets under your skin more.
I drew influence from Mike Leigh, Ruben Ostlund, a lot of Scandinavian filmmakers, Lukas Moodysson. I also drew influence from horror films and thrillers, which is something I would never think to do earlier in my career.
I was such a fan of Quentin's growing up. I remembered I wanted to see 'Pulp Fiction' so badly, but my mom had seen it, and even though she loved it, she just thought it wasn't appropriate for a 13-year-old.
'Straight Outta Compton' is my first biopic, my first period piece, and I got a chance to kind of get out there like some of my idols, you know, like Scorsese, Spielberg, Spike Lee, the guys who came before me. You know, I'm feeling good about it.
I've worked with Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog, Olive Stone and David Gordon Green, and Damien Chazelle on 'First Man.' When you have someone at the helm like that, they're gonna make something great.
I'm a huge film buff. If it wasn't for Martin Scorcese, Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani, I wouldn't be here.
What I want to do is make films that astonish people, that astound people, and I hope you want to do that too. It's easy to make money. It's easy to make films like everybody else. But to make films that explode like grenades in people's heads and leave shrapnel for the rest of their lives is a very important thing. That's what the great filmmakers did for me. I've got images from Fellini, from Bergman, from Kurowsawa, from Bunuel, all stuck in my brain.
Akira Kurosawa, David Lean and Alfred Hitchcock were the main inspirations for 'Samurai Jack,' along with a lot of '70s cinema.
