My roommate at Yale University introduced me to the auteur theory of filmmaking. I soon became a big fan of the works of John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch, and Stan Brakhage. I then decided to make my own films!
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I got picked for very unique and independent filmmaking experiences with auteurs. And I'm so lucky.
I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.
I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.
The dean of the American Film Institute has written that I'm one of the very few auteurs in America. I've had freedom for 40 years to create art that is totally personal and is what I believe in.
I became a director just for the love of movies, because of the power of cinema.
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 come from a family where my father is a filmmaker and professor of film.
I'm better suited to be a director, I think. I see myself as the general author. I hate the word 'auteur,' because it sounds so solitary when filmmaking is anything but solitary.
I always argued against the auteur theory; films are a collaborative art form. I've had some fantastically good people help me make the movies.
I fell in love with filmmaking. I fell in love with criticism. I fell in love with theory, and it made me really dogmatic in my approach to choosing roles.