A Quote by Clint Eastwood
When I did 'Bird,' it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I'd been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.
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[Charlie "Bird" Parker] would sit down and ask [Phil Wood], "What do you think about this whole secondary Viennese school with Schoenberg, Berg and Webern? Are you listening to that music and what do you feel about it?" These were the conversations that he was having. And he also said, what he learned from Charlie Parker was, not that he studied with him in the formal sense, is that the first thing that Charlie Parker would always ask was, "Did you eat today?".
Australian genre films were a lot of fun because they were legitimate genre movies. They were real genre films, and they dealt, in a way like the Italians did, with the excess of genre, and that has been an influence on me.
Of course, when you're doing something that's unexpected, people are going to have a very specific point of view about it, but I think it's all good to have a healthy debate about who Hitchcock was and what that means to people. He means a lot of different things to a lot of different people because the films are so great. If the movies were not great, no one would be bothering to show any interest.
You have some great films every year, but for the most part, no one is making films with heavy messages or themes. People are afraid of doing that.
Making movies in France is different, but it's still acting, you know. You still have doubts and you're scared, always, but I really love doing films in America, because I love to speak English. But I think there's something very entertaining about American films. But I also like the intimacy of French films.
All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.
I have always been really picky about the films that I make, because I think that there's such an incredible opportunity to bring up questions when you're making movies, and some of my favorite films bring up big questions. They are movies that, when you walk away from it, it hits you as something deeper, and it's a great, fun way to be able to bounce around some of these harder concepts in our heads.
I was concerned about that, because I've always been so specific about doing independent films, but I've never done anything that's so genuinely and ridiculously fun. And that's a great thing, for me to discover that that's possible.
In the '60s and '70s it was a great period for American films because studios were still run by individuals who worked off the seat of their pants and went along with things. At that time, they were very uncertain about what to make because of the influence of television. A lot of really terrific movies were made. But then the studios gradually became more corporate and were owned by corporations and run in that way and now they're very nervous. You see what they make - sequels, franchises and try not to take risks.
In a perfect world, I could be doing some bigger films and balance that with some independent films because they seem to be the most challenging and unique.
In a perfect world, I could be doing some bigger films and balance that with some independent films because they seem to be the most challenging and unique
I've been able to make some wonderful films, but sometimes you make films with great passion - great belief - and these films slightly don't work at the box office, and they become your favorite films.
Richard Donner made great movies. Seminal movies. The Academy, though, and we have to be careful here, should recognize popular films. Popular films are what make it all work. There was a time when popular movies were commercial movies, and they were good movies, and they had to be good movies. There was no segregation between good independent films and popular movies.
I could never be Charlie Chaplin. But the films that were made by people like him, or Gene Wilder, or John Candy, the people that inspired me so much were the people that were able to combine humor with heartbreak so beautifully and fluidly. Those films I think were what inspired me to want to come to L.A. and audition for movies.
I always wanted to play a boxer because some of my favorite films, as a boy, were those great boxing movies, like 'Raging Bull', 'Rocky', 'The Set Up', 'Fat City and Hard Times'. I just loved those films.
I am inspired by both Japanese Samurai films, in particular the films of Kurosawa, and how they share the spirit of American Westerns, with the influences running in both directions, and including the 'Spaghetti Westerns' and films of Sam Peckinpah.
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