Influences

This generation of filmmakers...I do have hope for. The serious ones anyway. A lot are influenced by directors who were influenced by people who actually read for a living. While this is not a good thing when it comes to making good stories, at the very least, we know they have great taste.

My influences go a bit further back. In my years, at 22 years, I watched 50's films. So we're talking the 90's to the 50's. I would assume the directors in their 20's today would be guided by films of the 60's. Probably some are. But it seems to be a void there somehow. I really hated 70's cinema until I stepped back a little to understand why it paved the way for the more raw gritty shoot from the hip style. The 60's had large musicals (still) and didn't tackle too many topics until the late 60's. Obviously "Easy Rider" began the trend of "independent film" funded by a failing lackluster Hollywood studio too hopped up on drugs to care. Also...Vietnam War.

I think this generation seems to embrace the darkness of the 80's. 90's and 2000's cinema was so...buoyant. 80's comedies are suited for television or re-booted as Stephen King horror dramas. In an odd way, meant more for tone and less for content. The 80's cinema...I haven't heard anyone in their 20's to 30's cite an influential film in this era (c'mon people "Unforgiven" or "Silence of the Lambs"?!). I think they probably saw the 80's the way we did...frivolity.

I did watch Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" in my teen years...a LOT. Only to discover later, writer Phil Schrader felt the ones who embraced it were fucking nuts. Yep. As I grow older, my favorite directors are Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges and Hal Ashby. Though I think George Roy Hill doesn't get appreciated enough. Nor does Frank Capra. I'm not sure the new crop of filmmakers ever truly study construction of story and film like we use to. I look at the youngsters who just graduated college and know there's a vacancy there.

I have a director friend now, who I was truly alarmed to realize how little he's actually seen.