What filmmaker is most intertwined with your childhood?

I have pretty strong memories of discovering Hitchock on a drugstore VHS carousel as a 14 or 15 year old. I tore through 6 or 7 movies that summer and picked up 4 more over the course of the next year.

But no filmmaker has wider, if not deeper, roots for me than Norman Jewison, who has a connection with three actors who I strongly associate with my childhood and teen years:
Steve McQueen - The Cincinnati Kid and The Thomas Crowne Affair
Sidney Portier - In the Heat of the Night
Al Pacino - And Justice for All
Pretty difficult to think of three actors who I liked more as a kid growing up, and Jewison directed all three of them.

And then there was Roller Ball. Huge movie for me as a kid.

And then there’s also Jesus Christ Superstar, which I have a super strong connection with from 8 or 9 years of age on.

And then to still be directing movies decades later that I was excited to see and enjoyed - A Soldier’s Story, Moonstruck, Hurricane.

Plus now as an adult, I’ve come to the movies of Hal Ashby, who was strongly influenced and supported by Norman Jewison and produced what is now one of my favorite movies The Landlord (1970).

 

George Lucas’s Star Wars was huge, but Spielberg’s influence was omnipresent from Jaws to Last Crusade. Aside from the films he directed there was his work as producer to contend with: Poltergeist, Gremlins, Goonies, Back to the Future, Roger Rabbit, Amazing Stories on TV… He seemed to have his hand in everything back in the 80s that a kid would love.

 

It's a tie:
- Walt Disney
- Gerry Anderson

From 11/12 years old: Terence Fisher (Hammer Films)

 

Walt Disney
Ray Harryhausen
Guy Hamilton
Gerry Anderson
Monty Python
Woody Allen
Stanley Kubrick

 

Jerry Lewis
Producer, Director, Writer, Star... he could do it all.
I loved watching his movies (on TV) growing up.

 

The "earlier, funnier" Woody Allen

 

I love 2010. It's a really solid science fiction film on its own. I often wonder what Kubrick thought of it.

 

The guy who directed Miami Spice
- whatever his name was.

 

There was one called The Restless Sea? Never heard of it.

 

Zemeckis

 

I guess I’ll go with George Lucas, for the Star Wars trilogy, but it varied over time. Spielberg took over for a while, then I enjoyed John Landis’ and Joe Dante’s 80s hot streaks.