The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Introduction
Movies are personal touchstones. They provide soundtracks and wallpaper
for our memories, and sometimes they become part of our own histories.
For these directors, the films in this book are much more. They provided
a spark that illuminated the rest of their lives. They inspired whole careers
and, as the book title suggests, changed lives.
What made this project so entertaining wasn’t just talking about film—
although I, like most cinema lovers, can do that endlessly. The best parts of these
interviews are not just about the movies themselves but also about the impact
they had on each director’s life. For instance, John Woo’s story of how Martin
Scorsese’s Mean Streets almost made him a Catholic. Or how Kevin Smith was
convinced, convinced that no other movie but Slacker could have made him
a director. In these many conversations, I found not one but two directors
who told me about their adolescent quest to find brief cinematic nudity on arts
channels—only to have their lives transformed by the movies Persona and L’ âge
d’or (hint: both directors are Canadian). Still other interviews took unexpected
turns—including Michel Gondry’s thoughts about death and how he’d like to
die, given that his cinematic hero was killed while working on a film.
There are great stories of directors meeting their heroes, as in Kimberly
Peirce’s tale of meeting Francis Ford Coppola, and these connections turning
into enduring friendships. We hear of Michael Polish loving Once Upon
a Time in America so much that he later hired one of the film’s stars—James
Woods—to star in his own masterpiece.
Throughout this project, I was able to gather directors from across the
cinematic landscape. Oscar-winners include Danny Boyle, animator Peter
Docter, and documentarian Alex Gibney. I’ve also tried to reach across
genres and generations, with conversations with veteran filmmakers such
as Arthur Hiller and Peter Bogdanovich, and relative newcomers such as
Brian Herzlinger and Jay Duplass. Some were long-winded, others pithy,
but almost everyone wanted to keep talking about their love of the films that
shaped them. Only two filmmakers refused to stick with one movie. You
(and the table of contents) know who you are.
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