“My dad was in television in Los Angeles–he did voice-overs, so he was friends with all these technical guys, and really when it was possible to get a ¾ inch VCR machine in your home, he taped ‘The Wizard of Oz’, ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, and he had a bootleg copy of ‘Jaws’. So those were the three movies that I was able to watch over and over. And the VCR was as big as this room, it was like a tank, and the tape was as big as a truck–and I would come home and watch every night, every day, ‘Jaws’, ‘Monty Python’, ‘The Wizard of Oz’.”
It finally all makes sense!
This quote is from my favorite director, Paul Thomas Anderson (“Magnolia”, “Punch-Drunk Love”, “There Will be Blood”, “Boogie Nights”, etc.), in a conversation with the amazing Lars von Trier (“Dogville”, “Dancer in the Dark”, etc.).
This is where your influences are from in my opinion: that which affects you before you are able to make conscious stylistic choices.