Carl Franklin

“My Life as a Dog, I really like. I couldn't tell you anything about the making of it. It's just was, I think, one of the sweetest movies I've seen.”

“Oh, Les Enfants du Paradis, Children of Paradise. When I did Devil in a Blue Dress, the street scenes in this film inspired me to do the street scenes and the way that I did them in Devil in a Blue Dress, and so I just, you know, thought it was very rich and I gotta have it.”

“Tokyo Story, one of my favorites, and Late Spring, where is that? Ozu, one of my favorite directors. And what he does is so simple. You know, the camera's on sticks, it's about three feet off the ground and a 50 millimeter lens, and he just lets it stay and lets the characters work the frame. And what happens is that he focuses so much, here it is, he focuses on intimate relationships, and by kind of the repetition of the routines of the characters, you get to know them in a way that you would know someone in your own family. And so when that gets disrupted, you know, you have this incredible catharsis, and it's just a, I mean, he's a master. And I know his pacing, it's kind of is slow, but it's interesting about film, you know, for some reason in this country we think, "Oh, you know, I went to see something last night, it was just, it was it's just so fast, it went just like that." And I'm thinking like, you know, we never say that about anything we really like. We don't say, "You know, I had sex last night and it went just like that," or "You know, I sat down and had a real nice dinner and it went just like that," you know. So I don't know, I mean, I love getting lost in Ozu's world.”

“And Late Spring, where is that? Ozu, one of my favorite directors. And what he does is so simple. You know, the camera's on sticks, it's about three feet off the ground and a 50 millimeter lens, and he just lets it stay and lets the characters work the frame. And what happens is that he focuses so much, here it is, he focuses on intimate relationships, and by kind of the repetition of the routines of the characters, you get to know them in a way that you would know someone in your own family. And so when that gets disrupted, you know, you have this incredible catharsis, and it's just a, I mean, he's a master. And I know his pacing, it's kind of is slow, but it's interesting about film, you know, for some reason in this country we think, "Oh, you know, I went to see something last night, it was just, it was it's just so fast, it went just like that." And I'm thinking like, you know, we never say that about anything we really like. We don't say, "You know, I had sex last night and it went just like that," or "You know, I sat down and had a real nice dinner and it went just like that," you know. So I don't know, I mean, I love getting lost in Ozu's world.”

“Interesting thing about 8½, I saw this movie a couple times. I was at the AFI at the time and it inspired me to write and to shoot a little project that I should have made into a full-length feature, and maybe I will someday, that's about a fundamentalist minister. I have no idea why this movie inspired me to do that. Maybe I'll discover them when I make the movie.”

“To Sleep with Anger. Charles Burnett was a major influence in my life. Actually, his movie, which I don't think we have yet, is Killer of Sheep, the one that I saw at the time. He doesn't follow any kind of a conventional structure, you know, and what he does is so quirky and so brilliant that it defies your ability to replicate it.”

“Death in Venice, I want to see that, of Visconti. The Leopard is another one of his I want to see.”

“And there's another one, I'm trying to remember the name of it. The Damned, yeah. I'm just racking up here.”

“’Round Midnight, which I already have, is one of the great jazz movies. Bertrand Tavernier, one of my favorites. Actually, there's another of his movies that I wanted to take a look at called Coup de Torchon. It's about a guy who's, you know, he's a constable in this little village, and he gets no respect at all. He's a very nice man, he's a good man, and no respect from anyone, including the two pimps who were paying him off, and including his wife, who's, you know, having an affair with someone else. And it really does make you wonder, because you find yourself kind of on his side when he becomes this really, you know, unbridled killer, and killing, you know, for sometimes for no reason at all. And so it actually does kind of challenge you in terms of what your moral makeup is, and what the moral possibilities are for us, for anybody who is actually a good person. I think we all consider ourselves good people, but you know, you never know. But at any rate, hey, that's kind of all the information, all the knowledge I have.”

“Oh, Chimes at Midnight, which is a compilation of the Falstaff stories, a Falstaff from Shakespeare, anything that Falstaff appeared in, with Orson Welles. And that's actually a very interesting depiction of those times. Yeah.”

“The Killers, of course, is one of the great film noirs of all time, and of course I love film noir.”

“This is Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project, which has several films on it, several that I don't know, but the one that I do know, and that the reason why I'm getting it, because I don't know how to get it otherwise, is Pixote. One of the sub-themes of it is the kind of evolution of a criminal, which I explored in my thesis film at the AFI, and you know, some of what I saw in the movie and what from my own experiences, or actually what I, you know, kind of saw around me in the area that I grew up in, which was a rough area, inspired me to kind of tackle that subject. Because, you know, you would be playing football with these guys in the street, or you know, pickup basketball or whatever, you know, you're nine, ten years old, you don't see that guy for three years, and then the next time, you know, he's different. You know, he's like, you know, involved in stuff that you wouldn't imagine, and you don't, you have no idea why, you know, what were the elements that came together that brought him there. You know, sometimes it's, can be some very serious crime. And the thing about the kid who plays the lead, it deals with, you know, one of the things that it deals with is how the authorities respond to these children who are committing crimes in Brazil. And the kid, who was not an actor, who became an actor, was murdered by police in Brazil. So, really an interesting story.”