“So we've got Cassavetes. I was in a class with Ira Sachs and it was like the best directing class I've ever taken because it's funny with directing, there really isn't a way that you can teach it. It's sort of like how do you teach someone to have a personality or like have a taste? It's like you just are you and go make something. But Ira Sachs was really great because he showed us films by auteurs and then we've read about like interviews with the auteurs and then the whole point of that, the end of the class, he was like, well, just make something and I booked this room, we're gonna screen it here for your classmates. And one of the filmmakers he showed was Cassavetes. And when I look back at Cassavetes, it felt like whenever I was watching his stuff, like he was making his own rules. I'm like, whether it worked for me or not on a personal level as a viewer, I was like, you're not following anything prescriptive. And so much of film school felt like prescriptive, like this is how you line up the shot, like this is how you get inside the emotional like language of that character. And I don't think it's that straightforward. I actually think a lot of filmmaking is throwing the rules out the window and being like, this is what turns me on, like this is where my instincts are taking me, and that's what it felt like with all of the Cassavetes films I've seen.”
