movies, music, art...and other things.

As an artist, I feel that we must try many things, but above all we must dare to fail

If you really want to be a filmmaker, you need to learn to tell stories and the only way to learn to tell stories is by watching a lot of movies and reading a lot of screenplays. Sit down and forget about writing every day, learn how to read a film. You need to make yourself truly educated enough if you can and watch at least a couple of the great movies made every year since cinema was invented. Learn about Max Ophuls and Erich von Stroheim, and F.W. Murnau and Carl Theodor Dreyer and find things that they were trying to illuminate what Scorsese or Nolan is doing. But when you come at film and the oldest thing that you know is twenty years old, that’s a problem. I remember talking to a young director and he said he loved old movies like Taxi Driver and I said ‘Since when is that an old film?’ To have Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin under your belt is invaluable and I really advise people to watch movies and read movies, and constantly be in love with the medium.