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The latest adaptation ofEmma.
with a period at the end arrives as a confection: ruffles and pastels and sweetly embarrassing ailments.
I was obsessed with Hayley Mills.
When my daughter was born, I bought it, and then she and I watched it.
I have a funny obsession with the early live action Disney movies.
The score is like treating the movie as if its an animated film.
I wanted that in the music in this movie.
Emma is intelligent beyond her years, except shes very emotionally stunted.
But she really is the woman of the house from a young age and she doesnt have a mother.
2.The Turning Point(1977)
I used to rent ballets.
I was so intoThe Turning Point!
To me, that was steaming hot.
There is a lot of choreography in the way the actors move.
3.Bringing Up Baby(1938)
Screwball comedy is a huge influence on me.
I made the whole cast watchBringing Up Baby.
Van Gogh
When I was a kid, I went to museums a lot with my mom, happily.
But I had this fatigue I didnt identify until later.
Theres a term for a sort of art fatigue.
It happens to people in Florence: theres so much incredible art they almost become depressed and cant function.
I probably often did.
I started playing this game when I was little to collect color combinations.
Id go up to a painting, but I didnt read who it was or when it was painted.
I didnt look at what the painting might mean or the theme of it.
Turquoise, yellow and orange, I never thought of that.
I started seeing Van Gogh paintings that way, which is interesting when youre just collecting color combinations.
For the movie, when I was doing my research, I realized how colorful the Georgian period was.
Wed really been looking atfadedwallpaper andfadedclothing in museums.
A lot of movies were presenting this time period in faded antique creaming yellows and browns.
I poured over those colors doing the same thing, collecting color combinations forEmma.
5.Mon Oncle(1958)
It has almost no dialogue in it.
The colors are fucking incredible.
Jacque Tati was kind of like the French Charlie Chaplin.
And I just loved how much of that story can be communicated without words.
For me, the script is one layer of storytelling.
The actor develops the other script, which is whats really going on.
What are they really thinking?
What are they really trying to get?
And then we can have competing stories happening within one scene.
I was just as happy to listen to that record, both sides, all day.
Beck
I shot Beck for about 15 years on and off.
He introduced me to most of the folk music Im aware of.
He is an incredible library of music knowledge.
Hes also an incredible library of art and literature and cinema.
He brought a lot of influence into my creative palette.
Jane Austen herself was a big fan of folk music.
She had a large collection of hand-copied music in her own personal collection, like 500 pieces of music.
She loved Irish folk songs.
That obviously comes fromEmma.
Jane Austin pinpointed it in the Emma-Mr. Knightley relationship.
9.Harold and Maude(1971)
Its one of my favorite movies of all time.
I love how dark, but how full of hope and light it is.
I also love that Harold is sort of an anti-hero.
Like Emma, hes privileged and spoiled.
He has good reason to be upset with his mother.
And that he can be mad, but he can also participate in that.
It was my favorite teen movie, even though it wasnt a teen movie.
My friend made me watch it on VHS in junior high.
And it changed my life.
