Quotes About Influence

What with 'The Brady Bunch,' 'Spider-Man' and 'Sound of Music,' I have three cults going.

First favorite character growing up was Spider-Man, second was Wolverine.

I wish I was agile like Spider-Man and everything we do that draws on the childhood inspirations and the adulthood inspirations, for that matter. They're definitely the reason how I am, how I am today, because I was a smaller kid who was a nerd.

I loved the idea of Spider-Man as a kid, and I loved the Todd MacFarlane run in the 1990s, and the first Raimi movies were released when I was in film school. Those were big.

But I'm more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg's my main influence.

I don't know if I wanted to be Spielberg; I would never say that.

I grew up on Spielberg and Lucas. That was sort of what inspired me to make movies.

I would love to meet or work with Sofia Coppola. Or Wes Anderson or Spike Jonze. I'd love to meet them. The way they film, it's all so geometric.

I love so many directors. I love David O. Russell. I love David Fincher, I love Alexander Payne and Jane Campion and my aunt. Spike Jonze. There are just so many amazing directors.

Spike Lee's been doing it for a long time now. We're all standing on his shoulders.

Some people compare Spike Spiegel to Dirty Harry, and they're both antiheroes. But Spike is an extension of myself.

So many people - DPs, writers, and the assistants that go on to be directors and writers - come from the School of Spike Lee. He's almost set up an Institution of Spike Lee.

If there's one thing that I've learned from both Spike Lee and Tarantino, it's that you can wear your influences on your sleeve but at the same time invoke new energy and new flavor.

There's a whole network of people, particularly in New York, obviously, that came up through the Spike Lee School. I'm one of them. That's big!

The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine.

How did I write 'Spin Me?' I listened to Luther Vandross's 'I Wanted Your Love.'

When you're actually president, the spin matters a lot less.

Spin Me Round was number one all over the world, everywhere. It changed the face of pop music, no question. We took technology further than Trevor Horn.

When I wrote 'Noughts and Crosses', I was halfway through it when I realised this was very like 'Romeo and Juliet'... as long as you make it your own, and put your own spin on it, I think it's brilliant to use other great work to find your own voice.

Questlove redefined what a band can be, and Paul Shaffer and Max Weinberg really put their own spin on it. I bow down to these people. All of them.

It is all down to 'The Two Ronnies.' Those years with Ronnie Barker were the spine of my career.

I grew up in the '70s, early '80s as a kid, and when we first immigrated to this country I went to a 7-Eleven and for the first time in my life I saw... back in the day they had this little spinning comic book rack, and there were comic books and I was basically drawn to them.

I have an addictive personality. Boarding school merely sent me more quickly on the downward spiral that dominated my childhood.

I knew 'Hurt' way before Dad recorded it. In 1992, 'Downward Spiral' was one of my favorite albums.