Truffaut, Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, they were the great directors of the Nouvelle Vague. They found the freedom to make exactly the films they wanted. Chabrol was important because he was able to make very strong portraits of women and very complex portraits of women. He was very clever and he had a lot of joy and pleasure. He didn’t have some big theories about his work, he just enjoyed making films. I try to work like that.

The music of the “I Have a Dream” speech is a replication of the music which comes out of the mouths of the African American preacher. Preacher, singer, blues singer, jazz singer, rap person, it is so catching, so hypnotic, so wonderful that, as a poet, I continue to try to catch it, to catch the music.

I liked all the normal kinds of adventure books, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Huck Finn sorts of things. I loved Swiss Family Robinson and that whole period of South Sea adventure movies. I liked westerns. Westerns were very big when I was growing up. When we finally got a television there was a whole run of westerns on television. John Wayne films, directed by John Ford, before I knew who John Ford was. I think those were very influential in my enjoyment of movies.

Very much, because he’s interested in that same kind of process. Bonnard, Matisse, Indian miniature paintings, which he collected. That’s where the light comes from, a spectral relationship within the painting itself.