'WHIPLASH' MAKER CITES SCORSESE & DE PALMA
Damien Chazelle, who
wrote and had originally planned to direct the De Palma-esque Grand Piano, is getting consistently great reviews for a new movie for which he is the writer/director,
Whiplash. Chazelle tells
RedEye Chicago's Matt Pais that
Martin Scorsese and
Brian De Palma are among the directors who inspired
Whiplash. "In a sense," Chazelle tells Pais, "obviously the influences in this movie are a lot of old filmmakers and Scorsese and De Palma, but the people who actually really get me off my ass and actually motivate me to, ‘All right, [bleep] it, I gotta do some work’ are the young people, the people in my generation who are doing great [bleep]." The two younger directors Chazelle mentions by name are
Ryan Coogler (
Fruitvale Station) and
Benh Zeitlin (
Beasts of the Southern Wild).
Meanwhile, in a review of
Whiplash,
Screen Invasion's Mel Valentin writes, "Credit also extends to Chazelle’s cinematographer,
Sharone Meir, who lights both interiors and exteriors like ’70s-set urban dramas and crime-thrillers popularized by
Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, and Brian De Palma (among others)."