Reginald Hudlin

“Black Orpheus, exquisite in every possible way. I like to watch it periodically and go, “Oh, yeah, this is what I’m in the business, to make a movie– to aspire to make a movie as good as this one day.”...”

“The other greatest Black film ever made: Killer of Sheep, Charles Burnett. When I was in college, I would put together little film festivals at school, and I brought Charles there, and I showed the movie and everybody in the film program was blown away. This movie was made– He’d worked all week, saved enough money to buy a roll of film, shoot that roll of film, go back to work. And thank God for Charles Burnett for making a true masterpiece.”

“Menace II Society by the Hughes brothers. Early in our careers, people would mix up the Hudlin brothers and the Hughes brothers. We laughed about it all the time because they would compliment me over Menace II Society, they would compliment them for House Party, and we decided we would claim each other’s body of work. So, if you see one of us, we’ll just say yes, and, you know, we’re all brothers.”

“Risky Business. There’s a couple of movies that really inspired House Party. Animal House was one of them. Risky Business was the other. You just go, “Wow, I can make a movie like that, about my life experiences.” I don’t know if we succeeded or not, but Risky Business is the business.”

“Rouge, great movie from Hong Kong in the ’80s, mixing all kinds of genres. It’s romantic, it’s scary, it’s all the feelings, it’s this extraordinarily beautiful, touching film.”

“Melvin Van Peebles, the father of modern Black cinema. Sweet Sweetback, legendary film. What most people don’t know – and they’ll put it on and go, “Oh, wait, what’s this?” – it’s a completely experimental film. This movie is, wow, this is free jazz. And the irony of me saying that is the score is by this unknown group, which later figured out, “Oh, we should call ourselves Earth, Wind & Fire.” But Melvin Van Peebles acted, directed, produced, did every doggone thing.”

“Bruce Lee, what a great action actor. In one of the great fight scenes in Enter the Dragon, where he’s fighting O'Hara, the guy who killed his sister at the beginning of the film, he fights the guy, the guy crosses the line and he takes him down and he stomps him out. Now, here’s what you see in that film that you’ve never seen in other movies like this. There’s a Close-Up on his face in slow motion where you see him go through this whole range of emotion.”

“One of my absolute favorite filmmakers, Fellini. Fellini, postwar Italy somehow really resonates with me for working-class Black America. Something about, okay, we’re rebuilding our life out of the ruins and we’ve got so much flavor and we embrace the surrealism of our lives, and it’s comedic and it’s tragic and it’s heroic. It’s all the things at once. He’s always been a giant hero to me. When I was in film school, I remember writing a paper on 8½.”