Thierry Frémaux

“Pierrot le fou, my favorite film ever, my favorite filmmaker ever. It's not true that you become a movie buff at the age of 13 or 14. Little genius, I don't believe in that. No, when you are 18, 20, and you put the cinema you used to see back in your past and you start a new life in cinema, I started my new life in cinema with Pierrot le fou and it's a film I could see every day.”

“My friend Bertrand Tavernier, 'Round Midnight, with a wonderful scene between Martin Scorsese and Dexter Gordon. Every music is registered live, and especially the concert homage at the end with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams. And in this DVD box, we have a wonderful bonus material, the making of made by Jean Achache, which is very good.”

“Il Posto, Ermanno Olmi. My second year in Cannes, we had About Schmidt by Alexander Payne. Jack Nicholson came, and we had a restored print of Il Posto. And I remember Jack Nicholson, I was quite scary about him, welcoming that great artist, and I say, 'Hello Jack,' and Jack say, 'Hello, hello. Is it true that you have Il Posto today in screen in the Festival?' I say, 'Yes,' and he want, 'I want to see it.' Because Jack Nicholson is a great, great, great movie buff.”

“La vérité de Clouzot. Two things: first Clouzot, François Truffaut didn't like very much Clouzot, he was destroyed by the Cahiers du Cinéma, but Clouzot was a great filmmaker. Le Corbeau about French occupation is a masterpiece, and this film is a masterpiece. Brigitte Bardot, Brigitte Bardot, especially in this movie, she's extraordinary. And the movie is very good, not only for the movie itself, but for what the movie says about French society at that time.”

“I could take that because Budd Boetticher, because in France I'm always fighting against schools. If you like that, you can't like this. Yes, I can like that, I can like that, and I do like this. And I like, me I'm the kind of spectator, I love Chantal Akerman and Jean-Marie Straub and I love comedies, French popular comedy. I don't take one from the other. But if you like cinema, you like everything. So all those Westerns of Budd Boetticher with Randolph Scott, all masterpieces.”

“I wanted to find some Kaurismäki film. He's one of the greatest poets and greatest genius of history of cinema. He used to say, 'In my country, in winter, days are short, it's all light, so we are sad, so we drink. But in summer, days are long, we are happy, so we drink.'”

“Godzilla, and of course King Kong versus Godzilla and so on. It's a great.”