“I’d always been pretty secular, and I kind of bought it. It always
seemed like fair game to kind of scalp the church somehow. It just seemed kind of quaint that the savagery of Buñuel’s attack always seemed kind of charmingly distanced for me because I’d already made quite a happy secular space for myself—that it felt a bit like looking at a picture book of World War I, or something. There was so much time and space between me and it that I just saw it as something that must have been pretty important to the artist.”
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"If you love films and care about filmmakers, you'll have a hard time putting this book down. These lively conversations reveal just how much one generation of filmmakers influences the next - and how a single movie can change the course of a young person's life and career."
-Leonard Maltin, author of Leanord Martin's Movie Guide -
"A great and provocative read. Elder begins with a simple question and leads a wide variety of filmmakers down all sorts of unexpected paths. Why do we respond so passionately, even irrationally, to the movies that change our lives? The wonderful thing about being a critic or a lifelong movie lover is that life changes all the time in relation to the spells being cast on the screen. Elder's book honors that alchemic relationship many times over. It's addictive."
-Michael Phillips, film critic, Chicago Tribune