Sam Mendes Lists His Movie Inspirations

Sam Mendes won the Inspiration Award at the Jameson Empire do last night, and the Skyfall director gave a fantastic speech in which he listed the films and scenes that have inspired him.

And as we thought it was such a great collection of movie moments, we’ve transcribed the speech for your reading pleasure:

“I want to thank Stanley Kubrick for the war room in Dr. Strangelove, Billy Wilder for C.C. Baxter in The Apartment, Kurosawa for the death of the king in Throne of Blood, Martin Scorsese for panning a camera down an empty corridor in Taxi Driver, Joel and Ethan Coen for the last scene between Marge and Norm in bed at the end of Fargo, Paul Thomas Anderson for the deafening of H.W. Plainview in There Will be Blood, Bergman for the visit of B.B. Anderson to Liv Ullman in the dead of night in Persona, Francis Coppola for the killing of Fredo Corleone in The Godfather II, David Fincher for the first scene of The Social Network, Bob Fosse for the audition sequence at the beginning of All That Jazz, Quentin Tarantino for Christopher Walken’s speech about the watch in Pulp Fiction, Woody Allen for the fireworks over Manhattan, Clint Eastwood for making it rain at the end of Unforgiven, Michael Powell for the moment Moira Shearer steps into the ballet of The Red Shoes, David Lynch for the car journey with Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, Mike Nichols for Benjamin in the swimming pool in The Graduate, Francois Truffaut for the moment the boy looks into the lens at the end of 400 Blows, and Wim Wenders for the moment Harry Dean Stanton sees Nastassja Kinski after all those years at the end of Paris, Texas.”

Skyfall was named best film at the awards, while The Hobbit, Ted, Sightseers, The Woman in Black and Headhunters also received gongs. The full list of winners can be found here. And while we're on the subject of great movie moments, this is our list of the 100 best, to which we'd probably now add the cuff pop below...

Chris Tilly is the Entertainment Editor for IGN in the UK and would like to watch cricket with Sam Mendes sometime You'd be best advised to follow him on both Twitter and MyIGN.

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