Paul Thomas Anderson for teaching me that it's ALL about the script and if you have the right actors directors don't have to do anything on set but be a fan, Lumet for his films and his book, a young directors» must read, Coppola for his courage in filmmaking, Steven Soderberg for refusing to ever be put in a
box and pushing the form as far as he can, Kathryn Bigelow for giving masterclasses in action, James Cameron for Terminator 2 and prove
big budget cinema can still be perfect cinema, Sean Penn for bringing his acting chops to directing, David Mamet for his scripts and his
dialogue, Nolan for having more heart than most people seem to give him credit for (Memento, Rises, Inception and Interstellar all made me cry.)
There's a very loose story in there about crystals - you want them, but you're going to have to go through a load of
big old monsters first - but you could quite easily skip over the
dialogue boxes without really missing a thing.
... Teaching outside the
box it's all about the
dialogue following the observation, with an explicit focus not only on your personal areas of strength and how this can be shared across the school to improve pedagogical practice, but also the one
big thing that will move your teaching forward.