Focus Features

It's an obvious choice for anyone who's visually driven, but [Jean-Luc] Godard's use of typography and colour is great in this film. The color palette is really specific. He uses whites, blues and reds, keeping everything very graphic and simple. The scene when the couple argues in bed using book titles as forms of silent insults is genius and the typeface on the title cards is perfectly flawed.

The aesthetic of this [Guy Madden] movie is really specific –– think old-timey propaganda stuff –– and while formally it hasn't influenced me I really loved it conceptually. It's as though Madden allowed every surreal idea that popped into his head and allowed it to take form in the film in some way or another. You really get the sense that his style of writing and directing is very intuitive. At one point two characters are in the snow, and it's clear that the snow is just cotton and the icicles in their hair are freezie wrappers. I love the low-tech aesthetic.

Roy Andersson shoots all his stuff on a giant sound stage and controls everything to the last detail. His characters are all done up in weird dull face makeup to make them look really blown out and sallow. He incorporates fog, smoke and haze wherever he can and seems to prefer that magic hour light at the end of the day when it takes on gold and pink hues. He only uses locked off shots in this film and really slow sad, hilarious dialogue.

I really love Charlie Kaufman's script for this Spike Jonze film. It's hilarious and observes the way we misunderstand or invent things in our minds. I love the weird 7th and a half floor office space, and the conversation with the receptionist who misunderstands everything that John Cusack's character is saying.

I learned at grad-school that it's just better if you know how to do everything yourself even if you're not great at it. Because somehow budget always gets in the way and there are always cutbacks and blah, blah, blah and you always have to do more than one job. Vincent Gallo does everything himself in this movie, or at least a lot of it. He did the sound track, wrote the screenplay, directed it and starred in it. It's easy to hate someone like that because he's probably a bit egomaniacal, but I think it's brave and think more people should just go for it like he does. It's really inspiring.