Sam Mendes

Sam Mendes on his new Away We Go and his debt to Hal Ashby. (Hollywood Interview)

I immediately thought of all the great Hal Ashby movies, The Last Detail being the primary one. There was a simplicity in his work stylistically, and also the way he used music, was years ahead of its time. His films are almost more inspiring now than they were when they came out, or even 10-15 years ago. Now you’ve got all these great directors like Spike Jonze, Judd Apatow, Cameron Crowe, all saying that one of their biggest influences was “the master, Hal Ashby.” So I watched The Last Detail several times, and thought ‘It’s so simple in its presentation, yet so complex in the way the characters are presented, and the people that they meet,’ and how unafraid he is to meet someone and move on. There’s no tying up “loose ends” and having the characters come back in the end for some kind of payoff. The whole idea of an “arc” that every character has to have is just absurd. The Last Detail presented human encounters as they usually happen in life: you meet someone, you have the encounter, and you move on.