At least two of your movies—Brazil and The Fisher King—seem to draw on your time in New York.
Brazil was inspired by fascist German and fascist American architecture—Rockefeller Center. For Fisher King, I started thinking in those terms: a nice steel-and-glass photogenic place with no soul, but full of life and jest and joy and beauty and color. And what I like about [the film] is, it did seem to enchant people about New York—the story of the woman who walks home afterwards twenty blocks in the wrong direction, the fact that they waltz in Grand Central station. I put a line in the movie when Jeffrey’s hanging off the building—he says, “Nobody ever looks up in New York.” Architects do the ground floor with a lot of elaboration, then nothing till they get to the top, then they have the crown: It’s like they’re showing off to God. We deserve to see that, too.

Director, The Brothers Grimm
Opens August 26

Related:

• Archive: “Movie Features”
• Articles by Logan Hill
• Table of Contents: Sep 5, 2005 issue of New York | Subscribe!