Paolo Sorrentino

Frequently casts Toni Servillo
Frequently works with cinematographer Luca Bigazzi
Oblique storytelling with partially obscure plots
Often casts veteran actors in supporting roles: Angela Goodwin and Raffaele Pisu in The Consequences of Love (2004), Fabrizio Bentivoglio in The Family Friend (2006), Fabio Bucci, Giorgio Colangeli and Paolo Graziosi in Il Divo (2008), Carlo Verdone and Carlo Buccirosso in The Great Beauty (2013).
Often tends to have a large 10+ minutes prologue before the main title appears.

Lost both his parents in a domestic accident at the age of 16.
Music is written into his scripts.
Never studied at a film school.
During production of his films, he never goes back and sees what he filmed at the end of the day, so when he goes to the cutting room, he really sees for the first time what his DP and him captured.
Cannot write his scripts without listening to music.

I don't use Twitter. I'm a serious person.
[on the journeys in The Great Beauty (2013)] In the film apparently there is no destination. People are floating over life. Apparently, they are always still in the same place. They're destined to go nowhere. However, the protagonist, without even realizing it, is moving toward a very precise destination. It is an appointment with the highest moment of his youth, his adolescence and of his purity. So the destination is specifically indeed those cliffs where he ends up meeting the young girl. The love of his life when he was a young man.
[on the constant motion in daily life] It's the fragmentary nature of the movement in today's life that makes it difficult to move in tune with the past. It's the neurotic component of the fragmentary nature of today's movement that makes it difficult to get in touch with the feelings that characterized the past, or other experiences.
[on The Great Beauty (2013)] It's very much a film about the time flowing and with the flowing of time, the time that we end up wasting in our lives. That's why it becomes burdensome and we are all dealing with the aspect of death. But through this fatigue, this weight of our life on all of us, we somehow give dignity to the life that we are living.
[on Rome] There's one thing that I like about Rome that was stated by Napoleon: that from sublime to pathetic is only one step away. And in Rome there's a constant shifting between sublime and pathetic.