- Ari Aster is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for writing and directing the A24 horror films Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019). Aster was born into a Jewish family in New York City on July 15, 1986, the son of a poet mother and musician father. He has a younger brother. He recalled going to see his first movie, Dick Tracy, when he was four years old. The film featured a scene where a character fired a Tommy gun in front of a wall of fire. Aster reportedly jumped from his seat and "ran six New York City blocks" while his mother tried to catch him. In his early childhood, Aster's family briefly lived in England, where his father opened a jazz nightclub in Chester. Aster enjoyed living there, but the family returned to the U.S. and settled in New Mexico when he was 10 years old.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bonitao
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- Seamless mix of horror and extremely dark humor.
- Unflinching depictions of graphic violence.
- Long uninterrupted camera shots.
- Interest in pagan religions and cults.
- He has cited Rosemary's Baby(1968), Fanny and Alexander(1982), Persona(1966), A Matter of Life and Death(1946), The Thing(1982), 45 Years(2015), A Brighter Summer Day(1991), The Age of Innocence(1993), In the Mouth of Madness(1994), The Piano Teacher(2001), 8 1/2(1963), and Repulsion(1965) as the films that influenced him the most.
- Toni Collette (who starred in Hereditary) has said that Aster was the most prepared director she's ever worked with, and that he had the movie basically completely shot and edited in his head two years beforehand.
- Graduated from the American Film Institute.
- At four years old he saw his first movie in theaters, Dick Tracy (1990). During one scene a character fired a Tommy gun in front of a fiery background. Purportedly, Ari jumped up from his seat and ran out of the theatre in fear, causing his mother to have to chase after him.
- I'm usually not quite aware of what my influences are until I'm in post-production and I say "Oh, that must have been lodged in my unconscious and this must have been in the back of my head." I try to be pretty open with the movies that I love and the films that have been important to me. But I try to never draw from things too consciously or self-consciously.
- I think it was probably the time I was eight, maybe seven, that I knew that I wanted to be making movies. I've been obsessed with movies since I was first introduced to them.
- I try to avoid traditional coverage wherever I can, and I like to draw shots out as long as I can without it becoming indulgent or distracting. I really love shot sequencing, and I map out the blocking and what the camera is doing in relation to the blocking long before production. I typically get really involved with camera movement.
- Making films for me is just like this horribly prolonged grieving process of having to make compromises. Sometimes they're small, sometimes they're huge.
- In shooting, you're racing. Like, if you get stuck on one shot, then you're compromising all the other shots you could do that day. So you can get it as close to perfect as you can. And then some shots you have to move on and you didn't get it the way you wanted. And that's a tiny tragedy, and then you carry that weight to the next one.
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