'Nocturnal Animals' Director Tom Ford Reveals His Movie Influences, Including Hitchcock and 'A Clockwork Orange'
For his first film since 2009’s A Single Man, fashion designer turned director Tom Ford adapted Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan as Nocturnal Animals. A neo-noir thriller, it follows an art gallery owner (Amy Adams) trapped in a loveless marriage to a cheating husband (Armie Hammer) who finds herself immersed in a new novel written by her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal). Split between Adams’ past and present, as well as the fiction she’s reading, it’s a trifurcated story of love, regret, murder, and revenge — following in the tradition of many classic movies.
Our Kevin Polowy recently asked Ford what movies were the greatest inspirations for Nocturnal Animals. In their chat [viewable above], it’s little surprise to hear the filmmaker cite In Cold Blood, A Clockwork Orange, and films by Hitchcock as prime influences. But, he says, he wasn’t so much attempting to directly allude to those, but rather channel many movies that shared key elements with his latest material — including “the sound and the desolation” of Peter Bogdanovich’s Texas-set The Last Picture Show.
Nocturnal Animals is one of this award season’s most stylish and bracing releases — starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Laura Linney, Isla Fisher, Andrea Riseborough, Michael Sheen, Jena Malone, and a great Michael Shannon — and is in theaters now.
Watch the Nocturnal Animals cast talk about getting haircuts from Tom Ford:
