Djamel Bennecib

His favorite movies are Jaws (1975) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Jaws (1975) is the movie that inspired him to become a director.

"Lost" is by far, the best show I've seen in the past 20 years... and it's actually a weird, offhanded influence in the way I've developed "The Great L.A. Pretenders" because we see characters interacting in such a way as if Hollywood were an island. For them, there is only this dream of Hollywood, and they will stop at nothing to realize it. Of course my technique in the way I choose to shoot it is always as cinematic as possible, like "Lost," you will see in webisode 4 which is called 'Drunk', I used an extreme close-up of Sherman's eye. If you pay attention to "Lost", almost every episode uses this close-up to focus the story line from an ensemble piece to one individual for that specific episode. For me...it is important to know my influences and pay respects to them, but at the same time, try to make them my own. But I cannot help that I love "Lost" immensely and many other great films like "Goodfellas" and Scorsese films in general. Everyone steals from everyone, but as long as it is polite stealing, it is flattering as opposed to pissing off the creators. About the wry, offbeat dialogue of "The Great L.A. Pretenders" you're talking about, if I had some American writing my show, we would miss a lot of the charm in my Raymond Queneau-esque perspective on life. So in this sense, we choose style over correctness. I mean, polite stealing is funny, no?