Brian De Palma filmmaking careers of directors such as Mark Romanek and Keith Gordon. Filmmakers influenced by De Palma include Quentin Tarantino, Ronny Yu, Don Mancini, Nacho Vigalondo, and Jack Thomas Smith. During an interview with De Palma, Quentin Tarantino said that "Blow Out" is one of his all-time favorite films, and that after watching "Scarface" he knew how to make his own film. Critics who frequently admire De Palma's work include Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, among others. Kael wrote in her review of "Blow Out", "At forty, Brian De Palma has more than twenty years of moviemaking behind him, and he
Brian De Palma enrolled at the newly coed Sarah Lawrence College as a graduate student in their theater department in the early 1960s, becoming one of the first male students among a female population. Once there, influences as various as drama teacher Wilford Leach, the Maysles brothers, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Andy Warhol, and Alfred Hitchcock impressed upon De Palma the many styles and themes that would shape his own cinema in the coming decades. An early association with a young Robert De Niro resulted in "The Wedding Party". The film, which was co-directed with Leach and producer Cynthia Munroe, had been shot