#484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming

(gentle music) You've helped create some of the most incredible characters, stories, and open worlds in video game history.

But when you grew up in the late '70s and '80s, open world video games wasn't a thing.

So you've credited, uh, literature and film as, uh, early inspiration.

So let's talk about, uh, film first, if we can.

Sure.

What to you are some of the candidates for the greatest films of all time, maybe films that were highly influential on you?I mean, Godfather.

God- well, I think for me, probably Godfather II more than Godfather I, but I love both of them.

But I love the divided story in Godfather II.

And as a migrant, I used to live in Soho.

I love the bits in Little Italy and I love the, uh, the sections in Sicily.

So I think...

And the bit at Ellis Island is just one of the best shots in all of cinema.

When you see little Vito turning up in Ellis Island and you get that shot, it's amazing.

It gives you a really good cinematic sense of what it must have been like to arrive in America.

How much of the greatness of Godfather do you think is the writing, how much is the cinematography, and how much is the acting? You got De Niro, you got young Pacino.

Well, Coppola started as a screenwriter, so I think he wrote, at least co-wrote the script.

So it's almost like the writing and directing almost become the same thing.

Well, it's one of those films, both of them are those films, which I was thinking about this idea of a perfect film where everything's good, where the acting's seminal, where the writing's seminal, where the music is seminal, where the shots are so memorable, where the scenes, uh, uh, you know, define what you think about things.

You know, it's impossible to think about the mafia and not think about The Godfather.

What about the pacing? It is a bit slow.

You have, you have movies like 2001: Space Odyssey, slow.

Yes.

It used to be, back in my day, (laughs) it used to be slower.

Life got faster.

Life just got, you know-