Filmmaker Wim Wenders is the director most recently of the 3-D dance film Pina, which was nominated for the 2012 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Before participating in a panel on images of L.A.-and the tensions between the city’s fiction and reality-he revealed that although he’s a dapper dresser, the item of clothing he truly can’t live without is his underwear.
Q. What’s your favorite movie snack?
A. There’s only one. It’s popcorn, and I don’t like the salted one.
Q. What do you do to unwind?
A. Listen to music: blues, rock ’n’ roll, classical, African.
Q. What do you obsess about?
A. Editing. Precision.
Q. What inspires you?
A. Places. I’m a big traveler.
Q. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
A. “Don’t buy anything from a man who’s out of breath.”
Q. Who’s your favorite Beatle-and why?
A. John. The question why is obsolete.
Q. What was the last thing you bought online?
A. CDs, books. An electric toothbrush.
Q. What’s the most surprising place you’ve taken a great photograph?
A. Armenia. It was a panoramic photograph of the Armenian alphabet, building to a huge monument of the alphabet that even the Armenians didn’t know existed.
Q. What item of clothing can’t you live without?
A. Underpants.
*Photo by Sarah Rivera.