1 He has never worn a baseball cap - either the right way or the wrong way round.
2 He understands music better than any director, living or dead.
3 He is deeply romantic but never sentimental.
4 He is one of the few film-makers to take the art of cinema out of its obvious arena.
5 He has never capitalised on his success by repeating an idea in a simplified form.
6 He understands the relationship between eroticism and film. (Weekend has one of the best ironic-erotic moments in cinema.)
7 He is not anxious to please his audience.
8 He is extremely funny.
9 He takes his responsibility as a film-maker very seriously.
10 He is determined to retain his credibility. (He is rumoured to have said that it would be difficult to decide who is the more stupid - George Bush or Michael Moore.)
Jean-Luc Godard is undoubtedly my favourite film-maker of all time. He is the antidote to Spielberg, he is still using his brain and, as far as I can tell, he hasn't sold out. (His idea of a commercial film was Contempt. When the producer wanted nude shots of Brigitte Bardot, JLG shot an extra scene in which she asks: "What do you think of my ass?", "What do you think of my breasts?" and so on.)
When I interviewed cinematographer Raoul Coutard recently at the ICA launch for Colin MacCabe's Godard biography, he refused to take credit for any of the ideas in the films he did with JLG. He would just say, "It's complicated ... I would discuss it with Mr Godard." I pushed a bit harder and wanted to know if JLG was difficult to work with. Coutard laughed. "He can be a shit ... but he's a genius."
It is difficult to imagine what cinema would be like without his influence. I certainly don't think I would have been as keen to make films if I hadn't seen Weekend, which remains one of the great cultural statements of the 1960s. It is full of ideas and energy and better than a year at film school.
· Weekend screens on Friday and Saturday at the Institut Français, London SW7. Box office: 020-7073 1350.