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The Books, Music and Films that Made Me

The Books, Music and Films that Made Me

Last updated on: November 24, 2012 at 1:04 pm by dannyfisher

The Books, Music and Films that Made Me 2012-11-24T13:04:46-07:00 dannyfisher

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The author many years ago.

Recently, one of my students mentioned that he’d be curious to see a list of general recommendations I might have in terms of arts and literature. Not long after, in an interesting coincidence, Cornel West’s Hope on a Tightrope: Words and Wisdom found itself on my reading table: Dr. West ends the book with a list of the books and music that “made him.” I took that as a hint from the universe that I should take a moment to answer my student. I’m not sure how interesting this will be to the rest of you, but it was a good exercise for me and I hope it directs somebody to something that transforms them as much as it did me.

Like Dr. West, I feel deeply shaped by certain books and pieces of music. I also feel deeply shaped by quite a few films as well. (I was once a film major — it’s a medium that speaks to me.)

I’ve chosen to stick with Dr. West’s way of doing the lists: by artist’s name, with the specifically influential works noted.

Again, these are works that “made me” — not an attempt to name the “bests” in these areas. (I’m aware, for example, that no films by Howard Hawks, Federico Fellini, Ernst Lubitsch, Luis Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, Nicholas Ray, Mike Nichols, Preston Sturges, or Quentin Tarantino — to name just a few — make the cut. That’s simply because I don’t necessarily “feel” the influence of their work in my life the way I most certainly do with the others I’ve listed.)

In terms of process, I simply listed as fast as I could — “first thought, best thought” — and then went back a second time and added things that it occurred to me were missing. I have invariably forgotten important influences, but I think each is fairly representative of the works of art and literature that have made me the fellow I am today.

Please enjoy. And please share yours with us in the comments if you’re so inclined!

* * *

FILMS

Terrence Malick – whole corpus, but especially The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life

Errol Morris – whole corpus, but especially The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

Charles Chaplin – whole corpus, but especially Modern Times, City Lights, and The Great Dictator

Steven Spielberg – Lincoln, Schindler’s List, Munich, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Amistad, Empire of the Sun, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, War Horse, Catch Me If You Can, and The Sugarland Express

Spike Lee – 4 Little Girls, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, 25th Hour, Malcolm X, Inside Man, and Do the Right Thing

Peter Weir – whole corpus, but especially Fearless, Witness, and The Mosquito Coast

Martin Scorsese – whole corpus, but especially Mean Streets, The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun, Goodfellas, and The Departed

Warren Beatty – Reds and Bulworth

Robert Duvall – The Apostle

Jonathan Demme – Cousin Bobby, The Agronomist, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains, and Swimming to Cambodia

Woody Allen – Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Broadway Danny Rose, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Sweet and Lowdown, Deconstructing Harry, Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Sleeper, Zelig, and The Purple Rose of Cairo

Richard Attenborough – Gandhi and Cry Freedom

Michael Moore – whole corpus, but especially Roger & Me and Bowling for Columbine

Christopher Nolan – whole corpus, but especially Memento and The Dark Knight

Tim Robbins – whole corpus, but especially Dead Man Walking

Sean Penn – whole corpus, but especially The Indian Runner and The Pledge

George Clooney – Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck.

Mira Nair – Monsoon Wedding

Arthur Penn – Bonnie and Clyde and Little Big Man

David Anspaugh – Hoosiers

Noah Baumbach – Kicking and Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, and The Squid and the Whale

Wes Anderson – Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited

Michael Mann – The Insider, Ali, and Heat

Cindy Meehl – Buck

Orson Welles – Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight, and F for Fake

Jean Renoir – Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game

Akira Kurosawa – whole corpus, but especially Ikiru, Ran, Seven Samurai, Red Beard, Rashomon, High and Low, Yojimbo, Dersu Uzala, and Dreams

Alfred Hitchcock – whole corpus, but especially Vertigo, North by Northwest, Rear Window, Psycho, and Shadow of a Doubt

John Ford – The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Quiet Man

Fred Zinnemann – High Noon

Ross McElwee – Sherman’s March

Frank Capra – It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

John Huston – The Man Who Would Be King, The African Queen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, and Prizzi’s Honor

George A. Romero – Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Martin

Joel and Ethan Coen – Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, A Serious Man, The Man Who Wasn’t There, True Grit, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

David O. Russell – Three Kings and I (Heart) Huckabees

Alexander Payne – whole corpus, but especially Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways

Ingmar Bergman – Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, and Persona

Billy Wilder – Sunset Blvd., Double Indemnity, and Some Like It Hot

Robert Altman – Nashville, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, M*A*S*H, and Short Cuts

Stanley Kubrick – whole corpus, but especially Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Francis Ford Coppola – The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now

Carol Reed – The Third Man

Joseph von Sternberg – The Last Command

Clint Eastwood – A Perfect World and Unforgiven

Jim Sheridan – In the Name of the Father

Werner Herzog – Grizzly Man

Lindsay Anderson – O Lucky Man!

Paul Thomas Anderson – Magnolia

Jean-Luc Godard – Breathless

Francois Truffaut – The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, Fahrenheit 451, and Day for Night

Sidney Lumet – Network, 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Davis Guggenheim – An Inconvenient Truth

Steven Soderbergh – King of the Hill, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Che, Traffic, and The Informant!

Ridley Scott – Blade Runner

Robert Mulligan – To Kill a Mockingbird

Steve Buscemi – Trees Lounge

Glenn Gordon Caron – Clean and Sober

Bob Rafelson – Five Easy Pieces

Neil Jordan – The Crying Game

Robert Zemeckis – Contact and Cast Away

Jim Jarmusch – Dead Man

Roman Polanski – Chinatown and Repulsion

Edward Zwick – Glory

–

MUSIC

Johnny Cash – whole corpus, but especially The American Recordings, At Folsom Prison, At San Quentin, At San Quentin, My Mother’s Hymn Book, “What is Truth,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Ring of Fire,” “Get Rhythm,” “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” “What Do I Care,” and “The Man in Black”

Bruce Springsteen – whole corpus, but especially The Rising, Born to Run, The Ghost of Tom Joad, “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” “Man’s Job,” “American Skin (41 Shots),” “Beautiful Disguise,” “Mary’s Place,” We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, Lucky Town, “Lonesome Day,” “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” and “The Rising”

Leonard Cohen – whole corpus, but especially The Future, Songs of Leonard Cohen, and “Democracy”

Woody Guthrie – whole corpus, but especially Dustbowl Ballads and “This Land Is Your Land”

Emmylou Harris – whole corpus, but especially Wrecking Ball, Red Dirt Girl, and “Deeper Well”

Elliott Smith – whole corpus, but especially Roman Candle, Either/Or, “Alameda,” “Last Call,” “Rose Parade,” “Waltz #2,” “Angeles,” “Pitseleh,” and “Son of Sam”

Bob Dylan – whole corpus, but especially Highway 61 Revisited, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, Time Out of Mind, Blood on the Tracks, Oh Mercy, Love and Theft, and The Bootleg Series

Philip Glass – whole corpus, but especially Satyagraha, Solo Piano, and the soundtrack for Martin Scorsese’s Kundun

Aretha Franklin – whole corpus, but especially Amazing Grace and “I Never Loved a Man”

Marvin Gaye – whole corpus, but especially What’s Going On?

The Beatles – whole corpus, but especially “All You Need Is Love”

John Lennon – whole corpus, but especially Imagine, Double Fantasy, “Working Class Hero,” “Jealous Guy,” “Mind Games,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “Happy Xmas (War is Over),” “Nobody Told Me,” “Watching the Wheels,” “Power to the People,” “Instant Karma,” “Gimme Some Truth,” and “Imagine”

George Harrison – whole corpus, but especially All Things Must Pass, Living in the Material World, Cloud Nine, Brainwashed, “Fish on the Sand,” “Any Road,” “This is Love,” “What is Life,” and “Isn’t It a Pity?”

Patti Smith – whole corpus, but especially Gung Ho, Horses, and Twelve

U2 – whole corpus, but especially The Unforgettable Fire and “Beautiful Day”

Roy Orbison – whole corpus

Patsy Cline – whole corpus, but especially “Crazy”

Public Enemy – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Fear of a Black Planet, “Fight the Power,” and “He Got Game”

Sam Cooke – Greatest Hits

Billie Holiday – Greatest Hits

Tom Petty – Greatest Hits, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: The Live Anthology, and “Have Love Will Travel”

The Travelling Wilburys – whole corpus

The Flatlanders – whole corpus

Jimmie Dale Gilmore – whole corpus

Stevie Wonder – Talking Book, Songs in the Key of Life, “Pastime Paradise,” and “I Wish”

Neil Young – whole corpus, but especially “Heart of Gold,” “Rockin’ in the Free World,” “Philadelphia,” and “For What It’s Worth” (with Buffalo Springfield)

Daniel Lanois – “The Maker” and Acadie

Bob Marley – whole corpus, especially “Three Little Birds,” “Redemption Song,” and “Get Up, Stand Up”

Beastie Boys – Check Your Head, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty, “Bodhisattva Vow,” “Stand Together,” “Unite,” and “Sure Shot”

Jeff Buckley – Grace

Bright Eyes – “Bowl of Oranges”

Lucinda Williams – Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

–

BOOKS

Bhikkhu Bodhi – whole corpus of translation and original writing, but especially In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon and “A Challenge to Buddhists”

The Heart Sūtra

Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra

Śāntideva – Bodhicaryavatara

Nāgārjuna – Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā and Suhṛllekha

Candrakīrti – Bodhisattvayogācāracatuḥśatakaṭīkā

Geshe Rabten – Mind and Emotions

Mipham Rinpoche – Gateway to Knowledge

Gyalsé Tokmé Zangpo – Thirty-Seven Practices of the Bodhisattvas

Mahāyānottaratantra Śāstra

His Holiness the Dalai Lama – whole corpus, but especially “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech” and A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night

Sulak Sivaraksa – Loyalty Demands Dissent, Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society, The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddhist Economics for the 21st Century, and Conflict, Culture, Change: Engaged Buddhism in a Globalizing World

Maha Ghosananda – Step by Step: Meditations on Wisdom and Compassion

Aung San Suu Kyi – Freedom from Free, Letters from Burma, and The Voice of Hope (in conversation with Alan Clements)

Archbishop Desmond Tutu – whole corpus, but especially No Future Without Forgiveness, God Is Not a Christian: And Other Provocations, An African Prayer Book, The Rainbow People of God, and God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time

Mohandas K. Gandhi – whole corpus, but especially Non-Violent Resistance and The Story of My Experiments with Truth

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – whole corpus, but especially Why We Can’t Wait, Strength to Love, and Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

Ralph Waldo Emerson – whole corpus, but especially “Divinity School Address”

Henry David Thoreau – whole corpus, but especially Walden and “Civil Disobedience”

Walt Whitman – whole corpus, but especially “Song of Myself”

Leo Tolstoy – A Confession, The Kingdom of God is Within You, War and Peace, and How Much Land Does a Man Need?

Mark Twain – whole corpus

John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath

Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird

W. Somerset Maugham – The Razor’s Edge

N. Scott Momaday – House Made of Dawn

Sherman Alexie – The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Tim O’Brien – The Things They Carried

Barbara Kingsolver – The Bean Trees

Upton Sinclair – The Jungle

Studs Terkel – whole corpus, but especially Working and Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

Jerry Mander – Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Louis Fischer – Gandhi: His Life and His Message for the World

Eknath Easwaran – Gandhi: The Man

David J. Garrow – Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Tony Hendra – Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul

Barbara Ehrenreich – Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Breece D’J Pancake – The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake

Alice Walker – The Color Purple

Pablo Neruda – Collected Poems

Charles Bukowski – whole corpus

E.L. Doctorow – Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, and City of God

Art Spiegelman – Maus

Bill Watterson – Calvin & Hobbes series

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince

Fred Rogers – whole corpus

John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meaney and A Son of the Circus

Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye

Herman Melville – Moby Dick

Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, and Oliver Twist

J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey

Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Frankenstein

Audre Lorde – Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Ernest J. Gaines – A Lesson Before Dying

Anonymous – Primary Colors

Herman Hesse – Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund

Jostein Gaarder – Sophie’s World

Booker T. Washington – Up from Slavery

Hunter S. Thompson – Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, and The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955–1967

T.S. Eliot – The Wasteland

William Shakespeare – whole corpus

Tennessee Williams – whole corpus

Eugene O’Neill – The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and Ah, Wilderness!

Tony Kushner – Angels in America

Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project – The Laramie Project

Eve Ensler – The Vagina Monologues

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche – whole corpus, but especially Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Pema Chödrön – whole corpus

Judith Simmer-Brown – Dakini’s Warm Breath and “The Crisis of Consumerism”

Joshua Eaton – “It’s Time to Open Our Doors”

Kalu Rinpoche – The Dharma: That Illuminates All Beings Impartially Like the Light of the Sun and the Moon

Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche – Present Fresh Wakefulness: A Meditation Manual on Nonconceptual Wisdom

Vice President Al Gore – An Inconvenient Truth and The Assault on Reason

Jonathan Harr – A Civil Action

Randy Shilts – And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

Sister Helen Prejean – Dead Man Walking

Rachel Carson – Silent Spring

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn – Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Howard Zinn – A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present

Nelson Mandela – Long Walk to Freedom

Anne Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl

Elie Wiesel – Night

Frederick Douglass – My Bondage and My Freedom

Malcom X – The Autobiography of Malcolm X

C.S. Lewis – A Grief Observed, The Screwtape Letters, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Paul Rogat Loeb – The Soul of the Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While (with others)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer – The Cost of Discipleship, Ethics, and Letters and Papers from Prison

Cornel West – whole corpus, but especially Race Matters, Hope on a Tightrope: Words and Wisdom, and The Rich and the Rest of Us (with Tavis Smiley)

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