My
life and creative endeavors have been greatly impacted by the following
people. Some whose work and style I borrow from heavily, and some whose
work and style I enjoy so much that they keep me around by making life
worth living.
Writer: George Meyer
Put simply, George Meyer is
one of the best and most important comedy writers of all time. If you
consider that he is considered the most influencial writer of the
biggest and most influencial TV show of all time, it is a certain shame
his isn't a household name. Anyone who wrote my favorite magazine and
Simpsons quote ever certainly belongs first on my list of influences.
Among the gems pitched and written by Meyer:
"Homer: Never, Marge! I can't live the button-down life like you. I
want it all: the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy
middles. Sure, I might offend a few of the BLUE NOSES with my COCKY
STRIDE and MUSTY ODORS -- oh, I'll never be the DARLING of the
so-called "City Fathers" who CLUCK their tongue, STROKE their beard and
talk about, 'What's to be done with this Homer Simpson?'"
See especially:
The Simpsons seasons 1-9
Army man magazine issues #1, #2 and #3
Writer: John Swartzwelder
The best of all the Simpsons script-writers (George Meyer was mainly a
re-write writer, meaning he would add top-shelf jokes to near-finished
scripts), his banner jokes are timelessly funny, and after leaving the
show's writing room due to laws that forbade smoking there, he went on
to write three of the funniest books ever written. Although he wrote
what I consider the worst Simpsons episode of all time (the Frank
Grimes episode "Homer's Enemy", he also wrote the best episode ever
(Hank Scorpio's "You Only Move Twice"), so in all it's a wash. He is
fabulously rich, breath-takingly funny and a near-total recluse. In
short, everything I aspire to be.
One of my favorite John Swartzwelder jokes (from Army Man magazine #2)
SOLDIER: Is it 1945 yet, sir?
MAJOR: No. Keep fighting.
SOLDIER: Yes sir.
See especially:
Bart the General (The Simpsons)
You Only Move Twice (The Simpsons)
Radioactive Man (The Simpsons)
The Time Machine Did It (book)
Double Wonderful (book)
How I Conquered Your Planet (book)
Writer: Hunter S. Thompson
I
blame Hunter S. Thompson as the reason I studied journalism in college
-- which is ironic in that Thompson never studied journalism in
college. Either way, his relentless voice and its freaky-deaky verbiage
have been a profound inspiration to me as a writer attempting to, as he
once put it, "use language as both a political tool and musical
instrument."
His writings were founded on the concept that sometimes ficition is truer than the truth. And I agree.
Truthfully.
See especially:
The Proud Highway
The Great Shark Hunt
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Writer: Michael Crichton
Juarrasic Park was the
first "big person" book I ever read, and then re-read, and then
re-read. I think I read it five or six times overall. His writings are
relatively well-researched (he has a strong foundation in science) and
even better crafted. He tells big stories in a small, easily digestible
way. He is literally a science fiction writer. And one of the richest
men on planet Earth.
See especially:
Jurassic Park
Sphere
Next
ER
Writer: Aaron Sorkin
I regard Aaron Sorkin as the liberal Ayn Rand. They both tell
over-the-top stories containing explosive speeches that are scripted to
look like the most brilliant off-the-cuff remarks ever nurtured and
born in the minds of man. In essence, they are Romanticists who portray
their characters as "man as he ought to be" as opposed to "man as he
is." They are both amazingly divisive writers in that they are adored
by their fans and literally hated by their nay-sayers. I love them
both, but can understand how people would hate them. Their characters
are more than people and less than gods, which is sort of what I aspire
to be, myself.
See especially:
Sports Night
The West Wing
Writer: Ayn Rand
She practiced what she preached
by witnessing the evils of communism/collectivism in Soviet Russia and
escaping to America where she went on to a long and successful writing
career despite English being her second language. Her writings, like
Sorkin's, contain larger-than-life characters who make big speeches at
opportune moments in the narrative arc. Because she was an outsider to
the language, I think she, like Nabokov, was able to learn to use
English words according to their precise definitions. Because of that,
her passages have an economy of use while at the same time a scientific
eloquence.
See especially:
The Fountainhead
Philosophy: Who Needs It
Writer: Robert Pirsig
Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of the few literary works
to successfully marry philosophy, fiction and autobiography into one
masterpiece of thought and family. It is the book I would have aspired
to write had it not been written already. It is and was a wild success
that Pirsig earned the hard way.
Writer: P.J. O'Rourke
The man single-handedly
destroys all the preconceptions that say liberals are the only funny
people. He is a terrific writer and wit, and he, like me, was once a
hippie who eventually saw the light. He is, at the same time, both
insightful and hilarious, while not being bogged down in the stuck-up,
overly complicated verbiage that seems to hinder most other Atlantic
Monthly contributors.
See especially:
Eat the Rich
Parliament of Whores
Writer: Jon Krakauer
Into the Wild and Into Thin
Air are two of the best works of journalism I've ever read. Krakauer
writes concisely and precisely, as all journalists should, but adds a
flair of his own adventurous spirit to his high-quality, low-quantity
works. Under the Banner of Heaven gives you a drastic reappraisal of
your thoughts on the Mormon church. (They went from being blonde
weirdos to blonde totally fucked-up superweirdos in my eyes.)
See especially:
Into the Wild
Into Thin Air
Under the Banner of Heaven
Writer: Jim Carroll
The first man to instill a
love of words, word-flow, word-play and imagery fun in me. His poems
and stories have a quiet, liquid rush to them. Their own pace on their
own pages. I often don't know exactly what I'm reading, but I know that
I like it. That's my kind of poetry.
See especially:
Living at the Movies
The Basketball Diaries
Writer: T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land and Other Poems)
Eliot is mainly listed here because his "The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock" is my favorite poem ever, and The Waste Land is in my top
twenty.
See especially:
The Waste Land and Other Poems
Writer: Sylvia Plath
I was bored in a high school English class and was staring at a
poster containing pictures of great American poets over the centuries
when my eyes drifted over a pretty facade I quickly learned to be
Sylvia Plath's face. Her eyes had this fantastic depth and the small
smirk at the corner of her slightly opened mouth communicated an
outward laugh at inward torture. I soon thereafter rushed to the
bookstore and discovered that not only was she very pretty for being a
"great mind," but she could write the walls off a building! She killed
herself after a lifetime of being unable to find an equal. She married
a "great mind" named Ted Hughes, but he cheated on her regularly, and
she suffered in a self-imposed isolation wrought from a depression
caused by having the inability to make close friends.
I regard her as a kindred spirit, and I will always be sad we didn't live concurrently.
In her semi-autobiographical book "The Bell Jar," the main character,
Esther Greenwood, is forever tortured by the idea that her inability to
make decisions for herself was like being in the middle of a peach tree
overrun with plump peaches, but being allowed to reach out and grab
only one of the peaches while the rest would fall away and rot and she
would have to watch. I use that example all the time to describe my own
indecisions. Which is perhaps why I have so many different and yet
mediocre styles of writing on this site. I just can't pick one peach
and watch the rest rot.
See especially:
The Bell Jar
Ariel
Writer: Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov had more command over the English language than
anyone since William Shakespeare. While his plots were either
convoluted or overly simple, every other part of his writing was so far
ahead of the pack that it didn't matter. I would have to read some of
his passages two or three times just to be able to understand them to
the extent they were meant to be understood. It's like he was able to
condense an encylopedia set into a single teardrop at the corner of the
reader's eye.
See especially:
Lolita
Pale Fire
Speak, Memory
Writer: Charlie Kaufman
I just enjoy the shit out of his whacked-out screenplays. By far the most original writer in Hollywood.
See especially:
Being John Malkovich
Adaptation
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Writer: Joe Donatelli
Joe Donatelli, my oldest brother, is definitely one of my
influences. I've always looked up to his writing successes and
endeavors. He is forever challenging himself to go bigger and better.
See especially:
Whatever his most current work is
Writer: Darin Painter
Darin is my brother's friend from college and was the primary source
of my inspiration when I was a columnist in college. I used to read
Darin's column religiously when I was in high school, and his
combination of, again, ingight and comedy, has been a continuing source
of inspiration to me.
See especially:
I don't know. I haven't read anything of his in a long time, but I
guarantee you whatever he's working on in his private files is nothing
less than awesome.
Writer/Cartoonist: Bill Watterson
I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes and have always loved it.
Watterson retained his childhood imagination and used it as the fuel
for the motor of his message, which he never beat over the reader's
head, but instead let him or her discover it on his or her own. He
hated commercialism and treated his reader as if he or she actually had
a working brain. For that, I will always love him. Plus, he's from the
part of country where I was born, and we don't have many success
stories around there.
Writer/Cartoonist: Matt Groening
The Simpsons is the flagship of my aesthetic tastes, and Life In
Hell is just a fantastic, subversive, sometimes-cerebral adult strip
that I think remains as underrated as The Simpsons of today is
overrated.
Writer/Actor: Trey Parker
Writer/Actor: Matt Stone
Simply put, I moved out to LA because of these guys. I still plan on
being a South Park writer, but barring that, I plan on working with
these guys eventually. They are the ultimate combination of what I have
been referring to throughout this self-indulgent heroes list -- insight
and comedy. They run the finest admixture of those two concepts on
television, and their insight is as sharp as their wit is wet with
blood and flatulence.
See especially:
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (movie)
Towelie (episode)
I'm a Little Bit Country (episode)
Cancelled (episode)
Writer/Actor: Vernon Chatman
Vernon Chatman is not only the voice of Towelie -- one of the best
TV characters ever, haha -- but he is a co-creator and co-writer of
what I consider the best under-the-radar TV show this century: Wonder
Showzen. And not only is he a fantastic comedic wit, but he's also
black, and I needed to put a black person on here to maintain my street
cred.
See especially:
Towelie (South Park episode)
Cooperation (Wonder Showzen episode)
Time (Wonder Showzen episode)
Writer/Actor: Conan O'Brien
The man wrote one of the best Simpsons episodes of all time and is
the host of my favorite late-night show. I'm a little nervous about
when he takes over for the unbelievably unfunny Jay Leno (who's
actually surprisingly funny during the pre-show warm-ups and then turns
into comedy lead when the cameras start rolling), but until then, we
can all bask in the absurd glory!
See especially:
Marge Vs. The Monorail (The Simpsons episode)
Homer Goes to College (The Simpsons episode)
Late Night With Conan O'Brien
Writers/Actors: Monty Python -- Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam
I grew up watching these guys. While most kids were watching Barney
or some other bullshit, I was watching Sir Lancelot being rescued from
the "perilous" Castle Anthrax. I owe virtually all of my comedic
vocabulary to them. They're like the comedy version of Led Zeppelin. A
group of insanely talented individuals who were somehow able to work
together to make comedy bigger and better than anything on the planet.
See especially:
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python's Life of Brian
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Writer/Director: Stanley Kubrick
He's the best movie director ever. Let's just leave it at that.
See especially:
Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
A Clockwork Orange
Lolita
Writer/Director: Wes Anderson
I believe his career has been on a downward spiral since the
beginning, and I find a direct corelation between how much I like his
movies and when they came out (the earlier, the better). Bottle Rocket
is one of my favorite comedy movies, and Rushmore is also awesome. But
lately he just doesn't seem to be challenging himself. Or something. I
don't know. But Bottle Rocket is a movie that really got me thinking
about putting my writing talents to film.
See especially:
Bottle Rocket
Rushmore
The Royal Tenenbaums
Writer/Director: P.T. Anderson
Although his movies have that weird European style where they could
pretty much end at any point and the movie would make about the same
amount of sense, his shots are just too amazing to be ignored as
outright European foolishness. I consider him the most Kubrick-like of
living directors, in that he's made a wide variety of expertly shot
movies containing ridiculously symmetrical and profound shots.
See especially:
Magnolia
Punch-Drunk Love
Musicians: Pearl Jam
See especially:
Ten (album)
Vs. (album)
Hard to Imagine (song)
Last Exit (song)
Musicians: Tool
See especially:
Aenima (album)
Lateralus (album)
Musician: Billy Cobham
See especially:
Spectrum (album)
The Mahavishnu Orchestra (he was their drummer)
Musician: Frank Zappa
See especially:
Son of Mr. Green Genes (song)
Sofa (song)Peaches En Regalia (song)Fine Girl (song)Camarillo Brillo (song)RDNZL (song)Inca Roads (song)Cruising For Burgers (song)Big Leg Emma (song)
Musicians: The Beastie Boys
See especially:
Paul's Boutique (album)
Check Your Head (album)
Ill Communication (album)
License to Ill (album)
Musicians: The Bloodhound Gang
See especially:
One Fierce Beer Coaster (album)
Hooray For Boobies
Musicians: Blind Melon
See especially:
self-titled (album)
Soup (album)
Musicians: The Flaming Lips
See especially:
The Soft Bulletin (album)
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (album)
Musicians: The Fugees
See especially:
The Score (album)
Musicians: Hum
See especially:
You'd Prefer An Astronaut (album)
Downward Is Heavenward (album)
Musicians: Mogwai
See especially:
Hunted By A Freak (song)
Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home (song)
Mogwai Fear Satan (song)
Musician: Pharoah Sanders
See especially:
Thembi (song)
The Creator Has a Master Plan (song)
Musicians: Talking Heads
See especially:
Stop Making Sense (album/movie)
Musician: Tim Buckley
See especially:
Once I Was (song)
Dolphins (song)
Musician: Too Short
See especially:
Cocktails (album)
Life Is... (album)
Musicians: Ween
See especially:
Chocolate and Cheese (album)
White Pepper (album)
Quebec (album)
The Mollusk (album)
12 Golden Country Greats (album)
Artist: Ralph Steadman
See especially:
Everything accompanying Hunter Thompson's essays
Parent: Mom
Exemplary in raising, clothing, cleaning, feeding and teaching me. One of the two best parents I've ever had.
Parent: Dad
Stellar performance in making a living for the family and acting as
the quiet disciplinarian threat. The Luca Brasi to my mom's Godfather.
Another of the two best parents I've ever had.
Brother: Tom
One hell of a brother, in the best and worst sense of the saying.
Tom has made a great contribution to who I am today. I have much to
begrudge him for, but even more to thank. His heart is as great as his
chili.
Brother: Matt Vitale
Pretty much officially my brother. Also my trans-continental IT guy
as well as first-class well-wisher. He and his wife (and my friend) are
very near and dear to my heart.
Brother: Jason LeDonne
I give Jason credit for unknowingly saving my life one Winter when I
was facing down a horrible depression in high school. Jay had recently
fallen on some bum luck himself, and while I'm not one to believe in
God taking an active role in His universe, Jay living with us that
winter was a blessing of some sort. He exemplifies what I look for in a
friend: insight, wit and a comfort and awareness of who he is honestly.
Anti-Hero: Sophia Coppola
I hate Sophia Coppola so much I'm not even sure I'm spelling her
name right. I don't give a fuck. She has zero talent and zero brain.
Her script for Lost In Translation was about as original as the shit I
wipe on toilet paper. Fuck her nepotistic cunt.
Don't see especially:
Lost In Translation (aka Punch-Drunk Love for idiots, or "Eternal Sunshine of the Thoughtless Mind")
