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In no order of importance: Music, Architecture, Photography, Film, Reading, Art, Human Energy Studies and Gender Issues, Traveling, Maps, Comedy, Climatology, Geography, History
No one comes to mind, but there are those who I've naturally crossed paths and left with great appreciation for having met them.
That's a tough one, as I listen to so much. Generally, most anything that sounds authentic, or vulnerable or reckless enough to sound like something is at stake of being lost or being a failed effort. It can be something that is flawlessly written, performed and executed with everything in place, but still there is a palpable quality that something was on the line or at risk and "thinking" didn't overcome the end result. Bottom line, is I want to be touched, illuminated and excited by what I experience.
I guess I can apply the same general statements I used for the music section. There are so many great films that I can't cover them all. A few that come to mind at this very moment: O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, Spinal Tap, Brazil, Being There, Crimes And Misdemeanors, Slingblade, American Beauty, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Time Bandits, Thank You For Smoking, The Apostle, Waiting For Guffman, Network, Short Cuts, Glengarry GlenRoss, It's A Wonderful Life, Edward Scissorhands, The Royal Tennenbaums, The Princess Bride, The Graduate, The Departed, Koyaanisqatsi, When The Levees Broke, Match Point, Moonstruck, Almost Famous, What The Bleep Do We Know?, Doctor Zhivago, Straw Dogs, Billy Elliot, Some Like It Hot, Tender Mercies, Best In Show, Pulp Fiction, Torch Song Trilogy, On The Beach, The Player, Goodfellas, 12 Angry Men, Annie Hall and too many more to list ..... you get the drift.
National Public Television: American Masters, Nova, American Experience, most Ken Burns’ productions, etc. Colbert Report (Comedy Central), Inside The Actor’s Studio (Bravo), Network TV shows ... basically Frasier, Will & Grace, West Wing ...... etc
Again .... a tough one. I have a pretty extensive collection of books on music, film screenplays, art, photography, architecture and topics addressing spirituality and the human condition.Books that had a profound influence at one point or another: Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning, C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, Eric Fromm's The Art Of Loving, Paul Tillich's My Search For Absolutes, Joseph Campbell's The Power Of Myth and John A. Sanford's Invisible Partners, a great study on the anima and animus.I've always had an affection for Southern fiction .... Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner and (most recently) Wayne Greenhaw among others.I've always enjoyed deeply-researched from-the-heart books about music. Peter Guralnick's works have always embraced a soulful balance of writerly observation and standing out of the way for his subjects to tell the story. Sweet Soul Music, Feel Like Going Home, Lost Highway, Dream Boogie and his two Elvis books, Careless Love and Last Train To Memphis are very important books. David Ritz has done some great biographies, especially Divided Soul (the life of Marvin Gaye) and Rhythm And The Blues (Jerry Wexler bio). Greil Marcus' Mystery Train and Lester Bang's Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung are two other provocative books that come to mind.I seriously enjoy well done interview books. Bill Flanagan's Written In My Soul came out at a time in the 80's when I was digging into music writing and his care with his subjects (along with Peter Guralnick's work) influenced me greatly in choosing to write with passion, dignity and grace. Cameron Crowe’s book, Conversations With Wilder, is a series of well-researched interviews with director Billy Wilder that are done with obvious love and provides great insight into this legendary director.Sarah Vowell has been a recent revelation. I have to admit I resisted delving into her simply because her name was getting dropped almost reflexively as a thing of "cool" ..... and I almost always walk into the room of "cool" with great wariness. As it turns out, her love of American history and its great music connects deeply with me and her affection for the music and culture of the places I've spent most of my life ..... Memphis and Nashville .... touches me. Her feelings about making good road tapes is something I understand on an essential level. I have to thank Chris Walla for his encouragement to check her work. That was a good call.I just finished reading Candy Girl: A Year In The Life Of An Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody, who is the screenwriter for the upcoming Jason Reitman picture Juno. Candy Girl is a fun read with some really good writing.A quick - & very funny read I just completed is They Call Me Naughty Lola, which is a collection of personal ads from the London Review Of Books. It's some of the funniest stuff I've read in a while. If you like quirky British humor, then check it out.One book I'm currently re-reading is David Richo's brilliant How To Be An Adult. I read this around 1994 and it was profound. I'd forgotten about it, until recently when an unexpected event caused me to revisit it. I can't say enough about how much this should be a must-read for anyone looking to take responsibility for his or her life.
Can't think of any off hand. The worst person is capable of something "heroic" given the right circumstance and there are those who "heroism" has gone to their heads and corrupted them, however privately. It'd be easy to run down the usual list of "great" people, but in my heart, that doesn't feel very authentic, as I feel everyone performs acts of "heroism" - great and small - over the course of just living the lives before them. Dig deep in the life of any acknowledged "hero" and you'll probably find some devils that had to be overcome.