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The question

Which writers or artists have most influenced your work?

Originally asked

The Paris Review, to novelists and poets, The Art of Fiction

A durable Art of Fiction question asked through named literary influences and artistic models.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

George Lucas

Filmmaker; creator of Star Wars and founder of Lucasfilm

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I liked all the normal kinds of adventure books, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Huck Finn sorts of things. I loved Swiss Family Robinson and that whole period of South Sea adventure movies. I liked westerns. Westerns were very big when I was growing up. When we finally got a television there was a whole run of westerns on television. John Wayne films, directed by John Ford, before I knew who John Ford was. I think those were very influential in my enjoyment of movies.

Academy of Achievement interview, Washington, D.C., 19 June 1999 source ↗

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David Lynch Film director, screenwriter and painter
I don’t know if that is true. There have been 110 or more years of cinema, and it’s impossible for any one of us to make a film that can’t be compared to something that has come before. To me Blue Velvet is Blue Velvet and Rear Window is Rear Window. You could say that Sunset Boulevard or Rear Window has conjured an idea for me, but even though I love them or am inspired by them, life is a 24/7 movie. Ideas come out of that all the time. It’s hard to say it’s cinema that conjures ideas. It’s altogether.
Recorded The Talks, published interview, 15 October 2014 source ↗
Olivia de Havilland Film actress; twice winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress
Thrust into my profession without any training whatsoever, I had to just flounder and just find my way. It was an agonizing experience. It’s like jumping off a diving board in the Olympic contest without knowing how to swim or dive, and I just had to find my way. So one day, I said to Jimmy Cagney, “Jimmy, what is acting?” and he said, “I don’t know.” He said, “All I can tell you is whatever you say, mean it,” and I thought that marvelous counsel.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Washington, D.C., 5 October 2006 source ↗
Philip Johnson Architect; first winner of the Pritzker Prize
Only Mies influenced me. Le Corbusier I met. He was a nasty man, but obviously a genius. You don’t have to like the people just because they’re geniuses. Mies and I got along better and we became pretty close. I worked with him on his greatest building here, the Seagram building, which was kind of fun, but again, you can’t be a hero-worshipper and be an uncommon architect; you’ve got to be your own man. So I split with Mies and did a different kind of work.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, New York, New York, 28 February 1992 source ↗
Wayne Thiebaud Painter; winner of the National Medal of Arts
Very much, because he’s interested in that same kind of process. Bonnard, Matisse, Indian miniature paintings, which he collected. That’s where the light comes from, a spectral relationship within the painting itself.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Sacramento, California, 27 May 2011 source ↗

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Question What does everyone in your world seem to agree on that you think is wrong? Values & belief
Yeah, and it’s made it considerably more difficult. It’s funny when you look back now, because everybody’s sort of copied those films. They’re so ingrained in the culture now, it’s almost impossible to think there was a point where those things were completely odd and unique.
Recorded Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, Skywalker Ranch, California, 1 June 1999 source ↗

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Noah Baumbach, Robert Wilson, Marco Brambilla, François Ozon, David Lynch, Olivia de Havilland

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