What work had the greatest influence on your life

[Savonarola]

On the episode of Bret Easton Ellis's podcast I recently listened to, he had Illeana Douglas as a guest.  She said that her parents had been a typical middle class suburban couple in Connecticut until they saw "Easy Rider."  After which they dropped out, started a commune and lived off of food stamps.  FREEDOM!

She also said her father, and every other man in the commune, wanted to be Dennis Hopper; not a Peter Fonda or Jack Nicholson among them.

Have you ever had a life changing reaction to a work of art?  (Not necessarily as major as that.)

I think that reading "On the Road" encouraged me to travel and later to write about my travels.

[Malthus]

I wish I could claim some life-changing revelation as the result of an inspiring work of high art or philosophy.

But no - right now, the most influential work for me is a Disney children's TV show, that got me to take up drawing as a hobby. Dunno if that counts. 

[celedhring]

North by Northwest.

It was my first day at film school, and I had this teacher that made a shot-for-shot analysis of the first 30 minutes of the film. Hitchcock's mise-en-scene is sheer genius, and I knew nothing "scholarly" about movies at the time (I just really really really liked them), so it totally blew up my mind. It changed the way I watch movies forever.

It remains one of my favorite films. There was even this Halloween where I dressed as Tornhill/Kaplan putting on a suit and attaching a toy airplane on a wire to my back 

[Barrister]

Embarrassing, but I wanted to be a lawyer because LA Law made it seem like a cool career when I was a kid.

Obviously by the time I went to law school the show was long off the air and generally out of my mind, but it started me to thinking about it...

[Camerus]

Reading The Richest Man in Babylon in my early twenties had a dramatic impact on my behaviour, although it hardly qualifies as a work of high culture.

As a black sheep I felt existential comfort after reading Bukowski's Post Office.

[Monoriu]

Can't think of anything major.  Nothing really changed my plan to study and find a job to achieve financial independence. 

If I really have to say something, then it is "greed is good".  Obviously I agree with it. 

[Eddie Teach]

Probably the Bible. For better and for worse.

[Caliga]

Embarrassing, but I wanted to be a lawyer because LA Law made it seem like a cool career when I was a kid.

This is probably true of like half the lawyers of your generation.

I read an article the other day about the 'Scully Effect'... apparently a huge number of women were inspired to go into the sciences and/or medicine by Agent Scully.

[Caliga]

My answer is going to sound much more ridiculous, but here goes: Superman III.

Why?  Because I had just gotten a Commodore 64 when I saw that movie, and if you recall Richard Pryor played a computer nerd con man who was able to do all kinds of neat stuff with computers.... so seeing it made me wonder if I could program on my C64, and lo and behold I could!  So that's why I started teaching myself how to code on the Commodore, and now I've been doing it for decades (though mostly I code in SQL now...)

I never really thought about it before this thread and it took me a while to come up with an answer, thinking back to what started to push me in the direction of my career.

[Iormlund]

Probably Carl Sagan's Cosmos. I was a small kid, and it was aired well past bedtime, but my father would let me stay late to watch it. It was my first window into science and history.

[Josquius]

It would probably be something at an early age, that being where people are made.
I'll say Thomas the Tank Engine.
To this day I curse Beaching and privatisation.

[Malthus]

It would probably be something at an early age, that being where people are made.
I'll say Thomas the Tank Engine.
To this day I curse Beaching and privatisation.

If you find yourself ordered around by a "Fat Controller", I'd suggest counselling. Unless you enjoy it. 

[saskganesh]

As a teenager, I found a little book in the library called "How to Live on Nothing" which was  an idea I had never heard before. Not that being poor is a good idea, but what was important to me was the radical concept that there's a lot of ways to have a rich, interesting and good life outside of the social norm.

[mongers]

As a teenager, I found a little book in the library called "How to Live on Nothing" which was  an idea I had never heard before. Not that being poor is a good idea, but what was important to me was the radical concept that there's a lot of ways to have a rich, interesting and good life outside of the social norm.

I might well check that out.