Listening right now to Symmetry’s Themes for an Imaginary Film… It’s excellent, and the music reminds me of cool (but not necessarily good) Eighties films like To Live and Die in LA, Tequila Sunrise, 8 Million Ways to Die, and Black Rain.
However, I was watching actually a very good film the other night: Poltergeist (quick trivia: Who directed Poltergeist? If you said Steven Spielberg, you’d be wrong. He co-wrote and produced it, but Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame was the director), and as I sat there, I realized what a profound influence that film had on me, and it got me thinking about all of these “artistic“ influences I carry around just below the surface; not only those films mentioned above, but many others: Jaws, Road Warrior, Conan the Barbarian, Highlander, Alien, and Terminator. And of course, there are the books: early Stephen King (particularly Christine, Firestarter, Salem’s Lot and the Dead Zone), Neuromancer, Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, Michael Crichton’s Congo, Gary Jennings’ Aztec, and innumerable fantasy and sci-fi series (and games, ‘natch). There are the TV shows like Miami Vice and The Greatest American Hero , and even the music, everything from The Cars to Guns n’ Roses. All of these things, for good or ill, bubble up in what I write: characters, ideas, themes. These were the things I thought were cool or interesting when I was a teenager, and they’re an indelible part of me. They’re the trees in my literary forest: from above they’re indistinct, when you get beneath the canopy, down at ground level, they loom large.
Does that mean I’ll write a story about a rogue shark or a diabolic car? Not likely. But I do hope someday I can capture Jaws’ sense of creeping dread and create as likeable and relatable a protagonist as Chief Brody, or perfectly capture the rhythms of high school and the sense of alienation felt by Christine’s Arnie Cunningham. Whether I think of them as trees, or building blocks, all of these influences – memories – are part of me and what I write.
Or…I’m just suffering from extreme nostalgia. My oldest daughter just got her driver’s license, and if there’s anything that makes you feel your age, face your mortality, and remember your teen years, it’s that –
Oh, come on. Give us a story about a pyromaniac alien shark zooming through a postapocalyptic hellscape in his murderous self-aware motorcycle. You know you want to.