Pajiba

The Shawshank Redemption, at the exact moment when Andy Dufresne plays "Sull Aria" across the prison speakers. Transcendent.

Hah! Early in for a change!

Album: Fables of the Reconstruction / Reckoning, REM -- A cheat, but a friend gave me these two as a Christmas present. This gift started a life-long love affair with REM, and "Driver 8" and "Don't Go Back to Rockville" led me to explore authentic country like Johnny Cash.

Song: "Once," Pearl Jam -- This song epitomizes the angry album Ten, which nursed me through the roaring implosion of my first marriage.

Movie: Barcelona -- As with Pearl Jam, I discovered this introspective film at just the right time to get through a major crisis. The mood and dialogue resonate perfectly if you've got something lonesome but hopeful inside you.

For me it was Casablanca when I was about 17. It turned me on to old b&w movies and especially Bogart, who is now one of my favorite actors ever. It showed me that the old movies that my parents enjoyed could actually be worthwhile for me to watch too.

To be honest, I think I'm still waiting for that magical moment to come. Sometimes my taste in movies hovers between shameful and downright humiliating! I would say though, that my boyfriend has really got me watching classic movies in the last year, and the one that changed my mind about them (I thought anything without colour was D-U-L-L)was North by Northwest. Probably not the best movie ever, but it really showed me that black and white doesn't mean BORING. I also am easing up and letting him take me to more of "his type of movies" and surprisingly, I am enjoying them all. Perhaps the days when I got really excited about the latest Will Ferrel drivel are slowly coming to an end....

Album: I wasn't that into music as a kid, other than the 80's requisites such as Madonna and New Kids on the Block. But when I was 11 a girlfriend bought me Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes for my birthday (about a year after its release), which was the first album that I paid close attention to not only the lyrics but the orchestration of the songs and the flow of the lineup.

Movie: I'd say Edward Scissorhands-before that film I never had an appreciation for the sweetly absurd.

Dustin - we're like Mike and Ike, we think alike!

album: Elvis Costello, Spike (song also: God's Comic) - my teen self went - Oh, THAT'S how songwriting can be. Ooooohhhhh it's good, and then there's the part where it's ABOUT something!

movie: Aliens - I've said it before, and it's been covered on this site, but a woman, who is not like a man, who can kick ass BECAUSE she's a woman. Hell YES.

Oooh I didn't see the thing about album/song. So mine are Chutes too Narrow by the Shins which opened my eyes to indie music. And for the song I would probably have to go with Crosses by Zero 7/Jose Gonzales - it's hauntingly beautiful.

Pump Up the Volume. I think I was waiting for something or someone to tell me that I wasn't wrong to feel disenfranchised and that maybe it was OK to hate school and all the bull shit that came with it. Pump Up the Volume did that for me. I wonder if it still holds up. I may have to netflix it just to see if it still hits me the way it did the first time I saw it.

Once Were Warriors - Lee Tamahori
I'm from New Zealand, you see... and this was the most raw film I had seen at that point.

Music? It's happened a few times... the last one was Bright Eyes a few years back.

I would say the movie Gone With the Wind, only because it was the first "old movie" that I ever got into and loved. I watched it towards the end of 9th grade shortly after finishing the book (which I now count among my favorites). This sparked an old movie obsession with my friends, and the following summer and school year consisted of James Dean, Cary Grant, and the wonderful Clark Gable. I think it was that movie that really solidified my interest and constant viewing of movies.

I was 6 when The Joshua Tree was released. A few years later, my parents bought the cd. I remember listening to it over and over. Then, one day, I was sitting in front of our now antiquated stereo, reading the lyrics to "With or Without You," when it dawned on me that there could be an emotion so complex that there could be no real resolution. I felt like the time I had a dream that told me the secret to the universe that I couldn't remember when I woke up. The way I looked at love, and relationships, completely changed. I realized I had the capacity not to blindly accept the actions and words of the people I loved; that the people I loved, in fact, might not be perfect (I was thinking of my dad specifically, whom I worshiped even though he was a total ass all the time).

As for film, I think Remains of the Day. The severe repression of the main character, his inability to deal with his choices, and his gradual realization of the consequences of his choices, truly affected me. I vowed to never be like him and to live my life as honestly as possible.

I know this is gonna sound like a cop-out, but Star Wars Episode IV did it for me. I wasn't even seven yet when my mom took me (and my brother) to see it, and I can remember certain portions of the flick and that setting/experience SO CLEARLY. Lifelong sci-fi geek from that day on...

And the first time I heard When Doves Cry - I always tell people that before then I listened to the radio, and after... After I listened to music.

For me it was the first time i saw Leaving Las Vegas. it was finally on cable tv two years after it came out in theaters. i was a junior in college. i found myself constantly debating (with myself) who was the more tortured soul, Ben or Sera. to this day, i still can't decide. also, the soundtrack is the stuff of legends.

Album: Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique After I heard this album (I think I was 12) it made me want to listen to music outside of the usual top 40 and start digging a little further in to new sounds (to me this is the Pet Sounds of the 90's generation). I also started to track down all of the recordings they sampled from which brought about a passion for 60's in 70's pop at a young age.

Song: Minor Threat - Minor Threat When I discovered Minor Threat muuuuch after they disbanded (I think I was 15) it led me to attending live music at the local level.

Movie: A Clockwork Orange At 14, a old (to me at least) movie with a promise of boobs and a little of the ol' ultravoilence was too much to pass up. It delivered in that aspect, shed light on movies outside of the typical Adam Sandler and Chris Farley fare the rest of my friends were quoting in insessantly.

I'm with cmoody . . . Pump up the Volume seemed to change everything in one fell swoop. It had never occurred to me that I wasn't socially retarded because I hated school and thought teachers were mostly full of shit.
As for whether or not it might still have an effect on you . . . as soon as Johnette's voice rings out "Everybody Knows" as they drive around in the Jeep, I teared up. After all these years (did it really come out 17 years ago??!?!) it still gets me. And besides, the soundtrack is killer.

the low end theory by tribe called quest. i'm not sure about the movie. maybe texas chainsaw massacre. i will never not be afraid of the middle of nowhere.

the movie: nightmare before christmas. it came out when i was in fifth grade, and i. fell. in. love. my parents bought me my first vhs of it right after we moved from iowa to tennessee, and i watched it almost every weekend in my sixth grade year, due to the fact that i had almost no friends. the music: for years i was heavily into metal and punk rock, and a lot of those bands mean more than the world to me. but for transformative experience, i would have to say bonnie prince billy and will oldham in general, because from him i learned to love the blues and country. him and tom waits.

It's always a little embarrassing to open up in these types of threads because of poor music/movie tastes and choices made during adolescence. That being said, the album that marked a turning point in my listening tastes was Wild by Erasure. I got this cassette for free when I worked in a music store in 8th grade, but I didn't listen to it until about a year later. It made me see that I could enjoy music that wasn't being played on the local top 40 station. This album lead me to Black Celebration by Depeche Mode, which in spite of whatever opinions there are on Depeche Mode, it's hard to argue that this is their best. album. ever. And of course I've continued to evolve from there. Thankfully.

The movie that forever changed by viewing perspective was Barton Fink. My boyfriend (now husband) introduced me to it. It was the first movie I ever watched that didn't have a pat, convenient, happily-ever-after ending, and it thoroughly confused me. The Mr. teased me for years about this. But it opened me up to a whole different mind set of what a movie could be.

Movie -- The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Album -- The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Song -- The Time Warp, or anything else from the movie/album.

It was my first year at college, and it had just come out (cough cough) and I went to see it 12 times in a row. It was my first audience participation movie, and I think my last, too. It brought me out of my shyness.

Movie: The Piano

Song: Shine on You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd

Movie: "A Clockwork Orange". I saw this when I was 17, and a senior in High School (many moons ago)... and it was the first movie experience I had had when I "got the point" of the message that Burgess/Kubrick were trying to relay.

Album: Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Blood Sugar Sex Magic"... It may not be as "cool" or "hip" as some other people's experience, but this came out just before I started High School, and pretty much defined that whole experience. I listened to this album in its entirety all the way through HS and College.

Movie: Fight Club. I was 15, and until then Disney movies and romcoms had been my penchant. Raised in a quasi-sheltered home, I was unaware that anything better or deeper existed. Someone else rented Fight Club and brought it to my house, and behold: a love affair was born. That movie got me started really loving movies. I was just talking to someone about that the other day, how that movie was truly a defining moment (or 2 hours) that forever shaped my future tastes.

Album: probably Ben Folds Five's self-titled album, but I was a little younger for that one. Again, shaped my taste for life. I've moved on to liking Ben as a solo artist more now, but damn if I don't have some deep-seeded memories interlaced with that CD. Later on as a fresh high-school grad I had a similar experience with R.E.M. and "Losing My Religion". This is embarassing, but I used to write Michael Stipe letters that I never sent about how only he understood me. Oh God, my face still gets red just thinking about it! Ah, angst.

As a pre-teen: The Poseidon Adventure blew me away far more than Star Wars ever would and showed me that film was an incredible medium capable of anything in the right hands.

In my last days of teenagedom: Xanadu, for reminding me that, if I have fun, true love was possible and that gooey feeling inside was okay.

As a twenty-something: Steets of Fire, for reminding me that love is not possible under any circumstances at any time for any reason, no matter how awesome you are.

Album - "Misguided Roses" by Edwin McCain. I bought the cd for one song and I ended falling more in love with every other track on the album. It is one of my most treasured cds.

Song - "Pure Energy" by Information Society. I remember being very young and listening to this song with my sister and just dancing and dancing. I had never heard anything like it before.

Movie - "The Usual Suspects" I was so completely blown away.

I forgot about the album. There was a turning point . . . it was at my 12th birthday party. My friend, Alexis, held out two cassette tapes (this was in 1991, yeah, we had tapes still) and told me to pick one. One was Kriss Kross. The other was Red Hot Chili Peppers BloodSugarSexMagic. I chose the Chili Peppers. And for the rest of the night (it was a slumber party, of course!) we sat up listening to Sir Psycho Sexy and giggling. I STILL to this day can't hear the word "creamy" without hearing "creamy beaver, hotter than a fever" in my head and laughing hysterically. The point being, that choice influenced my music choices from then on. I can't imagine what would have happened to me if I had chosen fucking Kriss Kross.

First off, OMYGOSHCLARENCEANDALABAMA! AWESOMEILOVEYOU!

Now that's out of my system.

Albums: "Disintegration", The Cure because I was a terribly maudlin teenager, and it help me work through all my horrid angst, depression, and unrequited love.

And "Little Earthquakes", Tori Amos because I was/is/whatever a very angry bitter young woman and sometimes misery really fucking wants company and a good tune to hum.

Songs: There are some beautiful and moving spiritual songs that Johnny Cash and Ralph Stanley sing. Every time I hear them my life is changed and renewed.

Movies: Yes, wait for it. "Dead Poets Society" Honestly, it was after seeing that movie that I decided all I wanted of my life was to make a positive impact on people. Yeah, still haven't gotten around to it, but I am very well intentioned.

Second, "Master and Commander" for a bit of a weird reason. The character of Blakeney, the little midshipman, inspired me to raise a son as strong and brave as that boy was.

Movie - Clerks

I know I'll get a little heat for picking Kevin Smith, but this movie opened me up to something I had never experienced before: A Personal Connection to a film.

The brilliant writing, the hilarious scenarios, and the overall bad acting make this movie so incredible for me that I love it because of, not in spite of, it faults (Of which there are very few).

Album: Weezer - The Blue Album. This was the first cassette that I ever bought with my own money. It was a symbolic experience. I was now forming my own musical identity. And that album couldn't have been a better choice.

Song: The Message - Funkmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Growing up in the late 80s early 90s I wasn't exposed to a lot of substantial rap music. This was the first song that I took notice of what the artist was saying.

Movie: Pulp Fiction - I know this movie gets a lot of hate. But, it totally changed my perception of what movies can be. I guess coming in at a close second place would be "The Royal Tenenbaums". Which was the first Wes Anderson movie I saw.

in terms of albums, there have been a few that, while not necessarily life-changing, have at least opened a new door for me and let me break out of which ever quagmire i was in at the time, but one stands out head-and-shoulders above the rest...

Pixies - Doolittle: up until my brother's godfather (he was my parent's young'n'hip friend) gave me a mix tape for christmas that included, among other good songs, Where is My Mind?, my taste in music was pretty much defined by my father's record collection. not that it was bad (everything from the Stones, Hendrix, Little Feat and the Who to the Clash, English Beat, Elvis Costello and XTC), but it was just that- my father's- and i really hadn't developed a musical taste of my own. well, this mix-tape changed everything, and all of a sudden i was in to bands like Sonic Youth, The Replacements, Violent Femmes, Jonathan Richmond and the Modern Lovers and, of course, the Pixies. when i went to the record store to buy Surfer Rosa they didn't have it, but they had Doolittle. i listened to that album at least twice a day for the next year, and have bought probably 6 or 7 copies of it since then (who knew CD's can wear out?). thank god for mp3- i was working my up to being a major contributor to Charles Thopmson's retirement fund.

as for movies...

although it's not on my top-five list anymore, Magnolia affected me so much when i saw it that i had to see it twice more that same week. it got me laid twice and led me to a six-year relationship that ended last year and i have only just gotten over. heavy.

I used to write Michael Stipe letters that I never sent about how only he understood me. Oh God, my face still gets red just thinking about it! Ah, angst.

Awesome story, domo -- have you seen that performance art thing in NYC where people read embarrassing letters and stories from their early lives? It's pretty amazing . . .

And, everyone else, just curious: Am I the oldest person on this website? I'm 40.

For me, it was "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." After growing up loving romantic comedies and such crap, loving this movie was a totally eye-opening experience. Movies could be mean and violent and still beautiful. And, it has a kick-ass soundtrack.

Song: Over the Hills and Far Away, Led Zeppelin. At the tender age of 15, as a beginner to the guitar, that song absolutely floored me. That was the moment that switched me from obeying the gods of radio to seeking out music that actually moved me.

Other songs that instantly ushered in or reinvigorated various phases in my musical life:
Overture 1928, Dream Theater
Man on the Side, John Mayer
In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, Coheed and Cambria
Boston and St. John's, Great Big Sea

Movie: Swingers. Seeing this movie awakened me to the fact that movies didn't have to be blockbusters to be entertaining, and that realism is a powerful film tool. It also served as a great bonding tool with my closest friends and my eventual Best Man.

Music has played a much bigger part in my life than movies have.

Okay, I am a total idiot and misread (or didn't read) the diversion instructions.

So I recant my former statement and say "Heathers" Who knew that dialoge could be so cool and wicked? This movie also started my decade long love affair with Christian Slater.

socalledonlycousins - you're older than me but only by a year. feel better?

socalled: i'm thinking that that honour might go to eroslane. i saw Streets of Fire on beta when i was 10, but eroslane was a "twenty-something".

but you still are pretty damn old.

did the invention of the wheel have a huge impact on your life? what was the world like before fire?

Movie: I'm thinking I might be ridiculed for this choice, but Pulp Fiction did it for me. Subject matter, storytelling, performance, and a fucking killer soundtrack all in one. At the time it came out, I was hooked on it and it wound up being the first movie I paid to see more than once (four times). As a sidenote, this movie does not make my top five, 'twas just the movie that really made me dig movies more. As another sidenote, I think QT is quite the douchebag nowadays. I think he shot his load with this film...

Album: Metallica-Ride the Lightning. I can't honestly remember the last time I listened to the friggin' thing (or heavy metal for that matter), but it was the album that made we want to own more albums. And more albums. And more albums. Now I'm broke. Thank god for oragan-farming!!

Song: Too many to name - too many experiences linked to too many songs linked to too many memories and me proclaiming "now this, this here is what fucking music is about". So can't name one victorious. However, "Fans" by Kings of Leon was the last song that really made me all... guh. Hellifiknow what it was, but that song knocked it outta the goddam park for me.

Well, mswas, I don't mind being the town elder -- it's a good excuse to be cranky -- but it struck me that it's rare to see something mentioned here as formative that didn't occur during or after my adolescence.

Movie - Boyz N the Hood Where in LA is this South Central? What! It's right down the street from me?!? You mean, not all black people live in nice houses, shop at the Gap, and attend private schools?!?

Song/Album - The Wrong N***a to F**k Wit , Death Certificate, Ice Cube Further down the rabbit hole into my discovery of this thing called "the 'hood" and the plight of my people stuck in it.

Movie: The Last Temptation of Christ. I'm a preacher's kid, though admittedly not of the typical variety (The United Church of Christ ordains openly gay pastors, for instance) - but, when your Mom's a minister, you ponder the infinite a lot. And sometimes you doubt. A lot. So one day, flipping through the channels, I catch Willem Defoe rocking the Jesus hair, so I stop. And I am mesmerized. Far from appalling or angering me, that film awoke something in my heart that made me actually hunger for a connection to a faith I had felt quite detached from. Imagine! A look at faith that asked tough questions, that presented challenging ideas, that didn't tell me ghost stories or fairy tales, but that dares to ask just what does it mean to be "Wholly man AND wholly God" at the same time.

So, yeah, I'd say that was life-changing.

As for music, it was, is, and will always be Tori Amos. I was aware of her more frequently heard radio tracks in high school, but I hit college and all of a sudden she started speaking directly to me. All albums I hear are now measured in terms of how they stand up to Choirgirl Hotel.

For music, something by Pink Floyd; I can't remember what, but my brother discovered them and made me listen to them when I was twelve or so. That pretty much defined my musical tastes from then on, and they remain my favorite band.

For movies, I guess Apocalypse Now. I can't claim my teenage ass had any real idea what was going on in that one, and if I tried to view it again I doubt I'd be able to separate the nostalgia from any real appreciation of its quality. But still, it was the first "adult" movie that I dubbed my favorite.

Album: Tori Amos - From the Choirgirl Hotel. Got it freshman year in college...changed everything for me.

Movie: Honestly, it's a mix because the first two movies that really really hit me and made me start to realize that movies were more than just crap you watched to pass the time were introduced to me around the same time. One was in a college film class, and it was Run Lola Run, and the other was Eternal Sunshine...

Movie: I'm thinking I might be ridiculed for this choice, but Pulp Fiction did it for me. Subject matter, storytelling, performance, and a fucking killer soundtrack all in one. At the time it came out, I was hooked on it and it wound up being the first movie I paid to see more than once (four times). As a sidenote, this movie does not make my top five, 'twas just the movie that really made me dig movies more. As another sidenote, I think QT is quite the douchebag nowadays. I think he shot his load with this film...

Album: Metallica-Ride the Lightning. I can't honestly remember the last time I listened to the friggin' thing (or heavy metal for that matter), but it was the album that made we want to own more albums. And more albums. And more albums. Now I'm broke. Thank god for oragan-farming!!

Song: Too many to name - too many experiences linked to too many songs linked to too many memories and me proclaiming "now this, this here is what fucking music is about". So can't name one victorious. However, "Fans" by Kings of Leon was the last song that really made me all... guh. Hellifiknow what it was, but that song knocked it outta the goddam park for me.

Song: Smells Like Teen Spirit. I was a tenth grader then, far too into Billy Joel for my own good, when this video played on 120 Minutes on MTV (remember 120 minutes? remember when MTV played videos?) anyways, seeing that at 11:51 at night blew my freakin' mind. I didn't know that kind of energy was possible.

Album: Step One: Wait until you're at the lowest point in your life, emotional, personally, professionally.
Step Two: wait until the dead of night. Light a cigarette. Pour a class of something strong.
Step Three: Listen to The Who's Quadrophenia. Two hours later, go to bed. You'll be okay.

Movie: Almost Famous. "One Day, you'll be cool". A goal to strive for. Even if they'll never come true. "The only true currency in this bankrupt world... is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." The truth about this world. And that's just fine.

Movie : One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest
Music : Fugazi, the day I discovered PUNK

Album: Smashing Pumpkins "Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness." I bought it for "tonight tonight" and found myself liking all of the harder songs that weren't the sort of thing I listened to before that.
Song: The Flower Duet from the opera Lakme. I was watching Carlito's Way and when that song played in the background I was just blown away. I fast-forwarded to the credits to find the title. I'd listened to opera every now and then before, but I had no idea how amazing the human voice can sound when used well.
Movie: hmmm...I think Candyman is the movie that finally turned me into an all out horror fan. And it's not a movie, but Cowboy Bebop had a huge impact on me in college (wow. that's kinda disturbing actually.) Still the best anime - and one of the best series period - I've ever seen (man, I always seem to be in a CB mood whenever I'm on this site).

Song: "Take Me To The River" by Talking Heads

In the late '70s I listened religiously to the Top 40. Commercial radio then basically consisted of disco, turgid arena rock, r&b, and post-hippie balladeering. The first time Casey Kasem introduced this song, I honestly thought he was kidding. I thought it was a joke. It took me a few listens to decide they were just on a different plane than anyone else I'd heard.

Album: Combat Rock by The Clash

Music could be political and, unlike most of the Vietnam-era stuff, belligerent at the same time.

Movie: Jean de Florette

I decided to take a chance on a movie that 1) I had to read, and 2) contained no martial arts. I enjoyed it immensely for itself (and Manon of the Spring was even better), but more than that I realized that the number of movies it was possible for me to enjoy had just increased by a factor of ten. Trips to the video store were newly exhilarating.

Album - Tracy Chapman (then she proceeded to suck...)

Movie - The Harder They Come, which opened a whole new world to me.

"The Seer's Tower" and "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!" by Sufjan Stevens on his Illinoise album. After really listening to these songs I fell even deeper in love with them. "The Seer's Tower" is euphoric. If I could choose, I would die with the music of Sufjan Stevens playing in the background. My bangs are cut this way because I am emo-tional. Hahaha.

The Birds is my movie. It was the first movie my mom ever shared with me. Her aunt and uncle had worked at a movie-theater and so her and her cousin would watch all the movies, and this one scared the hell out of her when she was a kid. She bought me The Birds as if it was a gift from God himself, and watching it has since inspired a deep love for things that may not appear as shiny on the outside as others , but once you get past that they are so much better.

This was a great comment diversion Dustin.

causaubon: Well, fire was there; we would char dinosaur ribs and light our farts when lightning struck a tree or something, we just didn't understand it yet. For Streets of Fire I was 17, so that would put eroslane ahead of me. I didn't really think I was oldest, it just feels that way because this is an uber-geek-chic crowd, which I mean in a complimentary way.

Like Tanner, Pulp Fiction changed my life but for a different reason. For some reason, the scenes in that movie shattered whatever innocent view of the world I had left.

As for the song, there was a song I heard while working at a greek restaurant the summer before college titled, "Den thelo tetious filous" (I don't want friends like that) by Pashalis Terzis. He's an amazing singer that made me appreciate international music and for the first time truly feel the sadness that can be conveyed in a song.

malikvlc - I was 9 when I saw Star Wars (can't bring myself to put IV on there) with my family. What I remember so clearly is that while my brother, father and I were saying "Wasn't that awesome!?" and were so psyched, my mother was not enthusiastic at all. She shrugged and said, "it's just cowboys and indians in space."

JUST???!!!

Album: When I was young, we got a cassette of Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill that I played until it just fucking broke. I can still recite the words to Paul Revere from goddamn memory. But the album that still kinda gives me the giggles was Nerf Herder's Nerf Herder. The self-titled nerd rock, it's just awesome. It's a mere ten songs, but those ten songs told me, shhh. it's okay, it's fun to be lame.

Movie: Swingers. Yep. There's a documentary on the DVD where Doug Liman says something along the lines of "We didn't want to make this like a hollywood production. We wanted to make this 4 kids with a camcorder in Pennsylvania." And that was literally me and my friends.

Then, I went to film school in Boston and saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. My little bald head melted open, and my brain puddled out, and my heart exploded. I finished my degree, packed my bags, and moved my ass out to California.

I figured, I look like Kevin Smith, I write like Charlie Kaufman, and I bust ass like Jon Favreau. Maybe I can make it in this town!

So, anyway, you want fries with that?

And, everyone else, just curious: Am I the oldest person on this website? I'm 40.

Gotcha, socalled. I turned 41 on Monday! You surely pegged us as contemporaries from my last post.

To the rest of you, as Burt Lancaster said in Atlantic City, you should have seen the Atlantic Ocean in those days. It was really something.

Huh?
What??
Who's old???

All I know is that you damn kids better get off my damn lawn! :-D

Movie: I think one movie that changed me was Lost in Translation because it showed two realistic people who lived realistic lives as well as portray a moving and truly unique look at life. Also, Requiem For A Dream changed the way I looked at addiction and how important it is to stay off drugs, though I was never an addict.
Song: Hallelujah by Rufus Wainwright. This song is a truly powerful song that to me as well as one that haunts me to this day.
Album: I think the album One Beat by Sleater-Kinney is one that made me feel lifted and gave me a powerful message.

Album: Bloddletting by Concrete Blonde. It signaled my shift from heavy metal music to more alternative music and it was right around the time (senior year of highschool)that I started re-defining my musical tastes that I had a shift in my world view on a great many things.

Movie: Reservoir Dogs. I saw this my Freshman year of college. I must have seen this movie at least 12 times in the theater that year, including 5 nights in a row during one week. I think Dustin summed it up nicely above "[it was the movie] that inspired me to dig deeper into independent and genre flicks (and appreciate violence outside of the horror context)."

Album: the Dance Craze soundtrack, which I picked up on a whim at a used record shop (remember those? do they still exist?) just because I liked the cover art, which led to a lifelong appreciation of ska music.

Song: "How Soon Is Now" by the Smiths. Yeah, me and every other eighties kid in eyeliner, I know. Never before had I heard something so gorgeous about basically wallowing in one's own misery.

Movie: Blade Runner, which came out when I was fourteen, and was one of the first non-parent-sanctioned, arthousy movies I ever saw. I loved its bleakness and the plausibility of its dystopia.

Socalled, you and I are the same age.

Rock 'n' Roll High School

Which I unfortunately saw in college instead of high school. Oh, the havoc that might've been wrecked had I seen it a few years earlier. But it still broke the hold "authority" had on me, and gave me to the Ramones.

Express - Love and Rockets

This led me away from the Crue and the radio. Thank goodness.

socalledonly cousins - I'm 39 so pretty close.

Film - I was brought up in a home where we were taken to 'art films' from a very early age and I thank my parents for such a rich childhood.

The first movie that made a heavy impact on me was Franco Zefirelli's Romeo and Juliette. I saw if when I was 11 or 12 and I still love it to this day. It was through this film that I finally understood Shakespeare. R & J were so young and beautiful and passionate. People fighting got dirty, there was blood and snot and bigotry. I still love passionate films to this day.

Music - I would say Quadrophenia by The Who. I listened to it when I was about eight. I loved the 'concept' album and again, the pain and disenfranchisement in the songs really resonated with me as a preteen. I was a dramatic little bugger (I would probably be emo today)and Richard Daltrey's screaming rage filled voice and Pete Townsend's thin and sad voice really allowed me good wallowing time.

The Fly - Cronenberg's version. I saw it before much of my life experiences had accumulated. It got me thinking about the nature of life, disease and love. It suggested to me that I could view film as art and allegory for life. Thefore, got me to view humans differently than perhaps I would have without seeing it.

Yep, sansho, the Clash and Talking Heads did it. Two bands I never connected with very deeply but always appreciated that they were out there doing something unique. But apparently eroslane was rooting around with Led Zeppelin when you and I were an itch in our daddies' pantses.

The Fly - Cronenberg's version. I saw it before much of my life experiences had accumulated. It got me thinking about the nature of life, disease and love. It suggested to me that I could view film as art and allegory for life. Thefore, got me to view humans differently than perhaps I would have without seeing it.

Album: Tori Amos "Little Earthquakes" I had, up to that time, never heard a woman sing with that much anger and thought and conviction. It was perfect for my life-changing freshman year of college. A guy I had a love-hate relationship with for over a decade told me about this album so I guess I need to thank him for that.

Song: From the aforementioned album, "Precious Things". That song totally kicks ass and every time I hear it I think of all the crap guys I met in college (and after) and how I would have loved to smash their faces. It's so full of rage and the way she plays that piano in the mid-section is just gorgeous. I never knew how pissed off a piano could sound. OK, now I need to dig out this CD and listen to it.

Movie: Shawshank Redemption. . .it was beautiful and lyrical and powerful without being pretentious. So full of hope. It is still one of my all-time favorites.

Album: Everybody else is doing it, so why can't we? by Cranberries. I was a freshman in high school, and I wept while I listened, all the way through. Of course, you feel everything a little more in high school, but it still counts.

Song: Still You Turn Me On by ELP. Soft and hard, just like real love.

Movie: True Romance, absodamnlutely. Made me determined to find a Clarence to my Alabama, and I think I did. You're so cool...

Album: My first ever, Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral, still my all time favorite...

Movie: I'd have to say Leon The Professional

socalled: you're no fun. you're getting mellow in your old age. i was baiting you, hoping to get a rise out of you. thanks a lot.

album: reinventing axl rose by against me!
up until that album, I listened to mostly radio music and what the media usually labels 'pop punk.' somehow I discovered mitch clem's online comics, which led me to that album, which led me to the much-better-than-just-that-particular-album taste in music I have now.

movie: either fight club or donnie darko.

but I'm still young, a mere 18. I would imagine future life-changing albums and/or movies are going to hit me sometime in the next 10 years.

Heathers.

Album: Left and Leaving, The Weakerthans

Movie: American Beauty (made me stop liking movies and start loving film)

It's like, all my faves were already picked! Is my hipster-style "other"ness offended, or am I home? Mommy? Mommy, is that you?

Song- Today, Smashing Pumpkins. It's not like it's my favorite song ever, but I was raised in a strict household where jazz was music and anything else was GARBAGE GET THAT OUT OF MY HOUSE, and hip-pop was the only acceptable form in my ghetto high school, so one evening I snuck into the living room to flick on MTV with the sound down to, like, 2- I've never been the same.

Albums- Surfer Rosa, uff said, and The Fragile.

Movie- Almost Famous. I'd have Patrick Fugit's expressive-eyed babies to this day (Wristcutter Review?) Also, when I was growing up, anything Mighy Ducks changed my life. Those were real issues, man! A little older, Sixteen Candles.

Shut up, I'm a girl, I was a teen, it was awesome, kay?

causaubon:I don't know about socalledonlycousins, but the invention of the wheel did have a large impact on my life. It made it that much easier to get away from socalled's flaming farts!

After spending many years as a shy, stuttering, socially awkard kid who attended a new school every year I was presented with another fresh start at the beginning of high school when I was shipped up to my grandparents farm that was an hour drive from anything. Being moved into the most wonderbread of towns where people openly wore cowboy boots was a culture shock given that we were the only white family in our apartment complex in the city. The culture shock of it all was what I needed to take me out of my wall flower stage and cliched as it is Nirvana's Nevermind along with Heathers and Pump Up the Volume taught me that I didn't have to conform if I didn't want to. I could be smart and snarky and everything that no one else in that town was. I learned that I didn't have to like life or school or people and that I wasn't a compleate freak because I didn't. Knowing all this definitely made getting through high school easier on me and now I can look back and laugh about being one of the few people in that school who even knew who Kurt Cobain was before his suicide. I listened to NWA and Public Enemy instead of Shania Twain and Garth Brooks...and I'm better for it today.

Album: Orange Blossom Special, Johnny Cash
My parent's record collection was hit or
miss, but I will always remember the day I pulled this one from its sleeve. I must have spent hours staring at the bright orange cover and dreaming of being an elegant 8-year-old hobo. I think my mom finally hid it from me.
Also- on cd- Take Offs and Landings, Rilo Kiley. I don't think I looked at anything in my life the same way after buying that. In particular- I quit my job, packed up and moved away from the quietly oppressive town I was in.

Song: Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell. The orchestral version from the movie 'Love Actually'. This was the moment I realized that I never wanted to get married. To Anyone. Ever. And that was ok.

Movie: Dumb and Dumber. I grew up loving black and white, Hitchcock, Katherine Hepburn, all the good stuff. And then I realized that there was an entire world of comepetely stupid movies out there. And this is the one that still cracks me up.

Book: (I'm just going to add this one) The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen. It made my family's future look brighter and less dysfunctional.

HarshBetty: used record shops still exist. i've just spent 200£ rooting around used record shops here in London on my days off. and good call on the Dance Craze- i "inherited" (read: stole- he's not dead yet, he just doesn't have a record player) that one from dad's record collection.

and good call on the Blade Runner, too- i saw that in the theatre when it came out. i was six. my dad had taken me to see Bambi, or something, and we were both so bored that my dad decided that i was old enough to see Blade Runner and we snuck across the hall in the multiplex to see it. i love my dad.

My parents were big music lovers and I grew up with a pretty cool album collection to listen to... but one album that totally blew my mind was "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" from The Alan Parsons Project. In fact, I brought in a recording of "The Cask of Amontillado" for part of a high school english project! This lead me to "Radio KAOS" from Roger Waters which ignited my passion for albums with a really strong storytelling element to them.
The movie that changed my life... didn't really change my life but Die Hard showed me how awesome action movies are during a time when I was getting too old for kids movies... I have been a huge action movie fan ever since!

Album - Master of Puppets, by Metallica. Shut up. It was a brilliant album that made me realize that metal could be smart, which led me to Minor Threat's Out of Step , Helmet's Meantime, and into oblivion. Although cmoody's pick of Pump Up The Volume was pretty awesome.

Movie - Two picks: either The Killing Fields or Ghostbusters.

Yes, I am dead serious about all of this.

Movie- Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I think I was 10 or 11 when I first saw this. Changed the way I saw funny. I walked around perfecting my English accent for 3 months after I saw it. It totally pissed off my mum.

Album- Nervak by J.A.R. They're a Czech band. I first heard them in a bar in Prague where I was doing my junior year abroad. (Yes, I'm one of those people.) I didn't realize that what I thought was a bar mix CD was actually this album. Each song is totally different from the others in tone and style. Jsem Pohodlny (I'm Happy/Content) is amazing.

Song- One of These Things First by Nick Drake. My favorite "Woe is me" song. It came along at the right time.

Withnail:
The Who's Quadrophenia, eh? I've got the rest- Guess what I'm doing tonite!

P.S. I left out Morrissey. I actually left out Morrissey. My best friend just disowned me. "To daaii by your saaaeeed, oh, the pleasure, the priviledge is maaaaaiiine..." Exactly.

Album: Soundgarden, Superunknown - it was my first CD, it made me start listening to music

Movie: Batman (with Mike and Jack)

Album- Superunknown by Soundgarden. Until then I was a lonely pre-teen listening to Top 40 radio and singing along to Les Miserables in my bedroom. Then I bought that record- I'm ashamed to say only because I thought Chris Cornell was cute after seeing the Black Hole Sun video. It blew my mind and I never looked back. I've been a rock chick ever since.

"Angel Heart". It floored me when I saw it (with my Dad), and the ending scenes still kill. It was the start of a very unhealthy Mickey Rourke obsession, which persists to this day.

As far as an album goes, "36 Chambers of Death" literally changed my life. Can anyone deny that it is a masterpiece of American music?

Whoa David.. nice pick! :)

Awesome diversion!!!

Movies: My Life Without Me and All the Real Girls... Depicted "real" love stories and made me change my view of love completely.

Album: The Rent Original Broadway Soundtrack and Tori Amos's Little Earthquakes. They both got me through a very difficult time in high school.

Song: Heather Lewis by Weston. I heard it in September of 1996 at a party and it was a stepping stone to me becoming the indie rock loving woman that I am. And Just Like Honey by Jesus and Mary Chain. I think it made me fall in love....

random thoughts:

movies: when harry met sally, rushmore, east of eden, the graduate

songs: pretty much anything off of "transatlanticism" by death cab, bill joel "scenes from an italian restaurant," jeff buckley "last goodbye" (after a bad breakup)

oh snap...totally forgot "august and everything after" by the counting crows...that and "heart in motion" by amy grant were my first cassettes...such a nerd

If anyone feels that I'm a walking cliche, my excuse is that I'm a (recently discovered) 'millenial', so joke away.

Album: Dark Side of The Moon - even tho I was 30 years too late to remember it's release, I still managed to wear out 3 CDs of it. I can't even begin to describe the many conversations and life- (as well as mind-) altering situations that arose because of the marathon Friday night bake-fests accompanied by this album.

Song: No Myth - Michael Penn/Semi-Charmed Life - Third Eye Blind - I don't think these two songs could be any different, but they have always stuck with me. I don't even know why, but something about them lent themselves to cruising down to NYC from Connecticut on an early Saturday morning in my mom's drop top Seabring. I think I always liked knowing that no matter how confusing my adolescent life was, there was ALWAYS something else that made less sense - and I loved it.

Movie: The Talented Mr. Ripley/Gattaca - TTMR has been one of my favorite films for so long. Even the first time I saw it and had no idea what the undertones were, it spoke to me. Between the beauty of Italy and the cunning skill of Tom, it was just an all-around magical afternoon activity. Gattaca (also with Jude Law) was the first movie that actually made me think about my existence. It wasn't too hard to believe that the genetic engineering of the 'future' was right around the corner. And of course, two hot men made the poignancy all that much better.

So far, all you whippersnappers need to get off my lawn, because I'm 48.

Movie (for life choices): Ordinary People. I was already leaning towards it, but I think the therapy scenes in that movie were the final shove towards leaving my assumed career and beginning study in a therapeutic field.

Movie (for appreciating movies): Don McKellar's Last Night, because it was raw and very low-budget and yet I couldn't get it out of my head. I always give an unfamiliar independent movie a few minutes before I surf to another channel, thanks to that one.

Album: The White Album.

If anyone feels that I'm a walking cliche, my excuse is that I'm a (recently discovered) 'millenial', so joke away.

Album: Dark Side of The Moon - even tho I was 30 years too late to remember it's release, I still managed to wear out 3 CDs of it. I can't even begin to describe the many conversations and life- (as well as mind-) altering situations that arose because of the marathon Friday night bake-fests accompanied by this album.

Song: No Myth - Michael Penn/Semi-Charmed Life - Third Eye Blind - I don't think these two songs could be any different, but they have always stuck with me. I don't even know why, but something about them lent themselves to cruising down to NYC from Connecticut on an early Saturday morning in my mom's drop top Seabring. I think I always liked knowing that no matter how confusing my adolescent life was, there was ALWAYS something else that made less sense - and I loved it.

Movie: The Talented Mr. Ripley/Gattaca - TTMR has been one of my favorite films for so long. Even the first time I saw it and had no idea what the undertones were, it spoke to me. Between the beauty of Italy and the cunning skill of Tom, it was just an all-around magical afternoon activity. Gattaca (also with Jude Law) was the first movie that actually made me think about my existence. It wasn't too hard to believe that the genetic engineering of the 'future' was right around the corner. And of course, two hot men made the poignancy all that much better.

Oh man, I feel so alterna-teen saying this, but Singles. The freakin Doisneau Kiss at the Hotel DeVille shot, Cameron Crowe doing a soundtrack in the 90's, the Eddie Vedder cameo, it was all so affecting. I was just hitting my teens when this one came out, and I thought for a long time that it taught me everything about love that I needed to know. Now I go back and Campbell Scott kind of annoys me, but I'll always love Matt Dillon. Touch me Im Dick.

Beerfest, life changing moment: scene when they pull the "old Trojan keg" gag it was a very clever move never done by Americans, you see.

Powerful, powerful piece of cinema.

Oh, and I don't much care for the Hall and Oats hate. It was what it was for the time.

song-"American Pie" hooked me on music and started my love for singing at a very young age (but I'm still an oldie compared to most of you)

album-Alice Cooper "Trash" Right music at the right time of my life to help me break out of a bad situation.

movie-I can't say a movie has ever changed my life, but I'd say the closest was "Grease" which was the first movie I saw in a theater without my parents...which in a way was life-altering so I guess it does fit.

Music: The Cars' first album, Talking Heads Fear of Music, Elvis Costello's My Aim is True, and The Police's Outlandos d'Amour were all such a breath of fresh air after the stagnant and arid Disco Era.

Movie: I'm being just a tad flippant when I cite Sixteen Candles. I saw this with several girlfriends and I remember being the only one who thought that the Anthony Michael Hall character was cuter and more interesting than the generic cute guy, although I was too embarrased to admit it back then.

Socalled: I've got 2 years on you (as evidenced by my choices below):

Movie(s): "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "Rope" I saw them both for the first time within the same week (MBL in the cinema and Rope in college film club) and found out how a good story could be told on film. I really wasn't into film before that, but those 2 films pulled me in and now I'm a Pajiban!

Song: "Going Underground", The Jam. No need to explain this one I assume (at least to the Pajiba Centrum Silver contingent).

Album: "Mermaid Avenue", Billy Bragg and Wilco (but mostly because of Billy's contribution). I was at a real turning point (mid-thirties) when a lot of people stop listening to music and start watching the CNBC stock ticker (pauses to shudder)because the "youngsters have taken over the music scene" and "Mermaid Avenue" confirmed for me for ever that it would be music not Wall Street for me.

Movie: The Legend of Bagger Vance

'Take-offs and Landings' by Rilo Kiley is definitely the album that changed my life. I don't remember now what prompted me to buy it, but by the time I was halfway through "Science vs. Romance" I knew I'd found my new favorite band. I've since bought everything available (including the recent Under the Blacklight, which was disappointing). This was at the beginning of my search for good music outside the mainstream, and it was a wonderful gateway tool to a seemingly endless supply of great music.

As for a specific song, I'd have to say 'Shannon Marie' by Joe Firstman. It's one of the most beautiful and personal songs I've ever heard by any artist, and it started my love affair with his music and my desire to date a musician so that he could write an equally beautiful song about me. The last 40 seconds or so still give me chills, it's so good.

A movie that changed my life? I'd have to say Almost Famous. It's been my absolute favorite movie since the moment I saw it, and the film has definitely helped to shape who I am today, more so than any other film I've seen.

Side note- I can't wait until I move back to Illinois where I'm not 6 hours behind the rest of y'all. Maybe I'll be able to get my comment in earlier.

Movie: I'd been reading SF/Fantasy since I was in third grade or so and had caught the original Star Trek in reruns here and there and still, like many SF geeks my age, Star Wars: A New Hope blew my 16 year-old mind. The idea that the kind of fiction that I'd read and loved could actually be translated into visuals was just incredible.

Also, Han Solo? Totally hot. What, I was 16!

Music: The song I first remember loving all out of proportion was Simon and Garfunkle's "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her." I don't really know why, but that song can still make me tear up.

Also, I listened to my parents' copy of Rimsky-Korsikov's Scheherezade and fell madly in love with it at the age of, oh maybe 10 or so. It was the first time I realized what my ballet teacher was trying to make me understand: that music could tell a powerful story without any lyrics at all.

movies: i have a few. 1. Airplane! (yes i am serious and don't call me shirley) 2. The Jerk 3. Heathers 4. Say Anything

2. albums: again, a few. 1. The Say Anything Soundtrack 2. Pump Up The Volume Soundtrack 3. Tori Amos's "Little Earthquakes 4. Pearl Jam "10"/Nirvana "Nevermind" (let's just say before the last one, I mainly listened to Debbie Gibson and Tiffany-- hello!)

3. Songs - This list could go on for days, but 1. "In Your Eyes"- Peter Gabriel, 2. "Hallelujah" Jeff Buckley, 3. "Untouchable Face"- Ani Difranco (she was angry, and so was I at the time), 4. "Landslide" - Fleetwood Mac off the top of my head.

Album: American Recordings IV, Johnny Cash. Pure, unadulterated brutal retrospection. LOVE IT!

Song: Brick, Ben Folds Five. This song was released right around the time I was freaking out about my obligatory Freshman pregnancy scare. Needless to say, to hear a song that so perfectly described a moment in my life made me realize that there was life beyond Chris Ledoux and Warren G.

Movie: Heathers. I saw this movie after it was quoted in my High School newspaper. "Lick it up, Baby. Lick it up . . ." God. Finally, I was able to see another girl who had a visceral hatred for the Heathers of this world like I did.

Paddy: Anything with Daniel Day-Lewis! My missus is about a year older than you, and she has a deep, deep love for Billy Bragg.

Album: Jeff Buckley "Grace." 'nuff said about that album, I suspect, but it's some deeply moving stuff. Also, throw in tragic death of musician to said deeply moving album, and you stir up a lot of profound feelings in a teenager. I still can't believe he fell into the Missippi.

Urgh, transformative movie is just so tough to come up with! These two came out in the same year my senior year of college and blew my mind: "Moulin Rouge" & "Amelie." I don't own a lot of dvds, but I own those two, I also own both the soundtracks. Excellent!

i think my movie and album were actually in the same year-when i turned 13.

movie: the piano
i def. craved more complex indie movies after seeing it.
album: tori amos, little earthquakes
what can i say? i was in catholic school.
song: that cover that the indigo girls did of romeo and juliet. it gave me goosebumps. amy ray really sings with her heart on her sleeve on that one.

I see that there is someone on this thread named Withnail, but I do not see one of my all time faves Withnail and I. I connected with that movie when I was 19 because I related to Withnail's blind hedonism and wit. I still love that movie and watch it once a year, but it is a different movie when you are 39 years old(!) and now I identify with 'I' who lived the crazy life but got his act together at the end.

Another youthful fave that still holds up for me is 'Harold and Maude.' When you describe the movie it sounds corny and cliched, but when you see the movie it moves you to tears. Well, at least it moves me to tears.

HJ, will you marry me?

Songs: "Everybody Hurts" by REM (there was a breakup, I was in college, what more needs to be said), "Smells like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, "Just Like Heaven" by the Cure, "Karaoke Soul" by Tom McRae. Every time I discover something new I feel like my perspective shifts open a little bit more. I like that.

Movies: "The Color Purple." I think that was the first serious movie I ever saw. It came out when I was 15 or so and I think after that I wanted a little bit more from my movies than a few jokes and a sappy conclusion.

Alblum: American Edit by Dean Grey (it's a mashup album of American Idiot by Green Day and many, many other songs), Joshua Tree by U2, the first time I really heard Sgt. Pepper's.

A few come to mind: Todo Sobre Mi Madre, American Beauty, and La Vie En Rose.

HJ, will you marry me?

Chin your drinks everyone! If we vomit, David, it's on you, literally and figuratively.

Movie: Blue Velvet.

Opened my eyes and made me very uncomfortable. But now I love it. In fact, everything David Lynch does makes me a bit uncomfortable, even now when I watch Twin Peaks reruns. But hey, I love the guy.

Music: Ani DiFranco, Little Plastic Castle

I was 17 and listened to U2 or metal. Then I bought this album. Now I'm a sucker for alt country, Joni Mitchell, and still rock and metal, and basically everything else thrown in. Again, it made me uncomfortable, but I guess that's what happens when your eyes are opened to something new and you begin to realize things about yourself you didn't know before.

Song: So so many. Ummmm, probably Famous Blue Raincoat, by Leonard Cohen. Kind of cliche, but it still floors me. Even knowing the backstory, with all that scientology thrown in, can't really erase the power that song has.

While I was a precocious early teen seeing movies like Hannah and Her Sisters at the movies in the 9th grade -- the movie that really hit home just how cool movies could be, i.e. not mainstream Hollywood, was The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Senior year of high school, a few friends of mine saw the movie at least 3 times in the rundown indie theater in town. It opened up movies for me, no doubt.

Now I'm curious:

"Hang the DJ, because the music that he constantly plays says nothing to me about my life."

Your options:
--Hell, yes.
--Er, what?

My introduction to indie/alternative music started when I was 10. My sister set up this great system where she would sell me the albums that she no longer wanted. She would pick the one song off each album that she felt that I would most enjoy then play it to me a few times over a week. At the end of the week she would offer me the album for half the price she bought it. Within a few years I was a massive fan of Ben Folds Five, Sound Garden, You Am I and Smashing Pumpkins. So with that intoduction...

Album: Ben Folds Five - Self titled album
Song: Kid A - Radiohead
Movie: Picnic at Hanging Rock (at the age of 12 it was the most beautiful and haunting thing that I had ever seen)

I haven't heard a monumental album yet or a song that has been groundbreaking. Right now, To Build a Home by the Cinematic Orchestra and The Angel from the Lust, Caution soundtrack is set on repeat in my car.

As far as movies are concerned: Lust, Caution. I just saw it last night. I drove 72 miles to a small art house theatre that sold ginger ale from the soda foundtain and those little red and white boxes of popcorn. It was so awesome. The movie was full of sensuality and restraint and emotion. The music tied into each scene effortlessly and the must talked about sex scenes were literally breathtaking beautiful, human and animalistic and neccesary. Each thrust and moan added depth to the relationship between Mak Tai Tai and Mr. Yee. I walked out of the theatre feeling raw; teary-eyed and heartbroken. Even now, I cannot get the movie out of my head.

Sean, wow. Boston and St. John's is one of my all time favorite tearjerker songs. I listened to it when I was literally flying over St. John's on my way to Ireland and I was leaving my boyfriend behind. Good good choice.

Movie: Gattaca. The way it portrayed Vincent's beating a discriminatory system through sheer willpower, determination and the value of a sharp mind, how his love for Eileen showed her that it's not what's in your body, but what's in your heart that counts, Jerome's tragic decision at the end of the film -- all of it stays with me and colors the way I look at life. From the first time I watched it, I knew the movie would stay with me forever.

Album: A Perfect Circle's Mer De Noms. It was the first album I bought of my own volition that wasn't pop music, and that I honestly loved every song on. I still listen to it fairly often.

Song: Dmitri Shostakovich's Cello Sonata, Op. 40. I grew up in a family of classical music lovers, and was fairly surrounded by it, but I never used to listen to it except when I played it. This was the first classical piece I listened to without my parents putting it on or recommending it. I now listen to classical fairly regularly because of it.

Movie: Difficult to say, but probably The Big Sleep. Made me fall in love with noir, Bogart, and great dialogue, and has probably refined my taste in movies considerably (though the weakness for bad action movies remains).

Movie: "The Iron Monkey" - it opened my eyes to the artistry of kung-fu and, oddly enough, westerns.

Album: "13 Songs" FUGAZI - exboy-toy gave me a copy. I wore out 3 tapes and 1 CD - I now own two. Every song is tight. Every song means something. It's perfection.

Song: "Ne Me Quitte Pas" Jacques Brel - I cry every time I hear it. Best lyrics about unrequited love EVER.

Songs: Almost too many to list. Off the top of my head: Simon & Garfunkle's "The Dangling Conversation," Metallica's "One," which showed that metal wasn't just for the scary kids, and most recently "Onore Michi" by Aki Yashiro, which blew me away. It's so breathlessly beautiful, and I'm thisclose to ordering the single from Japan, since that's the only way I've been able to find it.

As for movies, there haven't been as many of those; I'd have to say On Dangerous Ground (Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino) for introducing me to noir, and my daughter's favorite "My Neighbor Totoro." Totoro confirmed for me that "cartoons" can be art, and I haven't stopped devouring them since.

The movie was A Trip to Bountiful which is based on a story by Horton Foote. I was about 14 and I did not see the entire movie but what I saw was so beautiful and moving in such a quiet and dignified way that I knew my movie viewing tastes had changed forever. I could now watch films that were deeper and more intelligent that what I was used to and that made me feel so mature. Although, I have yet to truly grow up - ah yes, good ol' arrested development - and I'm not
talking about the show.

As for music, my tastes have always been slightly odd when compared to others and by odd I mean most would make fun of my tastes if I were to be completely honest with them, so I will just mention the very first album that I played till
the cassette wore out - anyone remember cassettes?

Try not to snicker at me but Prince's Purple Rain was the end all be all for me. The movie was okay but I knew every song and every lyric on that album. I had never had that kind of relationship with an album up to that point so this was monumental for me. Prince was still in his genius phase and I began to see music as more than something just to sing along to. And it had everything I longed for in my music - rock and soul. Better albums would come but Purple Rain started it all off for me.

As for songs, I can't say any one song changed my life. I fall in love with songs the way I fall in love with men - way too easily. Too many songs move me depending on time and place so I can't pinpoint one that changed me. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a song and a man that will change my life. Ah, wishful thinking - that's what keeps me going.

Album: OK Computer, Radiohead. It completely changed the way I thought of music.

Song: Scars, Papa Roach. Not because it's a particularly good song, but those are the words that I needed to hear at that point.

Movie: American History X. For too many reasons to list.

Movie/book: A tie between To Kill a Mockingbird and Grapes of Wrath. I was born and raised in a fairly segrated area in NYC and these two films brought home the message that certain feelings and actions were just not right and had to be actively challenged.

Album: Diesel and Dust, Midnight Oil. The Oilers, primarily Peter Garrett and his freestyle performance and lyrics helped free my from the white man's two step while at concerts while opening me up to global causes of conscious.

Song: Common People, Pulp. I was introduced to it by my true north and the reaction was immediate and opiodesque. From the time of that unexpected cataclysmic reaction, wonderful music and my dearest friend's face/smell/essence have been forever joined. And no matter how much I try to hate her (and she gives me reason, I asssure you), or seek distance from her to preserve my own sanity (not much to begin with), music draws me back into her orbit and her pull is inescapable.

I would give myself some reason to it, but it would take too long...and isn't the movie that changed your life supposed to defy simple explanation?

Movie: Cabaret
Album: The Execution Of All Things, Rilo Kiley
Song: "Famous Blue Raincoat", Leonard Cohen

Late to the game, and answering a totally different question. The book that changed my life, and my taste in literature radically, The True Confession of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. I picked this one up in fourth grade and I hated it. Couldn't stand it, couldn't stand Charlotte, predicted every plot point well in advance, didn't like it at all. It was the first book I can remember NOT liking. I told my mom and I *gasp* didn't get in trouble. It was when I realized it was okay to not like something. Before then, with books or movies or television or music, I always wanted to be the "good girl" and not upset anyone, so I always tried to find something good about things I didn't like so I wouldn't upset or offend anyone. My parents didn't know what to do with this shy child in a boisterous (but loving and supportive) family. That book was the moment when I realized it was okay to have a contrary opinion (everyone else I knew including my mother loved that book) and more importantly to express it. It was what allowed me to develop and articulate my own sense of taste.

Movie: Heathers. Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?

Album: Weezer's blue album. It was my first favorite album that wasn't one of my dad's. Say It Ain't So is their best song ever.

I saw Jaws as a wide-eyed kid of only eight years old. For so many years after, I wanted to be Hooper. I studied sharks, drew them on my books and desk and generally wanted to be an icthyologist for the rest of my childhood. It wouldn't be till the DVD era when I revisited Jaws and discovered the sublime nature hidden beneath the blockbuster. It was a different movie altogether. The scene on the Orca, recounting the wounds of the sea brought upon each of the trio, is for me, as close to perfect as you can get. So everytime I see Monority Report or A.I. and cringe, all sins can be forgiven for this piece of work.

Movie: LA Confidential. I saw it the first week of college and it marked a clear line in the sand between who I was before and who I got to be afterward. While I absolutely love the movie, it was more about the experience, the freedom, the time of day, the clothes I wore, how rapt I was by the story, and the walk back to my dorm room. The Big Lebowski and Nobody's Fool would be close seconds in terms of how they affected me.

Album: Erotica by Madonna. My mother bought it for me for my 14th birthday after telling me she'd never have that filth in her house. Madonna helped make this girl a woman (in many ways) plus I realized just what power my 14-year-old self had over my mother. And that kicked off the years-long struggle for us to have an adult relationship.

Song: "Evolve" Ani Difranco. Specifically the last verse: "so I walk like I'm on a mission/ cuz that's the way I groove/ I got more and more to do/ I got less and less to prove/ it took me too long to realize/ that I don't take good pictures/ cuz I have the kind of beauty/ that moves"

Prior to Kill Bill (No,seriously) at 16,I wasn't the least bit interested in films,aside from those showing at the local theatres-after seeing Vol. 1,I did a bit of searching here and there,started watching a hellota other films & am now officially a geek.

Blood on the Tracks by Bobby D....

Pulp Fiction...not my favorite movie but it was just so different...I'd never seen anything like it before. Left an indelible mark on my teenybopper brain

Holy shit Socalled!!! This is really scary because your wife appears to be....ME! If I didn't know better I would be on Mr. PaddyDog's computer right now checking out his favourite web sites to see if this is one huge practical joke he's playing on me.

i think i feel old.

movie: brazil. disturbing. beautiful. irreverant.

i think i feel old.

movie: brazil. disturbing. beautiful. irreverent.

Alas, lass (see what I did there?), I'm sitting at a desk in San Francisco, grinding down the little man for the Big Man, plotting nasty perimeter defenses to keep both the fuckers out of my castle, and daydreaming about my next life as a dog-herd. Mr. Paddy is presumably safely asleep in the bosom of Erin right now, dreaming about his wife and her bosoms of Erin.

@socalled

I'm 42. Didn't scan the whole comments section to see who answered you. But I put that out there because . . .

Movie: Breakfast Club. I was in high school, and a composite of all three male characters to a degree. All state distance runner, straight A student (except for . . . a C in metal shop), and a metalhead. Sure, the scenes were stylized, but they did capture the atmosphere of self-conscious anxiety. Sometimes those barriers would break down for a bit, in certain circumstances, and it was exhilarating to get to know people in a different context. This movie captured that. Had it shown the next Monday, of course, they'd all go back to being who they were and ignoring each other.

The second, and the movie that so separated me from reality that it took hours afterward to touch base again, was Brazil. Egads but that movie was surreal. My two friends and I walked out, and it truly seemed like reality was the film. And no, no pharmaceuticals were consumed. Strictly sober decoupling from reality. The theme song still makes me feel that way.

Song: Xanadu (live version) from Exit . . . Stage Left.

Blood Simple

Movie: I'm tempted to say 'The Land Before Time', but that didn't really change me so much as reinforce the terror I had that one day, my mother would die. I still have that fear. DAMN YOU, LONG-NECKS! Why couldn't you live forever!?

So, instead, I'll go with Casshern. I know, I know - it's just a big fucking music video, I get it, shut up. The use of music in that film was brilliant, and Shiro Sagisu's score was to die for. The part at the end killed me inside. I left years of apathy because of that movie.

Album: Probably Tea for the Tillerman, Cat Stevens. I got into this when I was about 6 or 7 courtesy of my dad, and completely abandoned my poor James Taylor. It really changed a lot of things for me, perception wise.

Song: Too many to name. The latest has been the end theme to Dexter. Before that, it was a couple of songs from the Casshern soundtrack.

Movie: CABARET!

As a teen, in the 1970s, this movie rocked my world. It still does! Perfection! Divine decadence!

Also, I completely missed the age discussion. I don't know if I post regularly enough for this to count or matter for anything, but.. I'm 20. And I feel like an ancient child.

The Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz paved the way for me as an actor at an early age.

Albee's brilliant Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf did the same for me as a writer in the late early nineties as did Grapes of Wrath.

Rush inspired me at first by Neil Peart's lyrics then by the craftsmanship and dedication.

And, I am only slightly ashamed to admit it due to its schmaltz factor, Cory Hart's "Never Surrender" pulled me out of a bluer than blue funk coming out of high school.

Say what you will about Reese Witherspoon, but I was 13 years old, and she starred in Man in the Moon, about a girls first crush. Maybe it was my age, budding sexuality and all that, or dreamy jason London, but that movie made me cry in the theater for the first time ever.
I've never rewatched it since then, afraid to ruin the magic. It probably sucks.

After that it was City of Lost Children, which resulted in me only watching foreign films for almost the next two years.

Lola, it counts or matters to the extent we're all here nattering about stuff we like . . . which means it counts or matters completely. Opine and post!!

How the hell do you guys remember this shit? You are much more insightful than I, but I will try. My choices are a little harsher than what's been posted so far...

Music: Guns N' fuckin Roses-Appetite for Destruction. That album changed the way I thought about music. And still has me waiting for Chinese Democracy. Get on it, Axl!

Movie: I'd say in junior high when I first saw Scarface. Not so much for the actual movie(though it is a classic), but that it introduced me to a great actor, leading me to seek out what other movies this Pacino guy made. That's how I started discovering great quality films. I would hear about a great actor (or movie) and seek out what else they had worked on, and watch those. And so on...

Album: Pearl Jam, "Ten"
I was a teenaged, glammed-out hair bear, when this album dropped. I traded in my Aquanet and Def Leppard t-shirt for some Converse and flannels shortly thereafter. And to whomever said they saw this vid for the first time on on 120 Minutes, ME TOO! It was like a door was kicked in, a cold wind rushed over me..I had never heard my angst put in such terms.

Movie: "Singles"
I'm witcha, MG. All of my friends and I saw and loved this movie, and we all played the soundtrack to death. I actually went to Seattle the summer after this movie came out and made my parents drive me around looking for the Mother Love Bone wall (which we found!!) No other movie captures the feel of the early 90's for me like this one does. Plus, Crowe's dialogue was just awesome. :-)

As you can see, I came of age during the so-called "grunge" years. What can I say?

I actually don't believe in this comment diversion... Too many options. There wer probably at least one movie/song/album a year that at least made me feel like my life had changed.

But if only 3 you must have, then so be it.
Movie: Pulp Fiction
Song: That's Entertainment The Jam
Album: BloodSugarSexMagick The Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Movie - All That Jazz. Really.

Popular Music, with vocals - I was introduced to four things at the same time:

- Steely Dan, anything.
- Frank Zappa, especially Zoot Allures.
- Robert Fripp / Brian Eno & similar.
- Joni Mitchell, Shadows and Light.

Some years before music kind of saved my life:
- Stan Kenton, Kenton '76

For a while I could actually play that stuff.

Song: Amy Winehouse - Back To Black. I will forever love this song.

Album: Metric - Old World, Underground, Where Are You Now? You never forget your first...

Movie: Stranger Than Fiction - I couldn't figure out what is is that I wanted to do with my life, but when I heard Maggie Gyllenhaal's line about making the world better with cookies, all I could think about was that I wanted to bake.

Movie - All That Jazz. Really.

Popular Music, with vocals - I was introduced to four things at the same time:

- Steely Dan, anything.
- Frank Zappa, especially Zoot Allures.
- Robert Fripp / Brian Eno & similar.
- Joni Mitchell, Shadows and Light.

Some years before music kind of saved my life:
- Stan Kenton, Kenton '76

For a while I could actually play that stuff.

Movie: "Wild at Heart". It was the first "art film" (at least that's how I thought of it then) I ever saw and I loved it.

Album: U2's "The Unforgettable Fire." Where I grew up, liking U2 was offbeat (believe it or not).

Song: The Cure's "Killing an Arab." Kind of in the same vein as my album selection, but that song was like nothing I'd ever heard and I really liked it.

And, Kathy - Depeche Mode kicks ass. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

I'm so late now it does not matter what I write, but anyway! I am happy Pulp Fiction got a few mentions, that one really gnawed at me at a young age. Royal Tannenbaums is another one- it came out when I was 16ish and when I left the theater and got home I started sobbing, and I am not even sure why.

But I want to give a little prop to American Beauty, a movie that left me feeling sharper, clearer, than I had felt in a long time. It reinforced all these doubts I had about family and yes, consumerism, but mostly it was transcendant. I admit to getting really choked up about the plastic bag scene-- "There's so much beauty in the world my heart feels like it might burst," you know? All I can feel is gratitude. It's... probably something that helped make up my mind to 'be an artist', whatever that cliche means.

"Sophie´s Choice". Up until I saw that flick as a teenager, my idea of good acting and a touching movie moment was watching Harrison Ford tell Karen Allen to look away from the light as the Nazi´s faces melted. To this day, I still think Meryl Streep´s acting in "Sophie´s Choice" is the best performance I have ever seen (or probably will ever see again) in a film. My second choice of movie would have to be "City Of Lost Children", which was the first film that made me realize that there are a lot of other amazing filmmakers out there in the world that don´t need the money or access to the Hollywood machine to make magic really happen.

Album: War - U2 -- years after release played non-stop on my walkman --started a lifelong love affair I don't care what you all say.

Song:
In Your Eyes - Gabriel (esp when played on ghetto blaster by Lloyd Dobbler)

Movies: 16 Candles

Better Off Dead (
when I LOVED it and found it HILARIOUS and told everyone to go see it....then no one else really liked it I recognized my penchant for oddity)

Pretty in Pink
(i'm an 80s girl)

Singles
(probably most re-watched movie of my life excluding Finding Nemo, et al)

Adult Life Movie:
Before Sunset

Movie: I was really surprised when I saw Dustin put True Romance. I thought I was the only person in the world that that movie meant that much to. True Romance is the movie that made me decide that I wanted to be a film writer/maker.

Music: My mom made me play a lot of classical stuff on piano as a kid, which i hated. when i was 12 or so i started listening to a lot of jerry lee lewis and he really made me passionate about playing.

The Crow

This came out my freshman year of high school, and I first saw it a week or two after the school year had ended. Up until this point I had been a rather lost individual who played a few sports, and had a few friends, but wasn't really good with either. I was just starting to think about doing theater, which would be the true life-changing catalyst later on. But as far as personal taste and culture: The Crow, both the movie and the soundtrack, was my major eye-opener to a world beyond top 40 radio and Tom Hanks movies.

Wow.... I am an outcast! No one has ANY of the same stuff as me!! I'm shocked!.... And drunk. Damn that Alex and all of you bold naming, proposing folks!

maylai: Oh, I remember the first time I saw Pearl Jam play "live," on Saturday Night Live, playing "Alive." (That's a lot of lives in one sentence.) Absolutely electric; gave me chills. BTW, isn't it about time for another groundbreaking music revolution?

Album- Sabbath, "Master Of Reality". Nuff said right there.

Movie? How about "Up In Smoke"? Huh?

As a little kid, I watched a lot of TVO [T.V. Ontario]. Saturday Night @ the Movies, hosted by Elwi Yost, was the greatest show ever. It was always some classic or other, followed by interviews with old stars/directors/writers/etc. I was mesmerized by the silent movie "Greed". This show, full of all things "OLD", perfectly balanced out my consumption of 80's movies like "Pretty in Pink". As for music, my older cousins introduced me to so-called "Alternative" music, and the likes of Madonna and Bon Jovi could just never be cool again.

Album: Hootenany and Let it Be- the Replacements. Growing up in the 80's, it seemed like it was either bad heavy metal or Phil Collins and Madonna. In contrast, the 'Placemats seemed to be all about being awkward and fuckin' up- and two things I was turning into an art form at the time. still am, I suppose.

Movie: Repo Man. My first car was an old chevy malibu. nuff said. "Quadrophenia" would run a close second, which definitely deserves the Pajiba treatment one of these days.

Book: And the Band Played on. A portrait of human weakness during the early days of the AIDS crisis. Knew a guy who contracted HIV and died from tainted blood products. This book chronicled just how poorly the crises was managed, and how my friend landed up dying because of other peoples' fuck-ups.

Movie: The Virgin Spring. Enough said.

Album: There really isn't one. It's more songs with me.

Song: Smoke by Natalie Imbruglia. Until 1999, I never listened to a lick of contemporary pop music. Theater, oldies, and Mozart (occasionally some Opera, as well) were the soundtrack of my young life. Then, I heard Natalie Imbruglia's Smoke in the background on New Years Day. It blew me away and changed my life, considering I fully plan on working in the music industry.

Movie: This is hard. I'm going to have to say Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Aside from being the first quality rock musical I ever saw, it had a powerful message about self acceptance and pursuing your dreams at any cost. This is coming from a 22 year old straight guy who was able to take Hedwig and suddenly stop being ashamed of all my performance/artistic ambitions.

Album: Short, Sharp & Shocked by Michelle Shocked. Up to then, my music choices had been heavily influenced by radio and older brothers and sisters, but Michelle was all mine.

Movie: a toss-up between
The Big Chill - At 15, it was probably the first movie I ever saw with my friends that dealt with adult concerns, and was not aimed at teens. My Glenn Close/Kevin Kline/William Hurt love goes back a loooong way.

The Producers - the brilliant 1964 original. I still laugh myself sick over Gene Wilder's blue blanky scene.

Album: Sufjan Stevens's Illinoise album. Absolutely motherf-ing brilliant.

Movie: Stand By Me. Hands down.

Don't kill me, but...

movie: Garden State (trust me, I knooow)

music: Jeff Buckley's "Grace" album ... found serendipitously in a $5 bin and bought because I'd heard of him once on VH1 ... and thank goodness

Movie: Daughters of the Dust was the first movie that really challenged me to pay attention, to figure out the language, to puzzle out the context, to be aware of symbolism. It was also the first movie I watched where I was aware of the cinematography and the director's choices in framing shots. And it encouraged me to take chances on movies I'd never heard of before.

Album: Little Earthquakes entered my life at exactly the moment I needed to hear it, as it seems to have done for a number of other people here. A few years later, Boys for Pele (and Dilate by Ani Difranco) got me through my first heartbreak, so Tori Amos is pretty tightly wound through my late adolescence and early adulthood.

Song: "Blasphemous Rumors" by Depeche Mode. Heard it for the first time when I was 13, and it marked the point where I started really paying attention to lyrics and seeking out darker, heavier music than what was in the mainstream at the time. Without that groundwork, I don't know if I would've been ready for "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which was the music video that changed my life. I still remember watching it alone in the dark at my cousin's house after everyone else was asleep, and realizing that something I couldn't even put a name to had changed, and I really liked it.

Book: The Handmaid's Tale sparked a long-standing love of Margaret Atwood's novels specifically, feminist literature in general, and scared the shit out of me. And still does.

aud--Short Sharp Shocked was my 2nd choice! "Memories of East Texas" totally woke me up not letting my small town drag me down.

Movie: I grew up in the 70s, and one of the few positives of that conjunction of childhood+decade would be the moviegoing experience. Our teensy little redneck town had an art house theater that everyone attended because the choices were so few...and it was a surprising success, probably for that same reason. Unfortunately, the 1980s and the sudden wide availability of cocaine killed the place, not because of lack of ticket sales, but because the owners let their drug use get a little out of control--to the point where they did coke openly and tried to sell it to moviegoers (including me, at age twelve!). Anyway.

I saw lots of movies there with my family--my parents preferred paying for movie tickets for us kids vs. paying a babysitter--including lots of things that were really too old for me, as well as more age-appropriate fare, including Breaking Away and A Little Romance, both of which I adored. It's also where I saw Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time, shortly before the place closed and the owners disappeared into the ether.

Despite my fond memories of said little art house theater, the movie that changed my...life?...was All That Jazz, seen at age twelve as a Sunday matinee at the local cineplex with grumbling parents and whiny little brother who was, of course, bored the entire time.

I expected it to be good, but I did not anticipate the gleeful self-awareness, the psychological theorizing, the sexiness that pinged my 12-year-old meter in a raw, adult way that made me really wish I wasn't sitting with my parents, and the kind of dancing that could loop it all together--FOSSE dancing--along with black humor, despair, sex, heaps of symbolism, my very first visual of a ribcage being cracked open (who doesn't remember their first gaping, raw body cavity?), and, again, the dancing...all before a completely inevitable and definitely not-happy ending. I had never seen a narrative come together from so many directions, in such a snarl, and yet still make complete sense as I sat gnawing my fingertips raw during the final joyous/cynical dance sequence/death scene. I don't think I've seen the like since, for that matter.

As for music, it was finding out that all the songs I'd loved on the radio as a child were, in fact, performed by the same person, which I discovered when my 9th-grade friend played her older brother's copy of Changes One for me. My now-identified love for the musical output and various personae of David Bowie sent me down a fairly decadent and definitely enjoyable path over the next dozen years or so, necessarily requiring explorations into all musical genres and under all kinds of cultural rocks in search of things transcendent and transgendered.

Movie #1: Star Wars. The original. I was 11 when I saw it, and it almost made my geeky sci-fi girl self cool for a moment or two.

Movie #2: El Norte. Made me believe that films could have desperately sad subjects and equally sad endings and still be incredibly good.

Vinyl: Miles Davis' Kind of Blue
Song: "Seventeen", Janis Ian
Film: Hair

The Third Man: The movie not only changed my perspective on cinema but also saved me from drowning my self in the Riene River in Koln, Germany. A couple friends of mine in the service and I went up there from Ramstein one weekend to unwind and basically get shit faced drunk on German beer. We were at a pub when I feel heads over heels form a swiss femme fatale named Sophie who had eyes only for my friend Jesse. Drunk and saddened by the alluming fact that I was going to remain alone forever I decided to throw myself in the Riene and since I can't swim basically I'd be ghost like Swayze from then on. But just before I reached the river I saw this old theater with "Orson Welles in the Third Man" on the marquee. So instead of throwing myself into the abyss I found myself sitting in a smoke-filled cinema in Koln, Germany. And my life was changed forever. It told a story of existential loss and betrayal. It was sad and knowing, and its glorious style was an act of defiance against the corrupt world it pictured. Seeing it, I realized how many Hollywood movies were like the pulp Westerns that Holly Martins wrote: naive formulas supplying happy endings for passive consumption. Of all the movies I had ever seen, this one most completely embodied the romance of going to the movies.
I left the theater that night happy to be alive. So what if my friend was in our hotel room that minute railing the girl of my dreams. There would be other girls but rarely would there be another film like that.

movie: the breakfast club
song: rush and a push and the land is ours the smiths
album: blood sugar sex magik the red hot chili peppers

The Princess Bride defines exactly who I am as a person.

I can't do just one album/song for life changes. At different points, different music changed something about what I listened to and how I listened to it.

From Outlandos d'Amour to Rebel Yell to Green to Meat is Murder to King of America to 101 to That Total Age to Floodland to Low Life to Turn On the Bright Lights and a lot of others in and around.

Movie: I don't know that it changed my life, but The Comfort of Strangers just messed with my head like nothing else.

Movie: Tigerland. An understated little gem that speaks volumes about the Vietnam War without ever stepping foot outside the US. Also introduced me to the then unknown Colin Farrell, long before he destroyed viewer confidence with dross like SWAT and Miami Vice.

Music: Green Day's Dookie. The perfect companion to my adolescent suburban ennui.

Song: Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, the saddest and most perfect song ever written. Until Limp Bizkit fucking raped it at the Concert for New York. One day I will have Fred Durst's head on a spike in my backyard.

Album: Metallica's Black Album. Before I heard it when I was 5 I thought guitars only sounded like they do in Green Day and Goo Goo Dolls songs, both of which I thought--and still think--sounded like cans with strings on them being played by whiny assholes. But as soon as I heard that album my mind was completely fucking blown--I thought my speakers were going to explode. It has ever since fueled my obsessive guitar playing.

Movie: The Shining. I saw it when I was ten, and even though my friends had already ruined it by telling me everything that happened, it still fucked my mind so hard that to this day it was been indelibly warped. I could watch that movie any time of any day, no matter how I feel. It also kindled some of my interests in things that creep other people out, like looking up serial killers on wikipedia.

Otis Redding saved my life.
He turned me from the Spice Girls to music with soul. This was also when I realized I was very, very different from the other girlies in my grade.

And my parents brainwashed me into abandoning the Little Mermaid to Star Wars when I was 7. I wept every time an Ewok was blown up, and I began to appreciate film. This was also when I should have realized that I was going to be miserable in high school. I guess it'd be smarter if I said it was Casablanca, but no, it was all effing Han Solo.

...and The Princess Bride. TL said it just right.

Movie: American Beauty. It was my senior year of high school, the night of the Homecoming dance. I somehow convinced my date and the other couple we went with to see it. We were all good little Catholic kids and I think everyone else, including the guys, was scandalized by it. I, on the other hand, couldn't stop thinking about it for months -- it flipped a switch somewhere inside me and made me look at "film" in an entirely new and different light.

Album: Probably Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness -- Smashing Pumpkins. It was the first album I distinctly remember appreciating as a whole, epic, and multifaceted entity rather than just a collection of songs. It also spanned the whole spectrum of teenage emotion, which deeply resonated with my high school self.

Song: Going to California -- Led Zeppelin. I was initially drawn to the beautiful mandolin line, but fell in love with the sweet, sad yearning which was expressed more simply and poetically in that song than in anything else I had heard up to that point.

Album- 2112, by Rush. Not long after it came out, my buddy across the street invited me over to listen to it on his kick-ass stereo. I was completely and utterly stunned (largely because my dipshit parents only listened to C&W). Rush is still far and away my all-time favorite group.

Song- Pachelbel's Canon in D. 'Nuff said.

Movie- Zulu. This film opened my eyes to the fact that there was a metric butt-load of history out there I was not being told about in school. That led to me learning about the whole rest of the world I was also not being told about. That eventually led to an interest in in such diverse things as astrophysics and engineering, which in turn led to Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, and then to the room with mattress wallpaper where I currently reside.

Fun fact about the movie: Early on, a Zulu runner comes into the kraal and pants out a message (in Swahili) to the seated King about the massacre at Isandlwana. After the first take, the stuffy English director thought the actor's lines took too long, and instructed him to say something "foreign-sounding" and short. What the actor (a real Zulu) actually said was, "I am not getting paid enough for this part."

I feel like these should always come with a heavy disclaimer, so here is mine: I was born in 1982.

Movie: 12 Monkeys. Maybe because it was the first "R" rated movie I saw in the big ol theater, thus making it impossibly dangerous, but it always seems Important when I watch it.

Album: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness- the Smashing Pumpkins. I was *cough* thirteen when it hit the shelves, and up to that point I was buying Beatles and Blues Traveler albums... stuff that was clean so my parents could read the lyrics. Mellon Collie was the first album I wanted so badly that I would risk the accompanying grounding and lecture about my eternal soul.

Song: Velvet Waltz- Built to Spill. It was at this point I realized what I actually liked and wanted every song I heard for the rest of my life to sound like.

God Damn it am I jealous of you people. Being only 16 I have never had a really life changing moment related to pop culture, I really really want/need one of those. HOWEVER, Arcade Fire's Neon Bible really changed my taste in music to something I can be proud of, and something that I associate with being me. It is all I listened to for 2 weeks, and it opened my world up to other fantasticly indie bands, which I have relied on in these troubling times I/we am/are going through.

Album: Unplugged in New York - Nirvana and Peal Jam - 10 are the first entries. Damn how I love those albums. I was 10 or 12 when I first heard them. Still fantastic.

From the Choirgirl hotel - Tori Amos. I was 20, bitter, miserable, and angry. She helped so much.

Movie: A River Runs Through It. I dare you to watch it and not get misty eyed at the end. Still one of my favorite movies.

Song: "Stupid Girl" - Garbage. Such a great song.

"One" - Metallica. I had never heard anything that powerful before or since.

After my non-answer that was just about a book, I realized something. When I was about 12 or 13 my father forced my siblings and I to watch The African Queen. We griped and complained and by the end of the movie were all riveted. There were tears. In my burgeoning sexuality, Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn taught me about romance and sexual chemistry. I learned to appreciate the classics and the beauty of an incredible movie. Sadly my father's taste didn't hold up as he was one of the four people in the world who enjoyed Waterworld, enjoyed it so much I think he owns it.