Frank Herbet' Dune

Oragon

The story covers so many themes from ecology to politics.It is one of those books that you read many times and see something different every time.
It also makes social cometary that spans more than just one time, many of the ideas can applied to every time.

Frank

It's A Wonderful Life

Los Angeles, California

I think in one way or another, this film has influenced the "American Character" as much as any single work of art or literature. It (for better or for worse) defines what we like to think our values are. It is both an homage to individualism and a paen to the need for a communal society in which we are all responsible for each other. It transcends politics, or should I say can be claimed by the politics of the Left and Right. It is as enigmatic as Capra himself was. I think it would make an excellent subject for examination

Terry

True West by Sam Shepard

n/a

As a young theatre student, I first read and then saw this play around 20 years old and couldn't believe how much it touched upon what it meant to be a man in America. The relationship between these brothers with their work, their environment, their mother/father and each other is such a perfect metaphor. True West, indeed!

Jerry

revolutions

USA

Our country started with a revolution, and it has been continuing for a long time, from flappers, to hippies, to punk, and more. This would be very fascinating to explore...

Lanie

Mad Magazine

New York, NY

Mad Magazine has been expressing a distinctly American sense of humor for over 60 years. Generations have been raised on - and influenced by - its particular version of satire; by turns cynical, skeptical, irreverent, and juvenile. By tirelessly mocking all that is ridiculous and overblown, everything that is worst about America, Mad stands as an icon of what is best about America: the little guy speaking truth to power, but with a winking grin.

Dave

NATIVE SON

Michigan

Richard Right's book, written in 1940, is the story of 20 year old Bigger Thomas, who lives in utter poverty--actual, moral. A protagonist with no redeeming characteristics, Bigger is a study in terrifying criminality, brutal and concienceless. He is full of a rage that seals over boiling emotions. For he is a black man of his time and place, with everything that segregation entails. He commits a horrific murder (fully illustrating the idea that no good goes unpunished) but finds it freeing for reasons the reader is compelled and horrified to understand. By killing a young rich white girl, an accidental act that ensues from his own sense of his place in the white world, he is surprised to discover he feels liberated. There can only be one end for Bigger and the mesmerized reader knows it from the first page. How did Right pull off this staggering and controversial achievement that created an uproar on publication and continues to today to stand as a landmark book?

Veronica

Casablanca

Casablanca, "in French Morocco"

It's an allegory that challenged the prevailing myth of "the American" who was self-reliant, unsentimental, and indifferent to the "problems of the world". The miracle of it is that the screenwriters were able to put across what in one respect is a ham-fisted piece of propaganda packaged in an immaculate, ever-compelling story. And quite apart from such high-brow theorizing about the work itself is the quintessential American drama of how it was made, with a cast and crew of European refugees and Hollywood's studio-system churning at the very top of its game. Finally, I would challenge you to find any work that has made more contributions to the lexicon of American speech. Go on, be a rank sentimentalist and produce a segment on Casablanca.

Steven

American Beauty (film)

suburban Chicago

American Beauty encapsulates in a film exactly how it feels to DO things American. We marry, go to work, have kids - like toys wobbling down an assembly line, and we have no idea why we're doing it. We have no idea how what we're doing relates to who we are, and the truth is, we have no idea who we are. The film makes that experience feel real.

Alex

lonesome dove by larry mcmurtry

book

Dismay is palpable, disaster around every corner yet hope is ever present. Heroes are present in every man. The quintessential description of America.

leslie

The Interstate Highway System

United States

The Interstate System has been called the Greatest Public Works Project in History. From the day President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Interstate System has been a part of our culture—as construction projects, as transportation in our daily lives, and as an integral part of the American way of life. Every citizen has been touched by it, if not directly as motorists, then indirectly because every item we buy has been on the Interstate System at some point. (From the United States Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration)

Carrie

Mister Rogers

Pittsburgh, PA (originally)

Fred Rogers created a character that revolutionized children's television using song and metaphor. He introduced complex psychological concepts to a whole generation of kids -- now adults -- that had no precedent (and few, if any antecedents). Fred, his songs, and his show were true 20th C American icons.

We will be honoring Fred in NYC on 11/9l, and have access to testimonials about his genius from other American Icons like Yo-Yo Ma and T Berry Brazelton.

Barry

University of Texas Tower

Austin, Texas

Long before Columbine, the Navy Yard, movie theaters and grocery store parking lot shootings, Charles Whitman raised the bar for mass murder when he killed 17 people on a hot summer day in 1966 from the top of the University of Texas tower using a range of semi-automatic weapons purchased around town. I was 11-years old, and remember the worries about my uncle, who was a professor at UT, where was he? Seven years later when I was a freshman, another student jumped from the top of the Tower at high noon while the bells tolled, "Raindrops Keep Falling From My Head."

The Tower symbolizes the best of UT; it burns orange when UT wins game or when a professor wins a Nobel Prize. The Tower inscription on reads, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

Despite all the Texas bluster, though, I can't forget the anxiety of my family on that day in 1966--where is he? Or understand why Texas continues to have liberal gun laws that make it possible for many Whitmans to go on shooting sprees. With all the victory and academic pride associated with the Tower, I still wonder when the truth about gun violence and mental illness will actually set us free?

Cathy

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Manhattan

There's something fascinating about Holly Golightly that captivated me, first in the book and then in the movie, when I was quite young, and yet mesmerizes my children as well. The movie has a Hollywood ending, which changes Holly's nature somewhat but both hold up. Hepburn, Capote: American icons too. BTW, I worked with John McGiver in 1972 in summer theatre.

Jan

Harold & Maude

VA

This movie really grabbed me and wouldn't let go. It covered the sadness of feeling like you don't fit in, the emptiness of a life based on status and money, the taboo around sexual contact between very young and very old, the acknowledgement that the elderly can even be sexual. Ruth Gordon was brilliant.

Bobbie

Calvin and Hobbes

Springfield, PA

Simply the most thoughtful comic strip written. Funny,philosophical,thought provoking, heart-warming,subtle. Even after Watterson stopped writing the strip more than a decade ago, the hole that was left in the funny pages (and in our hearts) is still there.

Dr. T

Catch-22

Havertown, PA

From the moment I first read this at age 13, I knew it was the greatest book I would ever read. I gave to kids I met in high school, those who "got it" became my friends; those who didn't, well... I observed that everyone I met in high school, then in college, then in life - everywhere - was a character out of Catch-22. It is my personal bible

fran

The Flat Iron Building

New York City, NY

I think Studio 360 should reconstruct this unique piece of American architecture. It is a quintessential landmark located in the center of the most thriving Metropolis in America. And easily one of the most recognizable. It's shape and location make it a perfect piece for you to deconstruct, tell the history of its making, and then reconstruct it.

SPREE

The Twilight Zone

TV Series

The Twilight Zone is an American science-fiction fantasy anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964 and opened my eyes to a strange "what if" world. Mr. Serling could tell a story without fancy FX tricks you see today. He left a lot to the imagination - which can be scary all by itself.

Sue

The House of the Seven Gables

Salem, MA

The House of the Seven Gables was founded in 1910 as a historic site with a two-part purpose. Our founder, Caroline Osgood Emmerton, purchased seventeenth century Turner-Ingersoll Mansion and inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, to preserve the legacy of this 19th century American author and to use tour revenue from The Gables to fund Settlement work in the immigrant community living in the neighborhood surrounding the site. Today, The House of the Seven Gables’ campus constitutes its own national historic district on The National Register of Historic Places and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2007.

Approximately 100,000 visitors from all over the globe visit and tour the mansion, other historic buildings on the campus and the seaside colonial revival gardens each year.
In the last century, The House of the Seven Gables has continued to focus on our founder's mission of preservation and community service and is one of the only museums in the country with such a dual mission.

Kara

Jim Henson

Since Passed

Two words for you; The Muppets. But beyond those felty puppet/marionette hybrids, Henson helped create a world for children and adults alike, rich with imagination and wonder that could rival even that of the master Imagineer himself; Walt Disney.

Tony