Lifestyle Gumbo: Five Fantastic Book References in Movies

We all know the great debt movies owe to literature – they borrow archetypes, plot devices and sometimes even the entire story. So it’s always nice to see films give shout-outs to authors and books. Join us in saluting the following five movies with awesome literary references.


Pleasantville
Teen siblings David and Jennifer have a lot to adjust to when they’re transported to ‘50s Pleasantville. There’s a ton of repression and censorship in the seemingly perfect town, which extends to the local library. David helps liberate the other high schoolers by reading them two of the most widely banned books, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.


Little Miss Sunshine
In what is arguably one of the movie’s funniest scenes, Frank asks Dwayne why he doesn’t talk. Dwayne simply points to a drawing on his wall. “Who is that? Nietzsche? So you stopped talking because of Friedrich Nietzsche?” We never get an answer. Frank, meanwhile, prides himself on being the highest regarded Proust scholar in the U.S.


Stranger Than Fiction
When Harold Crick seeks answers from Dr. Jules Hilbert on the mysterious female voice narrating his life, he gets some unexpected questions. Are you the king of anything? On a scale of one to ten, what would you consider the likelihood you might be assassinated? Just as Harold gets fed up, his mentor reveals that he has determined Harold is not “King Hamlet, Scout Finch, Frankenstein’s Monster or a golem.” What a relief.


(500) Days of Summer
Soon after meeting Summer, Tom gushes to his sister that they talked about Bananafish – presumably J.D. Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” – for 20 minutes. (Fun fact: Zooey Deschanel, who plays Summer, was named after another Salinger character, Zooey Glass.) But the mentions don’t stop there. Summer later tells Tom that she was reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray in a deli when SPOILER she met her husband.


Almost Famous
This 2000 ode to ‘70s rock n roll boasts a surprising amount of book shout-outs. Our trepid journalist William Miller wants to be Atticus Finch (of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird) when he’s younger. Rock star Russell Hammond, while high, warns his fellow partygoers that “in eleven years, it’s going to be 1984, man.” Finally, William’s Rolling Stone editor tells him to quit partying, as they’ve already got “one Hunter Thompson!”


Honorable Mentions:

The Savages
“We don’t have to go after him, Wendy. We’re not in a Sam Shepard play,” Jon Savage tell his sister.

Brick
“You read Tolkien?” drug dealer The Pin asks would-be detective Brendan. “You know, the Hobbit books?” Brendan looks at him quizzically before saying yes. “His descriptions of things are really good. He makes you wanna be there,” The Pin says. End (absurd) conversation.