From Barbra Streisand to Elaine May, Amy Sherman-Palladino reveals her biggest creative influences.
ForAmy Sherman-Palladino, life is a musical comedy.
Or at least, she wishes it was.
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“I still go back to my roots,” she tells EW.
Basically, that’s me in a nutshell."
“She means everything to me,” the writer says.
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“She had a lot to do with the way I write women, the way I see women.
She was so unusual as a leading woman because she was funny and strong and different.
She was never tragic or a victim.
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Sherman-Palladino credits his work with teaching her that humor could be less situational and more dialogue-focused and observational.
“I am huge Norman Lear fan,” she says.
“I loved anything that came out of his world.All In the Family.
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The best, just absolutely the best.
It was the way people looked at life and talked to each other.
That was funny.”
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So, nobody else can have one either,” she says with a laugh.
“Everyone’s going to keep moving and talking and pushing forward.
I view everything like a dance.
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Even sparring and fighting, it’s a dance.
I view the music in it.
Musicals' color and beauty the color is energy and energy is my motto.
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A lot of that really did come from my dance background and my love of musicals.”
She did and was immediately obsessed.
“You see things there that blow your mind,” she says of the film.
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“Not like now with all the bells and whistles and drones and CGI.
You see what they did back before any of that was invented.
Now, I just buy copies and give it to people because they should watch it.
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He would lie on the floor and look through a girl’s legs and under her chair.
Joan Rivers, my God who was better than Joan Rivers?
Stephen Sondheim
“Everybody is influenced by Sondheim because he was a wordsmith,” reflects Sherman-Palladino.
“He really knew how to put story into music and songs.
When you look atGypsy,which is my favorite musical, I think it’s perfect.
There’s not a moment in it that’s missed.
Those words came from him.”
She credits the series for shaping her approach to writing women on television.
