Who's on your geek Mount Rushmore?

[Cadence]

Curious and so looked it up...

When Mt. Rushmore was started in 1927, Teddy Roosevelt had only been dead for 8 years and out of office for 18.

 

[Desdichado]

Can we do a very tiny, separate sculpture with Lovecraft, Heinlein, Whedon, and Kipling as a tribute to people that we recognize as influential but really really don't want to put on the side of a mountain?

No.

 

[CleverNickName]

Edit: @Desdichado beat me to it.

 

[overgeeked]

Tolkien, Lee, Lucas, and Gygax

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insert arguments about Lee and Kirby
insert arguments about Gygax and Arneson

Is the real Mt. Rushmore in part about easy choices that don't require thinking? Does it have a complete disregard for moral complications? (Googling, apparently they were chosen to represent foundation, expansion, development, and preservation according to Wikipedia).

I can see folks picking Roddenberry - but Star Trek didn't have the defining toys of a generation.

Too much thinking for me to get to Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford, and William Shatner.

Are Looney Tunes part of geek culture?
Avery, Jones, Freleng, and McKimson.

Is anything about Spielberg geeky?

Randomly doing way too much thinking and getting too obscure: Bushnell gets credit for both Atari and Chuck E. Cheese!?!

Most of us could probably easily do four each for sci-fi, fantasy, comics, RPGs, video games, anime, space, science, etc. So I went with the easiest picks from RPGs, sci-fi, fantasy, and comics.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Is anything about Spielberg geeky?

Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, Indiana Jones, Amazing Stories, Jurassic Park, humoring George Lucas generally.

 

[Gradine]

I also have a hard time giving Lucas all the credit for Star Wars. Yes, he was the central guy, but he wasn't anywhere near as much by himself.

My Star Wars Rushmore would be: Lucas, Williams, Tippet, and Slavicsek. Idea, music, visual effects, expansion.

I would have a hard time making a Star Wars Rushmore without Ben Burtt (sound design).

 

[overgeeked]

Danny Kaye - first actor of whom I was a childhood fan, sparked my love of musicals and physical comedy and wonder at the world at large

My comedy four would be Monty Python, Mel Brooks, George Carlin, and Rowan Atkinson. A list of equally good alternates would be Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, on and on and on.

 

[sevenbastard]

What probably really shapped me as a person at a young age.

Gygax: D&D
George Miller: Mad Max movies
John Milius: Red Dawn and Conan The Barbarian
George Lucas: Star Wars and Indy

 

[Velderan]

Jeez.. this is tough. There were a bunch of people whose work was important in shaping how I view different forms of media, even if in some cases they were just expanding on work started by others so if I had to pick only 4 I'd probably say Shigeru Miyamoto, Chris Clairemont, George Lucas, and Tracy Hickman. It's possible I still would have come around to some of the media they were involved in creating, but their work was what initially hooked me and shaped how I view the type of media they created.

 

[Scribe]

To expand a bit, as I'm hopped up on cold meds and not working.

Tolkien - Obvious. I often think of the quote paraphrasing "Its like Mount Fuji, you either have it as the focus, its in the background, or if you do not see it, you are on it, or intentionally excluding it." Foundational.

Lucas - I didnt even think of Indy at first, but when you include Indy with Star Wars? I mean come on. At that point hes a lock. Attribute things to others, edits, whatever, at the end of the day I'm good with Lucas.

Roddenberry - Now, I've gotten away from Star Trek, but when I was a kid watching the original series with my Mom, and then eventually watching TNG and DS9? "Trekkies" being a thing? Yeah, hes on the list.

At that point I again can go many directions, I'm fine with Lee as my 4th pick, and if 40K had a singular vision (Goodwin? Chambers? Priestly? Ansel?) I would go with that for my personal Mountain, but I dont think most are going to know what I'm talking about there.

So, as Marvel was huge for me, and now is huge in the main stream, Lee.