In Popular Culture
- Subject of the Irish poet Michael Longley's "Elegy for Fats Waller".
- Waller's organ music is prominently featured in the David Lynch film, Eraserhead.
- He was caricatured in several Warner Brothers animated shorts, most notably Tin Pan Alley Cats.
- In the 2008 film, Be Kind Rewind Fats Waller was a major theme and influence over the storyline.
- Italian comics book artist Igort published a comic book about Waller entitled Fats Waller on Coconino Press in 2009.
- Some of Waller's music (Jitterbug Waltz) is used in the video game series BioShock.
Read more about this topic: Fats Waller
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind. It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)