Silicon Valley innovators and film artists Halfdan Hussey and Kathleen Powell founded the Cinequest Film Festival around the theme Maverick because that spirit sums up both worlds: bold, innovative, original, pioneering and highly creative.
What’s a maverick? It’s someone who blazes his own path, someone who follows her own moral compass and by doing so opens creative possibilities for the rest of us. Mavericks change the landscape of popular culture simply by being themselves. Mavericks inspire, mavericks provoke – but most of all, they make us think.
In the flooded field of Hip Hop, Kanye West stands out as one of its top artists. Starting out as a music producer, he worked his way in front of the mic. He introduced elements not used before in the genre, like intricately composed pieces of music for string instruments as well as soul music samples for his songs. Of course, Kanye is more than a musician – he’s a cultural icon. He amps up his maverick status by stating, in public venues, things that other people think but won’t say. He’s famous for declaring, during a benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” He’s currently in a Twitter war with Lily Allen over abortion; he grabbed an award out of Taylor Swift’s hand (Imma let you finish!); he stood up on stage stating that he should have won at the 2006 MTV Europe Awards. Love him or hate him, you have to admit -- if anyone can shake people up from complacency, it’s Kanye West.
2. Tim Gunn
Tim Gunn started off as an artist and fell into teaching. Sometimes the path you’re supposed to be on is the one you fall into. Tim’s unerring sense of proportion, attention to detail and love of teaching quickly made him a sought-out professor and administrator. When he joined Project Runway, he wasn’t paid for the first season. It was more important to him that the contestants learn and be given a proper chance to win than for him to profit from the experience. Like Kanye, Tim isn’t one to shy away from publicly speaking his mind. He castigated Anna Wintour for what he feels is her elitist and privileged stance in the fashion industry, took Isaac Mizrahi to task for allegedly being cruel to people and vowed never to have Snooki on Project Runway.
3. Lady Gaga
If anyone can personify “maverick” or “iconoclast” in this day and age, it’s Lady Gaga. Her strong sense of individuality, burning desire to sing, to create and live for her art makes her a touchstone. More than any artist today, Lady Gaga lives as if “all the world’s a stage.” Lady Gaga fuses together fashion design, art, performance art and music into an amalgam of uniqueness. Not only does she employ designers and artists to manifest her many visions, she also designs herself. Like members of Bauhaus and the Italian Futurist school or Duchamp, Lady Gaga believes form follows function follows form. Her innovative spin on the everyday has opened the doors for other artists of all fields to make their dreams a reality. Though she is the reigning queen of pop, she’s more than just a highly produced flash in the pop-culture pan. The woman has drive, ambition and sheer creative talent.
4. Quentin Tarantino
It pays to work in a video store! This high school dropout studied films all day and all night. It was his consuming passion. A chance meeting with Lawrence Bender, a film producer, at a party inspired Tarantino’s first screenplay, “My Best Friend’s Birthday.” While it was being edited, the last reel of the film was lost in a fire in 1987. He went back to work and created Reservoir Dogs. Hard to believe that incredible, dialogue-driven film was his first! Like Orson Welles, another movie maverick, Tarantino uses non-linear story structure to always keep his audience on their toes. Tarantino, whose influences run the gamut from Sergio Leone, Howard Hawks, Brian de Palma, and Martin Scorsese to cheesy ‘70s TV shows, grindhouse and Hong Kong Kung Fu films, has mashed them all up to create his own filmic vision.
5. Anne Klein
Designer Anne Klein not only changed the way we think of fashion, she created new fashion categories and single-handedly changed the way designers look for inspiration. Instead of looking to European designers for insight, she simply observed how American women lived and worked. Klein trail-blazed through the fashion industry like no other designer before her. She single-handedly created the concept of “junior” clothing, made affordable and fashionable clothing for the masses of women who entered the work force in the late ‘60s and created the concept of “bridge sportswear,” which is less expensive than high-end designer clothing, yet carries the same attention to detail. At a time when very few women were successful in the industry, and very few people were designing for women, Klein not only designed, she created her own company! She opened the doors for other American designers to flourish -- one of her first hires was Donna Karan.
source bettyconfidential.com under Anne Klein, Quentin Tarantino, Lady Gaga, Tim Gunn, kANYE wEST, Celebrities
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