The Sewers of Paris

Okay, to be fair, Jodie Foster isn't singlehandedly to blame for turning Ben from a quiet church boy into a tattooed pierced atheist with a husband and a boyfriend. But her influence didn't hurt. Ben's family moved a lot, and after a childhood of making and then losing friends, he was starting to feel lonely and sad. At the same time, school were becoming oppressive. When Jodie Foster appeared in Contact, playing an aggressive scientist who challenges the assumptions of everyone around her, he realized that he didn't have to just sit back and keep going to the classes and church services that were slowly eating him away. These days, his tastes verge toward the decidedly more unusual: music like Loreena McKennitt, which he describes as "hippie folk," or the kind of music you play to set the mood in a Dungeons and Dragons game. He likes weird movies like Titus, The Fifth Element, and Run Lola Run. And he has a soft spot for She-Ra. His favorite musicians and movies and characters all have a strangeness, an outcast quality, and a willingness to try something new (even She-Ra, a rare female action character who managed to go mainstream). Trying something new is risky, but it can also be just the dizzying nudge you need to break out of a bad routine.