00:00Hi, I'm Kate Hudson and this is my starter pack of cultural essentials.
00:05As a young teenager, I was obsessed with boys.
00:11I was boy crazy and when I started to go through all of the changes,
00:17music became the thing that made me discover my personal sexuality.
00:25It ignited something in me.
00:27And the album that did that for me, and I remember thinking over and over and over again,
00:32all of the things like I dream about, you know, going on a date or meeting a boy or having
00:37my first kiss and all of that.
00:39It's just like everything about this album was just like changed my life.
00:44It was a discovery. It wasn't like someone told me about it.
00:48It was just I found it and started listening to it and got obsessed with it.
00:52And it was the Rolling Stones, of course, Tattoo You.
00:56And every song on that album, I know that album like the back of my hand.
01:04And that was, yeah, game changer.
01:07The other album that I would say was like a quintessential childhood album for me
01:14was Rhythm Nation, Janet Jackson.
01:18And I knew all the dances.
01:20I love to read. I really, really love to read.
01:22But I grew up a very, very slow reader and then found out later in life that I was ADD.
01:28And then really relearned how to read fast.
01:32And now I just can't stop reading.
01:35So the bulk of what I really have read started like in my late 20s.
01:39I have this really wonderful friend in England who works at a bookstore.
01:43And he told me that I had to read this book.
01:46He said it's truly one of the great classic American novels.
01:49And it really hasn't gotten popular yet.
01:52And this was 12 years ago.
01:54It is now very popular.
01:55Many people have read it.
01:56He was absolutely right.
01:58I loved every second of this book.
02:00It was like every time I finished a page, I was sad that the page was over.
02:05And it's funny because what the book is actually about,
02:07I wouldn't think if you gave me the logline that it would be a book that would move me
02:11or that I would, you know, delve into and love as much as I did.
02:14And yet I did.
02:15And I think everybody should read it.
02:16I think it should be in schools.
02:17I think kids should read it at some point in high school.
02:20And that book is Stoner by John Williams.
02:23Okay, maybe this would be a twofer if possible.
02:26It took me so long to read this book.
02:28But I was so determined to read it because I loved it so much.
02:33It's about family and lineage.
02:35You know, you go back and forth with all of his different characters.
02:38But I loved it.
02:39And I fell in love with this author's writing.
02:42And it inspired me to want to read as much as possible.
02:46And it was 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
02:50It was the one that I rewatched in COVID.
02:54I went back to it because I wanted to feel if it held up.
02:58I wanted to, like, rediscover the show with a couple other things.
03:01But it really, like, started off this prestige television life that, like,
03:08I think everybody's living in now.
03:10It's the goal.
03:11It's what you want.
03:12You want to be in a show like this.
03:14And I just think that that was such a particular time in television history.
03:20And I think The Sopranos, to me, is, like, the all-time great show.
03:25And Tony Soprano is just one of the great, great characters.
03:30The things that 20-plus years ago that I remember, the second I started watching it again,
03:37they immediately came back.
03:38I started to remember the show, which says so much about when something is so well-written
03:44and so great, you know?
03:46When she finds out that he's been having an affair in that scene in the bedroom.
03:50Just get out, Tony.
03:52I remember thinking about that when I saw it and how brilliant she is in that scene.
03:57And then when I rewatched it, I was like, she was, like, almost even more brilliant.
04:01I was like, oh, my God.
04:02She's just so good.
04:04Every bit of The Sopranos, I would say, is a cultural essential, for sure.
04:09As someone who grew up with parents in the film business, and honestly,
04:15the people that I was surrounded by were always, all of them did something in the film business.
04:20So movies almost, it almost feels like it's impossible to remember that first experience,
04:27because film has been a part of my life forever.
04:31But I do remember the movies that made me feel like I wanted to, to, I wish I was up
04:37there.
04:38I wish I was doing that.
04:39You know, as a little girl, you just can't wait to sing and dance.
04:42Mimi and St. Louis and all the Judy, all the Judy Garland musicals and West Side Story.
04:47But as a teenager, I started to create my own relationship to film and the things that I liked.
04:54And at that time, it was the 90s, so it was the best time.
04:58You had Michael Mann in his, like, prime, Quentin Tarantino, Scorsese, later, older prime,
05:09but, you know, like, one of my all-time favorites that I was like, oh, I wish I could play
05:16that part,
05:17was True Romance.
05:18Everything about that movie just made me want to make movies.
05:22It made me want to write them, direct them, star in them.
05:26I love that you have this medium that brings everything together,
05:29and if you get all of the pieces right, like, nothing's cooler.
05:35You know, it can be smart, it can be intelligent, it can move you,
05:37and then it can just be so insanely cool.
05:41That movie was the one that really propelled me into being like, I can't wait to make movies.
05:46So, then I have to touch on one that is like, if I could say there was a movie that
05:51sort of,
05:51to me is like, what making, and there's so many, I say that, but like, the kinds of movies that
05:57make
05:57me feel, that are like, life-affirming, but sort of move you in a way that you walk away and
06:05you're
06:05like, thank God for movies, and thank God we have that experience to let it allow us to feel,
06:13feel all of these big feelings, and for me, that one was Terms of Endearment, because it hit on so
06:19many themes, so many real-life themes, and so many challenging interpersonal themes that are,
06:25that are so relatable and so potent and beautiful. The performances in that movie are incredible,
06:33and that, I think, is maybe one of my all-time favorites, too.
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