“All of us, we’re links in a chain,” Pete Seeger said of creative work. “And your way, is it really your way?” Henry Miller asked before adding, “The same goes for your ideas. You moved into them ready-made.” This notion is also true — perhaps even more true — when it comes to highly popular works of art, from literature to film. Star Wars, for instance, is a cultural classic that has sprouted homages ranging from Shakespearean parodies to Muppet comics, but it has itself borrowed from innumerable sources of inspiration. Film-lover Michael Heilemann explores those in a feature-length mashup of Star Wars and its many influences, tracing the tapestry of George Lucas’s creative borrowings:

A thorough list of Heilmann’s sources can be found here.

And for a meta-testament to the tenet at the heart of Heilemann’s film — this notion that all creative work is derivative — it’s worth noting that his own concept of excavating the influences behind Star Wars is not an original idea either: It’s something documentary storyteller Kirby Ferguson explored more than three years ago in the second episode of his altogether fantastic Everything Is a Remix series:

Complement with Mark Twain on originality and how the Gutenberg press exemplified combinatorial creativity.

HT Kottke