‘The Boomer List’: A Game-Changing Generation

The Boomer Generation

En español | Say what you will about boomers and their constant navel-gazing, but there’s no mistaking the power of their influence on American culture. “So much about how we live today is a product of this generation,” says filmmaker-photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, who gets into the hearts and minds of some of the generation’s key players in a new PBS American Masters documentary, The Boomer List. Greenfield-Sanders, who has chronicled the contributions of noted Americans in The Black List, The Latino List and The Out List, turns his camera on 19 personalities — one born each year of the baby boom, from 1946 to 1964.

1946: Tim O’Brien

Vietnam vet, author “There’s this mistaken notion that wars end, but they don’t end. You have to do something with the horror. The object in my writing is to try to salvage something from it — something in the human spirit that can prevail."

1947: Deepak Chopra

 New Age guru “I question every presumption we have about human potential. Do we have to age like everybody else? I don’t believe so. I think our biological age and our spiritual age are different things.”

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1948: Samuel L. Jackson

Actor “My whole upbringing was black — my friends, my teachers. Everything I’ve gone through informs my opinions because I am a child of segregation. I lived through it. I lived in it. I was of it.”

1949: Billy Joel

Singer-songwriter “When I was 18, I worked on an oyster boat. I was freezing. My hands hurt. I’d look up and see this big house on a hill. ‘Bastards. They probably never worked a day in their life,’ [I thought]. Now I own that house. I am that guy.”

1950: Steve Wozniak

Apple Computer cofounder “Young people starting companies [in Silicon Valley] was unheard of back then. We had no savings accounts, no friends who could loan us money. But we had ideas. And I wanted all my life to be part of a revolution."

1951: Tommy Hilfiger

Fashion designer “I came from a family with nine children. I delivered newspapers to make money; peering in the windows, I was shocked to find that certain people had swimming pools in their backyards. I was thinking, ‘Wow, I want to live like that.’ ”

1952: Amy Tan

Author “I used to think that I didn’t have dates because I was ugly, and I was ugly because I was Chinese. But it was good, because I grew up also thinking I could never rely on my looks as a way to get ahead in the world.”

1953: Eve Ensler

Playwright “I didn’t see myself as a young feminist. So much of my childhood was about surviving violence. In that sense, sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll couldn’t have come at a better time — because all of those things were a way out of this body, out of feeling."

1954: Julieanna Richardson

Historian “The only things we studied [in school] about black people were George Washington Carver — and slavery. I needed to know we had a history that was profound.”

1955: Maria Shriver

Journalist “Kids used to say, ‘I don’t really want to come over to your house because your mother is going to make me volunteer, and we’re going to have to live on an Indian reservation or go to Africa.’ ”

1956: Kim Cattrall

Actor “In the ’70s, in a very healthy way, sex was integrated into our lives. Then [with the AIDS epidemic] sex became a negative. Sex and the City was instrumental in breaking that free. ‘Yes, oh, we forgot about that thing. Oh, right, OK.’ ”

1957: Virginia Rometty

CEO of IBM “One of the most important things for any leader is to never let anyone else define who you are. I never think of myself as a woman CEO of this company. I think of myself as a steward of a great institution.”

1958: Ellen Ochoa

Johnson Space Center director “I got the top grade in every physics class I was in. And initially, some of my professors seemed very surprised by that. ‘Why shouldn’t it be me?’ [I thought]. ‘You don’t have to act quite so surprised.’ ” 

1959: Ronnie Lott

Athlete “The magic of sport is that you find yourself belonging. And you find yourself nurturing and wanting to serve and help a human being to the point where they say, ‘I can. I can do that. I can be that.’ ”

1960: Erin Brockovich

Environmentalist “Destroying the environment, deceiving people, jeopardizing their health and their welfare is absolutely wrong. And if you wanna corner them, you’re gonna corner me. And I come out swingin’.”

1961: Peter Staley

AIDS activist “We guilt-tripped the entire country about letting us die. Within three years of ACT UP being
 founded, the NIH research budget tripled. That’s how quickly we shifted things.”

1962: Rosie O’Donnell

Entertainer “So when I knew I was gay, which for me was when I was 16 or 17, I knew I was gay. I would drive around in my car with the windows rolled up, saying out loud, ‘I am gay. I’m a gay person.’ I just wanted to get used to saying it."

1963: David LaChapelle

Artist “I met Andy Warhol at this club. He said, ‘Well, come by and show me your photographs.’ I remember him looking at the photographs of my naked high-school friends, and he said, ‘These are great. These are great.’ ”

1964: John Leguizamo

Actor “I knew that Latin people were really funny and had incredible stories to tell. But where is that on TV, in movies, in plays? I mean, we’re f-----g funny and interesting. Why isn’t that happening?”

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