... But it was the author William Burroughs who inspired the band's name Steely Dan. The Nabokov influence continues to grow elsewhere in Hollywood. Recent evidence for well-read viewers includes Jim Jarmusch's film Broken Flowers with an eye-opening early scene in unambigous homage to VN's nymphet. The latest Lolita is the daughter of a race car driver, a victim of the sport, and Sharon Stone, an old flame of Bill Murray's leading character, an out-of-service Don Juan. Alexis Dziena, 22, may well be the most visually youthful Lolita, and certainly the boldest. The cast also features a Mona, a Rita, a Carmen, much American highway travel, and numerous motel rooms. Broken Flowers shows Murray at his increasingly minimalist best, and the whole project seems to have a vague but probably unintentional debt to VN.

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