Are movies, TV, and music legitimate sources of inspiration for authors?

Recently I was asked a question I don't hear too often:  Where do you get your ideas?

Weirdly,  I really don't get asked that often.  I mean, you're face to face with an author, wouldn't that be right up there with, "What's your book about?"

Alas, it seems like once you've answered the first question, many folks don't care to ask a second one.

In being asked, "Where do you get your ideas?"  I had to be honest.  I get many of them from other media:  TV, movies, and music.

That sounds like  a sell out, perhaps. Or does it?  As authors, we draw inspiration from the world
around us.  Why not from other media?  If it's okay to get inspired by news headlines, why not by a TV show?

For generations, books have inspired TV shows, Movies, and songs.  One of my favorites is "Wuthering Heights," which has spawned several movies, both TV and big screen, as well as a brilliant song done by both Kate Bush and Pat Benatar.  The argument about whether the book is better than the movie (generally it is) ignites every time J. K. Rowlings attaches the name "Harry Potter" to a film, or some crime drama series lends its characters to a TV show.

Now, TV has inspired books.  Look at the series, "Castle."  Good TV series.  The books...well...less so.  Which was weird for me to admit.

Is it pandering to the non-reading public to liken our work to some popular TV show.  (I've often compared the pacing and structure of my novel "Lies in Chance" to the TV show "Dallas.") Are we selling out the idea of true art in print if we try to write what we see and hear in someone else's art?

Recently I watched a documentary on the artist James Whistler.  He drew a tremendous amount of inspiration from Japanese art.  In a time where TV, radio, and movies did not exist, he looked to Japan for ideas for his own work.  Does that make his paintings somehow less beautiful, less worth our time? No, because the work, ultimately, was his.

We are told, from little on, if we want to be writers, we must "WRITE WHAT WE KNOW."  If we waited to write something fun from what we know, many books would never get finished, many stories would never be told, many voices would never be heard.  Instead, I say, start from the base of what you know. Then, look around you, reach out into the lives that surround you. Listen. Watch.  And if what you're listening to and watching is inspiring you to create something to share with others, then who cares where it comes from?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating copying anything or publishing something akin to fan fiction, literally taking someone else's idea and bending those characters to your will.  Let Hollywood do that.  Heaven knows it happens often enough. What I am saying is that if you feel something when listening to a song on the radio (does anyone listen to "radio" anymore?) or watching a movie, if some facial expression, line of dialogue, or cinematic setting unlocks a door for you, then build on it,  It's okay.

Whatever you are writing, it's far more important to feel something and believe in it than it is to have drawn the idea from some high end intellectual place.  Real life doesn't work that way.  And if we are supposed to write what we know, shouldn't we write the way our real lives work?