Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Cast your friends!


This has been a diverting activity I've engaged in off and on for a few months now.
You undoubtedly compare your friends or people you know to celebrities at times.  "Jose totally looks like Ernest Borgnine."  Or "did you see Alana last night?  She made Charlie Sheen look tame."
You might even take it a notch higher and say, "If this were Star Wars, (or insert another film title) who would play which role?"  Fern has even said, "In the movie of my life, who gets cast in the role of all my friends?"

I say, why stop there?  Take a common film or fiction trope and cast your friends into the requisite role according to their personality.  For example:

SPACE OPERA
Ghost Dogg is the smuggler with a heart of gold that he hides from everyone, even himself.
Dr. Rich is an Obi-Wan-like mentor...or a Klingon-esque warrior.
I'm the guy who urges "She'll hold together!  We'll make it through!" to the crew as the spaceship falls apart around him.

A WESTERN
Ghost Dogg is a bounty hunter, loyal to the job with no moral concern...and a helluva saloon piano player.
Dr. Rich is a steampunk inventor in the mold of Tesla.  The scientist, not the hair band.
Ahab is a salty saloon bartender...who dons pink, butt-less chaps at night to become the K-Y Kid.
I'm a rival bounty hunter to Ghost Dogg, modeled after Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday in Tombstone.
MEDICAL DRAMA
Armando is a morbidly obese man (his own choice of role) dying of a hangnail.
Dr. Rich is the hospital administrator who thinks he's Patch Adams.
Ahab is a highly trained but emotionally unstable neurosurgeon.
Wafer is head of security and master of Kung Fu.
Ghost Dogg is the head of the hot candy striper division, trying to hide his alcoholism.
I'm a psychologist, studying people who imagine they have hangnails.

CONSPIRACY
Dr. Rich is a priest who runs a halfway house, the St. Swibbins' Home for Wayward Dudes.
Dreamer is the owner of a comic store called Loving the Alien.  He is an expert at conspiracy lore and keeps an original copy of the real U.S. Constitution in his secret lair beneath the comics shop.
Ghost Dogg is a piano player in the Armada Lounge at the Holiday Inn.  He's also a soldier who has seen too many awful things.
Ahab is a Man In Black who hates his job.
Armando and I are producers at the local TV station...who get the story of a lifetime.

VAMPIRES
Armando would be a Christian zealot in a reverend's collar, waging a crusade against the undead.   As he puts it: "Like if Bruce Lee was a fat white dude, quivering lip and shit. Only bombastic and a bit of an asshole...okay that part is on point already, but you know what I mean."
Dr. Rich is the head of a wealthy but shadowy multinational corporation.  And he's a vampire.
Ahab would be a vampire slayer slayer.  
Ghost Dogg would be a Watcher a la Buffy.  Digging books and research.
I would be a vampire who has turned his back on his kind, helping the slayers.

DISASTER
Ghost Dogg would be the wealthy financier who pressures the scientists into fudging their data.
Dr. Rich is "the guy at the beginning of the movie that sells my ticket to the star-crossed lovers that die in each others arms at the end of the movie. Travel voucher and bump to first class, baby!!"
I'm the guy who cries out "I told you this would happen and you wouldn't believe me!  Why didn't you believe me??"

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1 comment:

  1. Here's another, but I have no idea of the plot or the trope:

    Dreamer is Jackie Smiles, a private dick. Public dick if the money's right.

    Armando is a psychiatrist in supermax prison for crimes against all humanity.

    Bernard is a lore hunter, an academic expert in archeology and literature...and a man of action.

    Ahab is a spy who thinks he's James Bond...but is a bit far from that mark.

    Dr. Rich is Paladiev Pesenko, former KGB agent attempting to defect to our side.

    I'm a shell-shocked soldier, a veteran of the battle against aliens at Dulce Base.

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