Movie meme

For the last several weeks, a meme has been spreading its way across the community: whom would you cast in the movie of your life? I haven't been properly tagged, and as a result I think there are rules to the meme that I am likely not following. But it is an interesting question, and I've been mulling it slowly for a while. What follows is kind of a mixed bag. For the most part I have selected actors, not for any physical resemblance, but for a character resemblance -- or a resemblance between the person and the kind of character that actor most often plays. Sometimes the similarity that I see is with a character in one specific movie; in those cases I say so. One thing I learned from this exercise is that I don't watch enough movies, because the exercise was not that easy. Maybe later I'll change my mind about some of them, but for now ....

Hosea: Jimmy Stewart

OK, so I'm flattering myself. It's my blog and I can be a flaming egotist if I want to. But there are a few aspects of the Jimmy Stewart persona that work well for me, I think. The earnestness, the slight social cluelessness ... these are pretty close. Nobody would ever think to associate Jimmy Stewart with romance or intrigue, and that too is a good match. Besides which, I think from time to time of George Bailey's triumphant line, "Hooray! I'm going to jail!" and I realize that in the grand scheme of things my own troubles don't amount to much.

Wife (until this last year): Bette Davis

Wife spent so many years (even before I ever met her) accused of being a hard-boiled bitch that she finally decided she relished the role. And God, was she good at it. She could be "high-maintenance" in a hundred ways, by turns frustrating, maddening, and terrifying. And yet she carried it all off with a style that was invigorating to watch. She personally has always been a big fan of Katharine Hepburn, but Hepburn would be absolutely the wrong choice to portray Wife. For Wife as I always think of her -- as she was when I married her and for a good two decades after -- only Bette Davis combines the panache and the brazen cojones to do her justice.

"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."

Wife (just this last year): Allison Janney as Barbara Fitts, in "American Beauty"

I'm not thinking of the obsessive housecleaner; more of the catatonic wallflower. That's an exaggeration, of course, but I don't know how else to characterize what seems to be happening with Wife these days. This deserves a post of its own. For now, I have identified a character.

Son 1: Mickey Rooney

If ever there were a kid anywhere in this country who deserved to be characterized as an "all-American boy" it would be Son 1. Sometimes Wife swears that she gave birth to Tom Sawyer without realizing it.

Son 2: Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker in "The Phantom Menace"

Son 2 is a lot more complicated than Son 1, but I think the very young Anakin Skywalker is a good fit. His compassion seems boundless; his gifts ... unusual in a child his age. In fact it is frequently hard to remember how old he is -- he can play with a silliness that makes him look younger than his years, and then he expresses opinions or insights that make him sound far older. He also has a deep, deep emotional bond with his mother (Wife); that, too, makes him resemble Anakin. I just hope this resemblance isn't a bad omen ....

Boyfriend 5: Leonardo diCaprio as Frank Abagnale Jr., in "Catch Me If You Can"

Young, dashing, romantic, a complete fraud, and a dangerous con man all wrapped into one. How could I possibly choose better?

Boyfriend 4: Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in "Iron Man"

The flip attitude, the perfect sarcastic timing, the degenerate lifestyle, and the incongruous idealism all fit together to make this a very good match. There is even a very vague physical resemblance. Boyfriend 4's addiction to alcohol adds another nice point of comparison.

Boyfriend 3: Burt Lancaster as "Elmer Gantry"

Boyfriend 3 was tall, handsome, and a facile talker. He had a strong jaw, an obtrusively fundamentalist religiosity, and an unexpectedly seedy personal life. Sounds like a good fit to me.

Boyfriend 2: George "Buck" Flower

George "Buck" Flower played characters who were perpetually unkempt and unemployed, and he is one character actor whose name I didn't know before starting to think about this meme. But I remembered the role he played in "Butterfly" and a little research proved that he played similar characters throughout his career. Not a bad fit, really.

Girlfriend 1: the young Elizabeth Taylor

The hair is wrong, the skin is wrong, the nose is wrong ... comparing photographs you could never mistake Girlfriend 1 for Elizabeth Taylor. Not that Girlfriend 1 wasn't radiantly beautiful -- she was! -- but the details were all different. Notwithstanding that, the radiance itself was similar, as was the sense you got from Girlfriend 1 that she was going places. Of all Wife's affairs, she was the only one you could truly believe had "boundless possibilities."

Boyfriend 1: Smurf

I have to ask your indulgence here. He was so long ago that I don't remember him very well. Of course you have every right to assume I was prejudiced against him: but I never thought he was terribly handsome, he was emotionally weak, he had a high squeaky voice ... I'm not sure what more to say.

Counselor: James Garner

This one was hard for me. (Maybe, as noted, I just don't watch enough movies.) I tried to think of physical matches, and I am even sure I have seen actors who look like Counselor ... but I can't for the life of me think of who they are. I finally picked James Garner for the overall unflappability of his characters ... a relaxed unflappability which Counselor certainly shares. I have trouble imagining Counselor as quite so much of a rogue as Garner usually plays; on the other hand, his first career was in advertising so maybe I am not so far off after all ....

I can think of plenty of things wrong with each of these picks, but it has taken me two weeks to come up with them so I'm sticking with what I've got. I'm looking forward to something similar from anybody that hasn't done it yet.