Casting directors have hard jobs, yo.
So I've been thinking about this "who would you cast as yourself in your biopic" thing - thinking about it an awful lot, actually. It's not easy. It starts off as a cocktail-party banter sort of question. But then, you start to think - well, first off, how do you even go about casting yourself? What's your text? Your whole life is an awful lot of scenes to sort through - also, it's not a neat story with a traceable arc. So there's a certain distance you have to create, a certain artificiality - what are you going to cut out of your story to make it more coherent?
And how do you identify your self? I mean, say you record me for a week. Transcribe everything, fit it into a script. Pick any given actor; she follows me around for a while, learns all my tics, my vocal mannerisms, the way I walk and talk and sit and stand and hold my shoulders and my jaw. Is that collection of external characteristics me? Or is there an essential center - internal characteristics, emotions, thought patterns, desires, that come through even without the body language? Clearly it's a combination of the two - but if you could only pick one, which would result in the more real portrayal? (I guess that all comes back around to the question of whether playing an actual person is acting or impersonating.)
So anyway, my initial answer is Katee Sackhoff, because she has an energy that I feel like I share - and I think my inner Katee Sackhoff is more inner than, you know, Katee Sackhoff's inner Sackhoff, and I've just realized that this sentence is making increasingly less and less sense. Anyway what I'm trying to say is that I have a Sackhoffian energy inside me that I often try to keep in check.
Awesome Boss suggested Jodie Foster, which I can sort of see - but Jodie Foster also has this distinct bird-like-iness that I don't identify with at all.
And how much does physical similarity matter? Because if we go purely on that, then Adria Dawn (April Tuna on Popular) is a lock. We have the same face. Though she photographs considerably better than I do. And I've also been told I look like Tilda Swinton - I can kind of see that.
But what if you completely disregard looks? In that case Claudia Black would move quite high on the list. And - is it the actor you're casting, or one of the characters they played? Because when I say Claudia Black, I think I'm really thinking "Aeryn Sun". Similarly, maybe I'd pick Tina Majorino-as-Mac circa Veronica Mars s2.
What if you disregard gender? This is an odd one - it's not all that difficult for me to think of men I'd cast as myself; but when I think about some of my friends, it's much harder for me to separate their gender from their identity. So: Matthew Gray Gubler; and Walton Goggins, which comes back around to actor-vs.-role because it'd totally be Walton Goggins-as-Shane in the first few seasons of The Shield, who would be my inner Katee Sackhoff's id, I guess.
And I also thought - would you limit yourself to just one person? Would you cast multiple people, a la Todd Haynes's I'm Not There, to play you at different times? Or - on this week's This American Life they did a story on a production of Hamlet in prison, and I was particularly struck by the following: "The character of Hamlet is played by four people. They are all onstage at the same time, taking turns delivering the lines. [The director] did this partly to give more actors speaking roles, and not saddle any one man with all that dialogue. But as theatre, it works.... This small gang of Hamlets, which mutters to itself and laughs at its own jokes, nicely captures that fractured quality of Hamlet's different personalities."
So would you cast multiple people as yourself, simultaneously? Do you feel like you have a separate self who, for example, observes and makes caustic comments? A separate self for parties? Would all your selves appear onscreen at the same time, or would they switch off according to the situation? I like this idea - I actually don't feel like I have all that many different selves (though Charming!Alanna certainly can't be discounted) but I have a strong internal monologue that I think would be captured better as a separate person than as, say, voiceover narration.
Man, my biopic would be so art-house. Because I think you'd have Matthew Gray Gubler and Claudia Black trading off the lead, and Katee Sackhoff and Tina Majorino providing run-on commentary/conversation and telling Walton Goggins to stop being so belligerent. And Alix Olson would probably make her Major Motion Picture Debut in there somewhere, too.
Just give me the Oscar already.
Anyone wanna chime in with your own casting choices for yourself? Or add to my cast of thousands?
And how do you identify your self? I mean, say you record me for a week. Transcribe everything, fit it into a script. Pick any given actor; she follows me around for a while, learns all my tics, my vocal mannerisms, the way I walk and talk and sit and stand and hold my shoulders and my jaw. Is that collection of external characteristics me? Or is there an essential center - internal characteristics, emotions, thought patterns, desires, that come through even without the body language? Clearly it's a combination of the two - but if you could only pick one, which would result in the more real portrayal? (I guess that all comes back around to the question of whether playing an actual person is acting or impersonating.)
So anyway, my initial answer is Katee Sackhoff, because she has an energy that I feel like I share - and I think my inner Katee Sackhoff is more inner than, you know, Katee Sackhoff's inner Sackhoff, and I've just realized that this sentence is making increasingly less and less sense. Anyway what I'm trying to say is that I have a Sackhoffian energy inside me that I often try to keep in check.
Awesome Boss suggested Jodie Foster, which I can sort of see - but Jodie Foster also has this distinct bird-like-iness that I don't identify with at all.
And how much does physical similarity matter? Because if we go purely on that, then Adria Dawn (April Tuna on Popular) is a lock. We have the same face. Though she photographs considerably better than I do. And I've also been told I look like Tilda Swinton - I can kind of see that.
But what if you completely disregard looks? In that case Claudia Black would move quite high on the list. And - is it the actor you're casting, or one of the characters they played? Because when I say Claudia Black, I think I'm really thinking "Aeryn Sun". Similarly, maybe I'd pick Tina Majorino-as-Mac circa Veronica Mars s2.
What if you disregard gender? This is an odd one - it's not all that difficult for me to think of men I'd cast as myself; but when I think about some of my friends, it's much harder for me to separate their gender from their identity. So: Matthew Gray Gubler; and Walton Goggins, which comes back around to actor-vs.-role because it'd totally be Walton Goggins-as-Shane in the first few seasons of The Shield, who would be my inner Katee Sackhoff's id, I guess.
And I also thought - would you limit yourself to just one person? Would you cast multiple people, a la Todd Haynes's I'm Not There, to play you at different times? Or - on this week's This American Life they did a story on a production of Hamlet in prison, and I was particularly struck by the following: "The character of Hamlet is played by four people. They are all onstage at the same time, taking turns delivering the lines. [The director] did this partly to give more actors speaking roles, and not saddle any one man with all that dialogue. But as theatre, it works.... This small gang of Hamlets, which mutters to itself and laughs at its own jokes, nicely captures that fractured quality of Hamlet's different personalities."
So would you cast multiple people as yourself, simultaneously? Do you feel like you have a separate self who, for example, observes and makes caustic comments? A separate self for parties? Would all your selves appear onscreen at the same time, or would they switch off according to the situation? I like this idea - I actually don't feel like I have all that many different selves (though Charming!Alanna certainly can't be discounted) but I have a strong internal monologue that I think would be captured better as a separate person than as, say, voiceover narration.
Man, my biopic would be so art-house. Because I think you'd have Matthew Gray Gubler and Claudia Black trading off the lead, and Katee Sackhoff and Tina Majorino providing run-on commentary/conversation and telling Walton Goggins to stop being so belligerent. And Alix Olson would probably make her Major Motion Picture Debut in there somewhere, too.
Just give me the Oscar already.
Anyone wanna chime in with your own casting choices for yourself? Or add to my cast of thousands?