I am an unabashed cinephile. Most of my posts are about either movies, TV or music – I wonder if it’s because I prefer the consistency and predictability of such resources versus real life. Nonetheless, I was decided to waste some time this morning on Facebook (cos normally, I’m never on there!) because a particular question caught my attention: Who are your favourite movie characters?
Oh blimey. I was filled with glee – the very thought of having an endless amount of favourite people from movies to choose from – oh, this will be easy – Lloyd Dobbler, of course – I’m just going to get this done and get back to work – hmmm, how about William Miller – and then, my lala land fantasy came crashing down.
This was a lot harder than I thought. I decided the best way to tackle this was to approach it in a methodical, logical manner (meanwhile, all common sense flew out of the window as I forgot this was some crappy fill in the blanks Facebook question). I stopped and asked myself:
What are my favourite movies and who are my favourite characters from them?
- Almost Famous: William Miller vs Jeff Bebe
- Singles: Cliff Poncier vs Steve Dunn vs Doug Hughley (heh, just for fun)
- Garden State: Andrew Largeman vs ?
- Clerks: Randal vs Dante (yes, I know… where’s the contest?)
- Mallrats: Brodie vs ? (Nothing beats Brodie)
And then I realised this approach was going nowhere. The reason being, while movies like Fast Times and Garden State top my all-time favourite list, it’s the story that wins for me and not an individual character, per se. Thus, I had to open up my little frigid mind (god, not movies outside my Top 10!) and consider characters I would either hang out with or love to hate.
So, here are my Top 5, as listed on my ever so cool Facebook profile (thank God things like this aren’t written in stone. Anyway, when was the last time something was written in stone anyway? Shouldn’t this phrase be phased out already?), including pictures – because all of us (by all of us, I mean all of us 5 people reading this, probably down to 3 now after all this rambling) are really lazy and like to look at pretty pictures.
- Lloyd Dobbler from Say Anything. One of best movies ever made with one of the best ever written characters.
- Jeff Bebe from Almost Famous. Provider of one of the best lines in movies: “Your looks have become a problem!”
- Brick Tamland from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. “Loud noises!”
- Randal from Clerks. Everything that was written for him was beautiful. He was the character you either wanted to hang out with or tell to shut the fuck up.
- Brodie from Mallrats. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega”
And here’s the Almost-Made-It-Too-Bad-You’re-Rejects-Now List!
- Frankie from Dream For An Insomniac.
- Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall but it was a close fight with Jonah Hill as the waiter.
- William Miller from Almost Famous but I’d most definitely want to hang out with Jeff Bebe over him.
- Dante from Clerks for giving me one of my still used lines today, “I’m not even supposed to be here today!”
- Mickey Fitzpatrick from She’s The One but this was strongly influenced by the fact that Edwards Burns is hotness personified and his voice makes all his characters cool.
- Pete Monash from Win A Date With Tad Hamilton. “I’d tear you apart with my bare hands. Or vicious rhetoric”
- Seth from Superbad.
All in all, I think I wasted over an hour, not only filling in that quiz but also writing this ludicrously long post that impacts nothing in real life. Thank you for listening and I will now crawl back into my hole in the wall.
