Dead Like Hamlet
Yesterday I interviewed my theater buddy and fellow film-obessive, Elias, for a profile I'm writing about him. (He's an actor.) As this was supposed to be a professional conversation, we tried really hard to not get off on our two favorite tangents--sci-fi and baseball. Baseball was easy to avoid because we're both currently a bit bitter: him about the Expos' flight from Montreal (did I mention he's Canadian?); me about the general state of the Yankees. But sci-fi? Sci-fi must be relevant, especially if he acts in it and I'm going to write about him acting in it. Right?
I asked him about his guest appearance on Dead Like Me last season and the bickering began. If you've been reading my recent entries you will be acquainted with my anguish over the cancellation of DLM. Elias, like many of my friends, becomes concerned when I take fictional characters too seriously. He interruped me as I was voicing my disappointment about not getting to see Daisy and Mason finally do whatever, but this time, not with "uh...they're not real..." but with "uh...they're dead." So now I have to be the one to say it: they're fictional! Who cares if they're dead or undead or whatever! I wanted to see them get together. (I know, I know, if only to live vicariously through her.)
This conversation becomes all the more ironic if you know how Elias and I met. He was co-starring in Killing Jar Jar, a play that he actually co-wrote with Andrew Farrar and which was of special interest to Star Wars geeks like me and the people I went to see it with. I was casting my play Reference Material [3am Pie] for the NY Fringe and thought that Elias would fit a difficult-to-cast part. What was it, you ask? My re-imagination of Shakespeare's fictional (and dead!) character of Hamlet, who guided our pop-culture-obsessed protagonists through the pitfalls of procrastination. Elias spent the rest of the summer in rehearsal, playing a fictional dead guy that I imagined. You know, I think that the historical reality avenges the fact that Elias won yesterday's DLM debate.
I asked him about his guest appearance on Dead Like Me last season and the bickering began. If you've been reading my recent entries you will be acquainted with my anguish over the cancellation of DLM. Elias, like many of my friends, becomes concerned when I take fictional characters too seriously. He interruped me as I was voicing my disappointment about not getting to see Daisy and Mason finally do whatever, but this time, not with "uh...they're not real..." but with "uh...they're dead." So now I have to be the one to say it: they're fictional! Who cares if they're dead or undead or whatever! I wanted to see them get together. (I know, I know, if only to live vicariously through her.)
This conversation becomes all the more ironic if you know how Elias and I met. He was co-starring in Killing Jar Jar, a play that he actually co-wrote with Andrew Farrar and which was of special interest to Star Wars geeks like me and the people I went to see it with. I was casting my play Reference Material [3am Pie] for the NY Fringe and thought that Elias would fit a difficult-to-cast part. What was it, you ask? My re-imagination of Shakespeare's fictional (and dead!) character of Hamlet, who guided our pop-culture-obsessed protagonists through the pitfalls of procrastination. Elias spent the rest of the summer in rehearsal, playing a fictional dead guy that I imagined. You know, I think that the historical reality avenges the fact that Elias won yesterday's DLM debate.
Labels: geeky interlude, Jill's attachments to fictional characters, specific men I openly adore
posted by Jill at
6/05/2005 09:40:00 AM
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