In addition to his personal blog, writer John Scalzi also maintains an AOL Journal called By the Way. It’s a paid gig — how would it be? — intended to promote AOL Journals and provide tips and hints for those who have one. Every week on this site, John comes up with Weekend Assignments, which are essentially the same thing as the memes that float around the LiveJournal community, just scenarios or suggestions to encourage people to think about themselves and start writing. This week’s Assignment is a fun one:

Congratulations! Hollywood is making a movie of your life, and you get to choose any actor you want to play you — yes, even if they’re dead (the things they can do with special effects!) Who do you choose and why?

 

Extra credit: Name the musician/band who will play the theme song to the movie.

Now obviously, any casting decision of this magnitude can’t be taken lightly, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time considering the matter…

Okay, so I spent about three minutes thinking about it while I showered this morning, but hey, I did consider it. I didn’t just make a snap decision to cast the hot pretty-boy flavor-of-the-moment. If I had, I’d only be prolonging Ashton Kutcher’s career and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?

The first question I had to answer was whether I wanted to cast someone who actually looks like me, like Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison in The Doors, for instance. However, the only actor I could think of who even remotely resembles yours truly (short, balding and bespectacled) is Jason Alexander, and, while I’m sure he is a talented and charming fellow in real life, I’d rather not encourage any comparisons between myself and Alexander’s best known role, George Costanza of Seinfeld fame. No, I think it would be best to follow the usual Hollywood conventions and cast someone better looking than me.

So who then? Harrison Ford came immediately to mind. He was my cinematic idol during his peak years between The Empire Strikes Back and The Fugitive, and he combines the serious nature I know I have and the swashbuckling twinkle I wish I had. But Ford is really best in action roles; he often seems to be trying a little too hard in straight dramatic parts and, despite what you may have heard, the life of an underemployed tech writer isn’t all that exciting. So he’s out.

Sean Connery was another possibility — another long-time favorite of mine, handsome and charismatic, with a masculine, take-no-bull attitude I’ve always found very admirable. But he’s one of those movie stars who always seems to be mostly playing himself, and “himself” is about as much like me as Red Bull is like an actual potable beverage. So I had to pass on Sean.

Realizing that this was going to be harder than I thought (and beginning to run low on hot water), I cast my net a little farther and considered more unusual possibilities. Dead possibilities.

Humphrey Bogart came to mind. He looked good in hats. I like to wear hats. That could work.

James Dean may be an icon of cool, but if you study all his films — easy enough, since he only made three — you’ll see that he actually played tortured, insecure young men for two-thirds of his film career. That sounds a lot like me. Except that I’d rather a film version of my life be a bit on the glossy side. Some degree of honesty is okay, sure, but the movies are supposed to make people look better than we actually are, aren’t they?

So how about William Powell of The Thin Man movies? He always delivered his lines with a breezy nonchalance that’s the exact opposite of my all-too-easily-ruffled nature, so he’d definitely make me look cooler than I am. Also, he did his best work alongside Myrna Loy and I wouldn’t mind being alongside Myrna Loy, so put him on the short list.

The person I really need to play me — a better version of me — is somebody who could strike a balance between honesty and glamour, intensity and enlightened serenity. Someone who seems older than his years but isn’t a drag. Someone with a dark side large enough to be seen, but not overwhelming to the better parts of the character. Someone with good hair.

And then it came to me: River Phoenix.

Before his untimely death on a sidewalk in front of Johnny Depp’s LA nightclub, River was on track to becoming, well, Johnny Depp, the rare talent who can make interesting, quirky, artsy films as well as more commercial fare and find success in both arenas. He was about my age, good-looking if not outstandingly handsome, and he could play intellectual, brooding and sensitive without people thinking he was either gay or clinically depressed. He also did a great Harrison Ford impersonation, and his delivery of two words — “I’m Carl” — cracked me up in Sneakers. He was one of those celebs I didn’t realize how much I really liked until I heard he was dead.

And then there was his hair. Thick, longish, artistically unkempt hair, the kind of hair that ought to look filthy and sloppy but somehow just… works. One guy in five hundred has hair like that, and they’re all bastards. (Depp’s another one, incidentally.)

Bastard or not, though, he’s the guy I choose. So get me River’s agent on the phone and tell him to warm up the WayBack Machine or call a reanimator or whatever he’s got to do to sign this kid.

As for the extra credit assignment about my film’s theme song, there really is only one choice in my mind: Rick Springfield. Go ahead and laugh. I know Rick is widely dismissed as just another has-been bubblegum-pop star from The Awesome ’80s — and so does he — but he was my first musical idol, he’s still good at what he does, and I think he’s vastly underappreciated as both a guitarist and a songwriter. What, you think anybody can write a tune as catchy as “Jessie’s Girl?” You have my permission to try and prove it…