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The Five Film Characters I’ve Always Wanted to Be
If only…
I recently wrote a piece for Father’s Day about good, bad, and ugly literary dads, and at the end I found myself wondering who of the lot I would most like to be. I decided it would probably be Senor Sempere, as this would make me a character in one of my favorite novels. This exercise sent me on a trip down a rabbit hole only interrupted by the Dallas Mavericks’ crushing victory over the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals last night (Go Mavs!), one where I pondered what fictional characters would be in the top five I most want to be and if any of those dads would make that top five. Yes, I am fully aware that my mind goes in strange directions.
Sadly, none of the dads made the cut. Even more surprising was the fact that there wasn’t a character from a novel in the top five; all come from movies. The highest-ranking character from a novel I would want to be is Larry Darrell from Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, with Spenser from the Robert B. Parker detective series also making the top ten. The rest are all from films.
There is one actor whose roles have all been excluded from consideration: John Wayne. My reverence for The Duke is such that I would never presume to become any character he has played, though I did actually come close once. When the retina in my left eye detached ten years…
