"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Monday, December 29, 2008

On real people who play characters with their names
Posted by Jill | 6:59 AM
Last night I was listening to an interview with Rob Corddry on "The Sound of Young America" on NPR, in which he spoke of the strangeness of the experience of playing a character that has your name. This was not the only time last night we referred to this phenomenon. In the 60 Minutes retrospective on the Obama campaign, Michelle Obama alluded to there being two people -- Barack Obama, the person she knew, and "Barack Obama" -- the phenomenon. Just as there was "Rob Corddry" the Judd Apatow-style resident asshole on The Daily Show, and then there's the smart, thoughtful guy who appeared in the interview.

Perhaps the most obvious example of a person playing a character that bears his name is Stephen Colbert. If you ever want to feel cognitive dissonance in action, imagine that you are a devout Catholic in the Montclair, NJ area and Stephen Colbert is your kids' Sunday School teacher -- which is in fact what he is on Sundays, when he is not "Stephen Colbert."

So what are these alter-egos that bear the names of real people? Is this a way for people to play roles the can't play in real life? Is it a manifestation of the id for which these people get paid handsomely? Is it just that these people have been fortunate enough to be able to present a public face that is the person they would really like to be, but aren't? And how do you get a gig like that?

Labels:

2 comments
Bookmark and Share
2 Comments:
Blogger Al Anine said...
I wish I had an alter ego in which I was brilliant and normal and civilized. Instead I find myself blurting out things only to later ask myself why I couldn't have acted like someone else during that moment. Ahh well, good thing my bosses value hard work more than social skills.
12/29/08, 12:41 PM  
Blogger Bob said...
I've had problems with this, wondering if I was playing a guy named "Rix" as a character on the radio & with some people who called me that. When a long relationship broke up in which I had been Rix (& Rix had been my "intimate" nickname since high school), I made sure my subsequent girlfriends called me "Bob," because Rix had become too public. My blog originally began partly as a theraputic attempt to sort it out. Rix is in the title, but Bob writes the posts. The little photo in the upper right is me mostly playing Rix at a radio event, but if you click on it you see Bob. Is there a difference? I'm not sure. Then there are the screennames, oy.
12/29/08, 3:39 PM  
Post a Comment
<< Home