When I came across this guy:
His name is Garrett Hedlund, and he's in the new Tron movie, as well as Country Strong, and THEN he's going to be playing Dean Moriarty in the film adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, which so totally appeals to my once-upon-a-time-hippie-wanna-be nature that I might just have to go home and get my Birkenstocks and socks on.
Yeah, I know. It was bad, I did it, but I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen. I will also confess that while I do know who Neal Cassady is/was (the real life Dean Moriarty), it's only because I like the Grateful Dead song.
I tried to read On the Road, but it was kind of like Moby Dick to me at the time. I had to wait 25 years for the movie, but if Garrett's in it, I'm glad I waited.
Anyway. I saw that Garrett guy, and I thought, Oh! He could totally be Comatose Dave in WIP3! I generally try to stay away from choosing real people to model my heroes after because once I start to learn sutff about them, I feel like I have to make that part of the story, and real people can be a little too human. I'm still not over the whole Mel Gibson debacle.
On the other hand, I have a tough time imagining imaginary people. So my plan here is to avoid any and all information about my boy Garrett until after I've written about him, so that his sordid interactions with underaged girls or attacks on paparazzi dont't play into his profile.
How do the rest of you do it? How do you come up with a face without getting sucked into a personality?
