I think I just very recently realized that I may pre-judge people in real life should they have one of the names that I use a lot in scripts and/or other writings in fiction. For quite some time, the name "Rick" was one that I utilized in screenplays fairly often and usually for the male lead. And I am not so sure if that was one extension of me - really - but I am sure that having related "Rick" to my very dear and now late friend J., that I no longer use that moniker for characters. I have put that one to bed. And, as far as I know, I don't know any real Ricks in real life.

But I do use the name "Zack" for characters who have a side to them that I don't like very much and I think this sometimes gets reflected onto real life people who carry that name around. Funny, huh?

Another character name I have used (and re-used) is "Miskit." David Miskit was the GM at a hotel at which I toiled back in the day, back when Times Square was still worthy of its name. I reserve this character name for my most hated, most evil of screen characters. My most prime example of this is naming the lead in my period piece horror flick "The Sin Eater" as Miskit although that movie has yet to see the light of the camera. But there is a movie that I ghost-wrote that will soon be coming out that does use that name . My name may not be on the picture, but that is evidence that my ghostly fingerprints are very much on the thing.

But by far the most amusing "life replicating art" incident I have experienced in regard to my characters names happened a few years ago back in San Francisco. I was attending an orientation/training for 826 Valencia (www.826Valencia.org) and we all had to give our names, etc.. There was a very cute young woman named Emily Blankenship -- I KNEW that name; figured I knew her. I had to, right?

And I know it most probably seemed like a pick-up line when I went up to her after the training ended and told her that I knew her from some place. And while I can really say I wasn't chatting her up -- I was more than happy with my girlfriend at the time -- she reacted as if I were and she reacted positively. She said something along the lines of "how about the two of us get together and try and figure it out." Normally, I would have leaped at that almost-modest proposal (but, see: "girlfriend;" see: "happy") and I probably said something about seeing her around 826.

She was very cute after all...

It didn't hit me until I was on the BART heading home to the East Bay. Of course I recognized the name (and mind you-- it's not "Mary Smith" you know) I had "created" her. In my script, "The Artificial Heart" there is an important (although not lead) character in the movie named, that's right -- Emily Blankenship.

Life imitates art indeed...

Cheers,

Brian