![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebony14A friend over on the Cepheid Variable list swiped this from alt.sf.fandom. For those not on that mailing list, here's a little quiz. Each one of these descriptions is of an iconic literary figure that has been played in film. Their literary descriptions are quite different from their cinematic appearances. See if you can guess them. I got 7 of 15. Cepheids, please don't spoil it for the others.
1) He doesn't wear a cape or fancy evening dress, sunlight doesn't harm him, and he has white hair and a white mustache.
2) He's a veteran of WW2 with a prominent facial scar he got from the SS. After his wife is killed, he's deliberately drinking and smoking himself to death.
3) She's blonde and from a rural Southern background. She lives in WW2 era New York and uses words like "dyke" and "jap" and even "fuck" (okay, "f**k"). She doesn't end up with the narrator, since he's gay.
4) She's an overweight teenager with a religious fanatic mom.
5) He's several inches taller and (for most of his adventures) at least a decade younger than almost every adult actor who's ever played him. He has no particular preference for any style of hat and is seldom if ever described as wearing a cloak. He can knock out a village tough with one punch and bend steel pokers and he's proficient in a syncretic British combination of jiu-jitsu and "Chinese boxing" called baritsu. [If you haven't guessed it by now, this last will give it away.] While not as fond of smoking a pipe as his various cinematic incarnations, he is addicted to a cocaine/morphine solution.
6) He has delicate features, sleek black hair, maroon eyes and a sixth finger on his left hand.
7) This criminal mastermind with an army of thugs and dacoits has "a face like Shakespeare and a brow like Satan" but is clean-shaven.
8) He's physically quite small, almost a dwarf, and while he's not bestial looking or obviously deformed and has no unusual features, there's something unpleasant about his face that nobody who meets him can quite put their finger on. His relationship to the other title character isn't revealed until the end of the book.
9) He has a jagged lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, speaks perfect English and French, spent some time working for British intelligence, has a son who grows up to be a pilot in WW1, and lives on an African plantation that's worked by his faithful native tribe.
10) This swaggering "man of gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth" is Celtic, not Germanic, with "Black Irish" looks and temperment. He swears in Gaelic and is prone to moods of bleak depression. Once he becomes king, he's a patron of the arts, with a deep respect for poetry.
11) He is at least 8 feet tall, maybe even 10 feet, with long straight black hair and pearly white teeth, but also withered translucent yellow skin and yellow eyes. He's given to very long speeches.
12) He's the son of a Greek immigrant who changed/shortened his last name. When he marries into money, he gives up being a private detective for a life of serious drinking. His fox terrier is a bitch.
13) He's a big guy who looks like a "blonde Satan."
14) He's almost seven feet tall and says "bein' an idiot ain't no box of chocolates."
15) This psychotic murderer is homely, middle-aged and stout.
1) He doesn't wear a cape or fancy evening dress, sunlight doesn't harm him, and he has white hair and a white mustache.
2) He's a veteran of WW2 with a prominent facial scar he got from the SS. After his wife is killed, he's deliberately drinking and smoking himself to death.
3) She's blonde and from a rural Southern background. She lives in WW2 era New York and uses words like "dyke" and "jap" and even "fuck" (okay, "f**k"). She doesn't end up with the narrator, since he's gay.
4) She's an overweight teenager with a religious fanatic mom.
5) He's several inches taller and (for most of his adventures) at least a decade younger than almost every adult actor who's ever played him. He has no particular preference for any style of hat and is seldom if ever described as wearing a cloak. He can knock out a village tough with one punch and bend steel pokers and he's proficient in a syncretic British combination of jiu-jitsu and "Chinese boxing" called baritsu. [If you haven't guessed it by now, this last will give it away.] While not as fond of smoking a pipe as his various cinematic incarnations, he is addicted to a cocaine/morphine solution.
6) He has delicate features, sleek black hair, maroon eyes and a sixth finger on his left hand.
7) This criminal mastermind with an army of thugs and dacoits has "a face like Shakespeare and a brow like Satan" but is clean-shaven.
8) He's physically quite small, almost a dwarf, and while he's not bestial looking or obviously deformed and has no unusual features, there's something unpleasant about his face that nobody who meets him can quite put their finger on. His relationship to the other title character isn't revealed until the end of the book.
9) He has a jagged lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, speaks perfect English and French, spent some time working for British intelligence, has a son who grows up to be a pilot in WW1, and lives on an African plantation that's worked by his faithful native tribe.
10) This swaggering "man of gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth" is Celtic, not Germanic, with "Black Irish" looks and temperment. He swears in Gaelic and is prone to moods of bleak depression. Once he becomes king, he's a patron of the arts, with a deep respect for poetry.
11) He is at least 8 feet tall, maybe even 10 feet, with long straight black hair and pearly white teeth, but also withered translucent yellow skin and yellow eyes. He's given to very long speeches.
12) He's the son of a Greek immigrant who changed/shortened his last name. When he marries into money, he gives up being a private detective for a life of serious drinking. His fox terrier is a bitch.
13) He's a big guy who looks like a "blonde Satan."
14) He's almost seven feet tall and says "bein' an idiot ain't no box of chocolates."
15) This psychotic murderer is homely, middle-aged and stout.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-12-30 10:32 pm (UTC)1. No idea
2. Indiana Jones
3. Me?
4. My cousin
5. Superman was addicted to crack?
6. That guy from the Princess Bride
7. Someone in Cepheid...I just can't pinpoint him right now.
8. Gimli
9. Harry Potter
10. Gary! Without the depression thing...
11. Dracula, played by Christopher Lee
12. That guy that played on Full House for forever
13. Travis! I bet Satan could look innocent.
14. My friend Keith
15. Okay, that describes just about all male cepheid elders. Just kidding. ;)
It's way too late for me to be awake. See my latest LJ post. *grin*
Answers.
Date: 2004-01-04 05:55 pm (UTC)2. James Bond
3. Holly Golightly (from "Breakfast at Tiffany's")
4. Carrie (from Stephen King's story of the same name)
5. Sherlock Holmes
6. Hannibal Lecter
7. Dr. Fu Manchu
8. Edward Hyde (from "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde")
9. Tarzan
10. Conan the Barbarian
11. Frankenstein's Monster
12. Nick Charles (from "The Thin Man" by Dashiell Hammett)
13. Sam Spade (from "The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett)
14. Forrest Gump
15. Norman Bates
no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-31 08:52 am (UTC)