A thing brought to mind by a reference in a recent “Cafe Society” thread. I realised that I have been personally acquainted with someone who was, it is generally agreed, the real-life model for a character in fiction.
The individual concerned, was Dr. W. G. Moore (1905 – 1978), modern-languages professor at St. John’s College, Oxford, England: celebrated for detective-novel fans, in his “fictionised” form as the academic / detective Gervase Fen, in the mysteries by Edmund Crispin. I had no idea of this fact, until all dealings between me and Dr. Moore, were over.
The relationship between me and the learned Doctor, was unfortunately a stressful and unhappy one – with no deliberate malice on either side. In the late 1960s, I was his undergraduate pupil, supposedly studying mod. langs. – at that prestigious university, I rapidly found myself lost and out of my depth, and basically uninterested in the subject, on the study of which I had rashly embarked. The whole thing did not go well.
A couple of years before starting at university, and in total ignorance of “who was who”, I read one of the Crispin / Fen novels, The Moving Toyshop – of which I now remember absolutely nothing. Unpleasant memories of Oxford years, and regret / some remorse re poor old Dr. Moore, to whom I was a great disappointment – though not all the fault was on my side – means my feeling reluctant to read any more of that series of thrillers. However, can’t help feeling some interest re my having known first-hand, a person who is acknowledged as the model for a fictional character of a certain degree of renown. Would be interested to hear if anyone else on STD, has had first-hand acquaintance with any similar such.
I’ve probably “met” paleontologist Jack Horner in the sense of being at the same event as him and shaking his hand, or the like, though I don’t recall specifics. And he was the primary inspiration for Dr. Grant from Jurassic Park.
I worked for General Electric in Binghamton one summer. Once upon a time Peter Hart did, too, and he based the characters of his strip B.C.* on the people he’d worked with. The originals of Thor, Peter, and others were still working at GE when I was there, and I met them.
*Before he seriously got religion, B.C. used to be a hilarious and occasionally profanely funny strip. Mort Walker’s book Backstage at the Strips describes how Hart and his collaborators used to sit around drinking beers and tossing out ideas for gags. “B.C.”, besides standing for “Before Christ” is also the abbreviation used for “Broome County”, the county in New York where GE was located. The local golf tournament is the B.C. Open, and used to use (maybe it still does) use cartoons of the B.C. characters by Hart as mascots. I’ve always suspected that Berkeley Breathed called his strip “Bloom County” in homage.
I have met Reen Brust, the inspiration for Aliera from Steven Brust’s novels, and I think I have met the inspiration for Morollan as well. My wife was in a gaming group with Steve back in college, and in his early days as a frustrated writer, he ran tabletop role-playing games set in his fictional world, along with Kara Dalkey, Will Shetterly, M.A.R. Barker and another writer I’m forgetting… Emma Bull. Anyway, many of their characters were inspiration for characters in the books, but only Reen and (Morollan) were live inspiration, as it were.
I have also met Diana Paxon’s daughter, Fiona, who was the inspiration for one of the main characters in the Westria novels. Chances are, I know several other people from the Kingdom of the West in the SCA were also inspirations for her novels.
In one sense I am a fictional character’s real-life original.
AOL used to have a Harry Turtledove forum in which I was a regular participant. Turtledove himself was also a regular on that board. When he was writing his World War series he gave several of the alien characters names that were the names of people he knew spelled backwards. One of them was mine.
It was a very minor character. Just a normal soldier who was mentioned in passing in a scene or two.
Close (and not really fictional, but…). My nephew’s girlfriend’s cousin is Henry Hill (GoodFellas). She didn’t even know this until about 5 years ago, and met him for the first time shortly before his death.
Well, Pete and my Dad grew up together. A handful of years ago, he (Pete, not my Dad) decided to write some new short stories, and dug into his past for characters. One of them was my Dad.
Oh, you mean what was the name of the story? It refers to my Dad by name…which can pretty easily lead you to my name. I’d rather not “out” my secret identity quite that easily.
Well I’ve gotten the chance to briefly talk with Oliver Stone twice, and Stone loosely based Chris Taylor, the protagonist of Platoon, on himself, so I think that sort of counts.
I disagree with Stone’s interpretation of the JFK assassination and a lot of his political views, but it becomes clear when you’re talking with him that he’s a brilliant man who has led a very fascinating life.
I have a few similar “almosts”. I’m acquainted with a woman who attended St. John’s School in Houston at the same time as young Wes Anderson. The school in Rushmore is loosely based on St. John’s, and some of the movie was even shot there. The woman I know seemed a little annoyed that the fictional school became an all-boys school, when of course the real school is co-ed – otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to attend!
Another woman I know has a sister who knew Zach Braff when they were in college together at Northwestern. They weren’t really friends – the sister apparently thought he was kind of a jerk – but were in the same social circle, and according to the sister several characters in the movie Garden State are obviously but unflatteringly based on some of their mutual acquaintances. I met Braff briefly several years ago when he was shooting a movie in the town where I lived (this was what prompted my friend to share her sister’s anecdote about him), so if his character in Garden State is based on himself then I have actually met the original.
I have a relative who attended the University of Iowa in the '80s, and met football coach Hayden Fry several times while working as a sports writer for the school paper. The '90s sitcom Coach was about a college football coach named Hayden Fox, although I don’t know if the character was really based on Fry or if his name was just a tribute to Fry.
I don’t suppose this is an entirely fictional character, I can’t really be sure.
I can’t even vouch for the reality of the example, but this is as close as I get to the proposed scenario. This actually happened to me: A guy at work showed me a picture, that he took, of a man. The man looked to be maybe in his 60’s (the year was late 1990’s) and had kind of a street-person look.
My coworker says: “That’s Mr. Jimmy.” I said: “Huh?” He said: “Mr. Jimmy, the real Mr. Jimmy!” I repeated: “Huh?” And he said: “From the Rolling Stones. You Can’t Always Get What You want. ‘I was standing in line with Mr. Jimmy’.”
And I just looked at the guy, as if to convey: “What the Fuck am I supposed to say about this??”
I met Jack Kirby at the New York Comicon back in 1972, and he used himself as a model for Ben Grimm/The Thing (and explicitly made himself The Thing for an issue of What If…).
Amazingly, we were in a small room with hardly anyone else there, sdo we got to spend quite a bit of time talking.
Google returns plenty of hits if you search for a “based on Oliver North” character, and I met the guy back when; I didn’t like him before that, and still didn’t like him after, and, so, well, the ‘during’ part went pretty much like I’d expected: he’s a dishonest guy who seemed plenty comfortable with trampling Constitutional rights.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle have fun basing characters on people they know. If you ever attend a meeting of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, you’ll likely bump into people who have been the inspiration for fictional characters.
The practice was known as “Tuckerization” or “Tuckerizing” from a writer named Tucker, who apparently did it a lot. But I don’t know any more details than that. Who was Tucker?
I met the man that Phil Foglio based his Buck Godot character on.
I used to be neighbors with the woman who served as the inspiration for one of the Jokers in the Wild Cards mosaic novels/short story collections. I suspect she’s also been used as inspiration for characters in a variety of other media/stories as well. I will also point out that the portrayal is not always flattering or positive.