Movie Characters I Want to be

Movie: Fight Club
Played by: Brad Pitt
Most Memorable Line: "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."

Why do I want to be Tyler Durden? Because he’s a total badass. He’s an in-your-face rabble-rouser with uber charm and a wild and free lifestyle. He is the epitome of cool – like a combination between a Buddhist and an anarchist. He is my hero and he is your hero – the man you’ve always secretly wished you were. He is charming, educated, physically fit, and he really, seriously doesn’t give a f**k about society.

I think everyone can admit that the first time they saw Fight Club they took mental notes on how to be more like Tyler Durden – I know I did. I considered getting in fights just to challenge myself and I assured myself that like Tyler, I didn’t need society and that my job and my car and my possessions didn’t define me. I really wanted to be Tyler Durden or to be like him – and on some level, I think most people can understand that urge. His character was built for that sort of response. He is a catalyst – a fight-starting, bomb-making, Marla Singer-screwing catalyst. And you totally wish you were him too.

He probably says it best himself: "I look like you wanna look, I f**k like you wanna f**k, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not."

But the coolest part about him is that he doesn’t exist to make you feel bad or inferior or inadequate – no, the idea is to show you that you too can be free. And that’s why Tyler Durden tops this list, because he inspires me. He shows the average, tie-wearing schmuck how to truly live a unique life.

Thanks Tyler, now lets go blow some s**t up.

Movie: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Played By: Matthew Broderick
Most Memorable Line: "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."


When I was a kid and I used to fake sick, I’d just pull a scratchy voice and act drunk or drugged until mom got tired of dealing with me. When it actually worked, I’d just stay home, and watch TV. In the later years, I stopped faking sick and would just go to a friends house to smoke pot and watch TV. I had no idea how what a poor job I was doing, or how much I was squandering my sick days, until I saw Ferris Bueller in action.

This kid raised faking sick to an art form. And he didn’t waste those days of freedom, no. He used his time to steal cars, sing Wayne Newton songs in carnival street friars, impersonate sausage kings, and even go to museums.

Probably a thousand times cooler than the coolest kid in your school, Ferris Bueller was really who we all withed we were in highschool – totally f**king fearless.

Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean
Played By: Johnny Dep
Most Memorable Line: "This is the day you will always remember as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow!"

Like a drunken Zorro, Capitan Jack Sparrow sways and fumbles his way through life, but somehow seems to always come out on top. Even if he loses, he’ll somehow turn the tables on you or change the rules of the game, because after all, he’s a pirate.

Pirates are supposed to be the bad guys, but we all know that they are the coolest – at least historically speaking. These modern day Somoli pirates who hold oil tankers for ransom and get caught by the Turkish Navy is much less glamorous than the yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-rum hooligans of yesteryear. Imagine being part of a group of slovenly men drinking rum and sailing endlessly around the Caribbean pillaging, raping, and running amuck in port towns. Sound like the best fraternity ever… only with scurvy. And no sororities. But you know, times were different back then – they got their lovin’ from Mermaids (this was before they went extinct, of course).

Oh and Captain Jack Sparrow? Yeah, I still want to be him. Even if he does end up cursed to be a lonely, immortal, skeleton-man or whatever (I fell asleep at the end of the last movie, so I may have made that up), it doesn’t matter. He’s so perma-fried that he always seems to be enjoying life to the fullest. Plus, he’s got awesome style. And he’s still Johnny Depp. Savvy?

Movie: Cool Hand Luke
Played by: Paul Newman
Most Memorable Line: "I can eat fifty eggs."

Sure, Luke is a criminal and sure he is condemned to a life of hard labor in prison, but I’d still like to be him. He is a prisoner who refuses to be a prisoner. He is a rebel (another rebel on this list? Must say something about my personality) and a non conformist and maybe he’s a criminal, but there is something about the way he livese that makes him ultimately likable – he is almost childlike in the way that he lives. I mean, who goes to jail for knocking the heads off parking meters? Who bets someone that he can eat 50 eggs on a whim?

matter how hard the prison guards try to break his spirit, Luke stands his ground and becomes a sort of rebel idol to the other prisoners. No matter how many times they try to lock him up, Luke keeps running away like a kid running away from home every time he gets sent to his room by his parents.

Maybe that sounds childish, but I think Luke is a hero. He endears himself to those around him, he never submits to the powers that be, and he always, always keeps his cool.

Movie: Indiana Jones (The Trilogy? Quadrilogy? All of them.)
Played By: Harrison Ford
Most Memorable Line: To Short Round, "Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory." (Temple Of Doom)

As kids we all dream of adventure. We want to explore foreign lands and save damsels in distress before we are even old enough to know what to do with those damsels once we’ve saved them. Indian Jones provided endless imaginative fodder for me as a kid. I remember watching him use his wits and his brawn to find the fountain of youth, do battle with the N***s, and stare evil in the eye and scream, "Prepare to meet Kali… IN hell!" Oh, and he always got his girl.

Indy’s cool-factor comes from a combination of book smarts, street smarts, non-stop adventure, and sex appeal. Add all that together and somehow, this guy was able to make archeology cool. And Archeologists dig holes for a living. Cool.