IMDB — A Journey
I was curious where I’d seen this actor before.
I saw the advertisement and trailer for the new Netflix original series ’13 Reasons Why.’
I’m excited. First of all, I’m excited because Netflix has been producing some pretty high quality content recently, (Netflix, please hire me) but also my parents pay for my account now, so I can watch all the ‘Chopped’ and ‘Forensic Files’ that I want to on their dime.
’13 Reasons Why,’ people remember that book, right? It was great but really depressing. Too real. Made me cry. The main girl, Hannah, uses cassette tapes to tell people how they contributed to her wanting to commit suicide. I remember not really understanding it when I was reading it in middle school.
And no, don’t start with the ‘dumb millennial,’ doesn’t even know what these
are.
I know what these
are, but the non-linear storytelling threw me. Plus, I was in that weird stage of Twilight-mania where I thought no story was complete without a romance but the girl in this book died so I felt incomplete. That sounds terrible, but teenagers are pretty specific about their literary tastes. I used to spend hours in Barnes and Noble just picking up books that had pretty, nondescript girls with fancy dresses on because that was what I was into.
Anyway, in the series, there’s this guy
who plays basically the main character, Clay Jensen. I remember not liking Clay when I was reading the book and I’m not totally sure why. Maybe it’s because he and the main girl (the dead girl), Hannah, could’ve had a thing and my ultra-romantic 14-year-old self was like, “You loser, how dare you ruin my fantasy.”
I try not to think about that point in my life, but this guy looks familiar, right? Slightly fearing that I would find out he was from a television show that I watched but didn’t exactly want to broadcast to the world that I actually watched, I jumped into the inescapable pit of IMDB.
So this dude’s name is Dylan Minnette. He also looks like this
And this
I was thinking of finding a picture that’s smaller, just for the sake of the piece as a whole. I thought maybe it would look more balanced with a smaller picture, but he’s kinda handsome, so I don’t really mind and neither should you.
I scanned through his page, barely recognizing anything. He was in a movie called ‘Prisoners’ which looks like a thriller and those don’t interest me but it looks like Jake Gyllenhaal is in it so maybe I should check it out.
He was in that horror movie ‘Don’t Breathe’ apparently but I don’t watch horror movies because, no matter how badly made they are, they make me want to hide under a bed and then promptly escape the underside of my bed because the Boogieman lives there. I become a ten-year-old watching the creepy shower scene of Stephen King’s ‘It’ through my friends’ circular glasses because I don’t want to look at the screen.
I mean, could you blame me? This
is horrifying. And there’s a punk band named Pennywise too which I hate, they need to be stopped. If you don’t understand the reference, watch Stephen King’s ‘It.’ (evil laughter) I heard they’re making a remake of it though. (less enthusiastic laughter)
I also brought a hoodie with me to every viewing of every one of those ‘Paranormal Activity’ movies and wore it backwards. No, not so that I could do this
It was so I could cover my eyes during the night scenes without the potential of seeing some scary-horror-ghost-face through the cracks in my fingers.
But back to Dylan. Like any other actor, he did his dues and was on an episode of ‘Law & Order: Special Victims’ Unit’ in 2012. My mom and I used to watch that show a lot, but not since Christopher Meloni left. We stuck around because he looked like my dad and we’d always yell, “Dad, your twin is on,” because for real, they’re similar.
Dylan Minnette was in a show I’d never heard about called ‘R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour,’ which was curious. Didn’t they have a show similar to that in the 90s where they had R.L. Stine introduce a short show based on one of his books while sitting in a dark decrepit house and he had to say “I’m R.L. Stine” before every monologue because no child watching the show knew who he was? Am I imagining it?
No wait, found it. It’s real.
His eyes looks so dead. This is exactly how I would imagine a child horror novelist to look like. Like, it’s a children’s book, so it should be happy, but he looks like he’s lost all hope. He’d rather write about children getting trapped in alternate dimensions or getting possessed by demon masks than them finally learning how to ride a bike or making the softball team or other uplifting things. Now that I see him in person, it makes so much sense. His eyes are dead.
Actually, my favorite ‘Goosebumps’ book was the one about the girl who thought she was being haunted by this neighbor kid but it turned out she was a ghost and he was still alive, mostly because I wanted some kind of tragic romance between them that never happened. Kind of a disturbing thought for an eight-year-old, but now I realize that I’ve always been creepy. I can’t blame Twilight for it.
But Dylan was in this new show that was from 2011 to 2013. Certainly not the 90s Canadian cheese of the original.
Wow, there are a lot of characters in this show. Like, 200 at least. How do the directors or whoever keep track of this many people? Do they write individual checks to each one of them? What if you’re auditioning for a new role and the director is like, “What have you done?” does someone proudly say, “I was the character Chad in two episodes. I was on screen for five seconds in each of my appearances,” and they ask, “What did you do? Characterize Chad for us,” and you say, “He’s dead. He died. I played a dead body.” Will you get a role from that? Is playing a dead body impressive? Like how long do you have to hold your breath?
I don’t know if Chad in ‘R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour,’ played by Dylan Minnette, was dead or alive or sick or in jail or a student or a super villain or what.
After scanning his whole IMDB page, I still don’t know who he is. He’s Dylan. He’s done a lot. I appreciate him. Maybe I’ll recognize him as a dead body one day. That would be cool. Then I’ll spit out, “That’s Dylan Minnette!” and no one would be impressed.
