The Adventures of QueerPenguin

Top 10 Dinner Party Guest List

What's that? A blogger doing a Top 10 list? Never!! I hear you cry. Such a thing has never been done before!!

I got to thinking about this again following Jane Fonda's latest tell-all about her swinging relationship with director Roger Vadim, Jane being a given in this list.

Alphabetically, dead or living:

1. Aristotle - would like to see how passionately or otherwise he'd argue that the law is reason free from passion. Hopefully he'd feel a bit conflicted. Determining the orientation and content of Western intellectual philosophy was moderately impressive too.

2. Albert Camus - the "upbeat existentialist", which is how I sometimes like to refer to myself in my more outrageous delusions of grandeur. A philosophy unfairly overshadowed by Sartre and a life cut tragically too short.

3. Leonardo da Vinci - artist, visionary, inventor, rampant homosexual and subversive. I'd like to get him to sign my copy of The Da Vinci Code, perhaps with a little doodle (*ahem*) of a Mona Lisa penguin.

4. Jane Fonda - as I've mentioned before, love her or hate her, the woman gets things done. Plus I'd really like to know who her plastic surgeon is for future reference.

5. Samuel Goldwyn - one of the mean old bastards who saw a profitable future in those silly little nickelodeon things. Arguably the movie industry needed the mean ratgbags to give it a kick start up the arse. I think it would be nice to see his reaction when shown what cinema evolved into after his death. Or maybe he'd just put out his cigar on my hand. Who knows.

6. Katharine Hepburn - a female non-corforming artist long before Madonna's mother was in nappies. An actor who came to understand her value independently of the studio system. A beauty who looked stunning in pants. A strong-willed, independent woman who allowed an abusive drunken derro called Spencer Tracy to walk over her for 25 years. Talk about a contradiction.

7. Alfred Hitchcock - my favourite director. I'd like to know how and when he had his first vision of Janet Leigh getting slashed to death in Psycho, my favourite film, and therefore began the modern horror/slasher movie that was often copied - Brian De Palma, Gus Van Sant, John Carpenter, Wes Craven etc. - but never equalled.

8. Karl Marx (and I guess a German translator) - just to make sure I've at least got the gist of what he was on about. And drink him under the table with Stoli shots.

9. Marilyn Monroe - the secrets that woman would have...

10. Tennessee Williams - my favourite playwright and the man who gave me Blanche du Bois, my favourite fictional character. I would like to see if they're as similar as I imagine there are. Would he ask me to place a paper lantern over the light before he entered the dining room? Would he bring a school boy along with him? Probably.

Bench-warmer: Oscar Wilde - for comedy relief, obviously.

That's it.

posted by Sam @ Friday, April 01, 2005