I’ve cast identical twins in some shows, but ironically they had to not look like each other. (And got away with it, makeup and costumes can do a lot.)
I always wanted to cast them both in a show playing identical twins, but the gimmick would be that for most of the show they would never appear together, leading the audience to believe both parts were being played by one person, until the surprise conclusion…
Unfortunately, I would have had to custom order/write a script for this idea and there just wasn’t funds/time.
According to Danny Lloyd, who appropriately played Danny in The Shining those girls (Lisa and Louise Burns) were actually very nice despite their creepy performance.
I think the trouble involves finding twins who can act well enough for a lot of screen time. If producers are just looking for twins to fill some very short-term requirement, then there’s no shortage. The only actual twin actors I know of who were worth the job description were Billy and Bobby Mauch who did a great job in The Prince and the Pauper (1937).
I could never get past the premise. What kind of parent would be so cruel and self-centered to deny their child even the knowledge of their other parent and twin sibling? And why should we be cheering on the scheme to get those parents back together when the girls should be plotting for legal emancipation?
It’s like it was written by and for people who have no idea how divorce works. It also has that tired old story of divorced-but-getting-back-together. But hey, movies are supposed to be a fantasy.
I’d love to see THAT film. Don’t even paint the parents as obvious villains, just ordinary seeming relatable people who made a terrible decision long ago. A chickens-coming-home-to-roost kind of family disaster film, but done better than Weeds. Could be good as a drama or a black comedy.
Or how easy it would be to impersonate another person just because of a shared appearance.
I’m always annoyed when movies do the “doppelgänger/person in disguise seamlessly taking over their double’s life without raising suspicion” thing. Twin switcheroos, Face/Off-type scenarios, people with Mission: Impossible quality masks, shapeshifters like Mystique from the X-men… they all feel so unrealistic to me because I know that if I ever tried to take over my brother’s life I would give myself away in minutes even if nobody caught the subtle differences in our appearances.
I may know him better than just about anyone else but there are still a million little things about his daily routine I wouldn’t have a clue about. Fooling his family would be a non-starter but I also couldn’t take over his job because I’m not trained in his field, don’t know his coworkers or responsibilities, and probably couldn’t even find his office without help. And this is a guy I’ve known for my whole life, not a long-lost sibling I just learned about a couple of weeks ago.
I wasn’t even aware of them. If we’re talking about reality shows or talk shows or kid shows or insipid sitcoms, then pretty much anyone appearing in those I would know zip about.
Well it is very closely based on Erich Kästner’s Das doppelte Lottchen which was written in 1949 but originally conceived during the war. Divorce was much more uncommon back then. In fact the book is hailed in the canon of German children’s literature as very progressive at the time because it portrayed the mother as a successful single working mother and it put the fault for the divorce squarely on the shoulders of the father.
This Robot Chicken sketch lampshades the problem with the movie (Yes, it specifically is about the 1998 version, but the principle applies to the original as well).
Well, presumably people in your brother’s life know that he has a twin brother so they would catch on pretty quickly. But in a movie where the doppelgänger is a clone or it is magic that produces them it isn’t so straightforward, especially if in the context of the story they have no idea that cloning/magic exist and that it is even possible to duplicate a human. In that case when someone starts acting erratic it’s more realistic to assume they have had something affect their cognitive function rather than that they had been replaced by an identical person.
In other words: Face/Off technology is so ludicrous that I don’t think there is anything John Travolta/Nicholas Cage could tell me if I was their partner that would convince me they had been face switched. I would try to have them quietly committed to psychological evaluation rather than help them fight someone that looks like my partner.
PL Travers, that’s who. (Ruining a couple of lives in the process) What kind of weirdo makes a choice specifically to adopt just one twin, anyway? If you only want one baby, go adopt a single kid somewhere. There are plenty of people out there who would be happy to adopt a set of twins.
Edit to add: a surprise reunion with a previously unknown twin who grew up in another country- could the original Parent Trap be Disney vindictively screwing over Travers by stealing her family’s story without paying for it? Hmm.
Ran into a former coworker at a music festival a few years ago and called out his name. He shook his head and said, “I’m his twin brother.” And he was. I was like
I wasn’t even aware of them. If we’re talking about reality shows or talk shows or kid shows or insipid sitcoms, then pretty much anyone appearing in those I would know zip about.
