So goes the marketing hype for films made right through the ’60’s. Such spectacles featured a couple of A-list movie stars and then the requisite number of extras hoping for their chance at celluloid stardom.
But what about our lives? How many “extras” populate them? Not the people we don’t know, but those with whom we have a regular or at least semi-regular relationship. It’s probably still a number too high to calculate. And that doesn’t include your social media such as Facebook friends in that number.
Then, who are the people in our own cast of thousands who influence us in some way or another? In the case of Jacob Will, the protagonist of my book A Coward’s Guide to Living, he too has many people who in the course of his story change his life.
Just like in real life, some of these people have a positive impact (A-listers), others not so much (B-listers). But it’s his cast of thousands. Who’s in your story? Who’s on your A-list? Are the B-listers important? That’s a question for a later time.
Bruce Meisterman 