When I was younger, I used to have a mental block on the words porpoise, tortoise, and turquoise. They were just similar enough that my brain filed all three words in a single slot, and I found it inordinately hard to distinguish between them.
Then, a couple of years ago, I developed a similar block on three people: Peter Morville (information architecture guy, co-author of the polar bear book), Peter Merholtz (user experience guy, co-founder of Adaptive Path), and Peter Morwood (SF and Fantasy guy, husband of Diane Duane). I just couldn’t tell the difference between them without a quick net search to jog my brain.
Now, I’ve got the same thing going on with three movie directors: Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), Paul W.S. Anderson (Event Horizon, Resident Evil), and Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia).
The block is annoying, but it has got me wondering what kind of film these directors would make if they really were one person. It would probably be a multi-threaded ensemble piece, darkly humorous, with tragi-comic elements, about a dysfunctional family with at least one child genius…fighting off a zombie invasion from outer space.
It might not suck, you know.