[…] Today’s story: The Silent Twins.The Story: June and Jennifer Gibbons were British twin girls whose bond became something ostracizing and dangerous as it drew them together, away from the world, and into trouble. As children, they spoke their own language, and rarely spoke to anyone else. But their love for each other sometimes curdled, resulting in one trying to murder the other and vice versa. As they got older, they went on a crime spree of theft and arson that got them branded as psychopaths. They …read more […]

I like Dead Ringers a lot. That was an extremely good version of evil twins in movies. I would say part of the appeal about evil twins is identity. How would you handle there's someone in the world that's practically identical to you - that bond for good or bad and the chances of confusion. I do think silent twins would be subject to bullying in a contemporary setting. Probably they would create a world of their own to escape that bullying. And probably it ends bad for the school when they go postal and plan and execute a massacre like in Columbine. Probably too dark for mainstream Hollywood, right? Next....

Let's get back to identity. What if one twin is rich and famous and the other isn't. Think about how that would affect the not-so-famous one. In the words of one of the silent twins: "they showed a remarkable self-awareness, admitting they could never be individuals as long as the other lived" So let's stress that relationship a little more. One rich and famous and helping the other could certainly help to stress the relationship? What do you think? So we have Paul Dean and Peter Dean, identical twins. Paul is a famous movie star. Peter is basically his stand-in. Yes, both can act but Paul has that elusive quality some people have - the camera loves him. Peter is OK, but let's just say the camera doesn't love him. Paul and Peter have had a special bond since they were kids. But the relationship has strained a little since Paul became a star. Peter liked being confused with his brother at first, but now he hates it. Oh, and the tabloids are making their day with the twins. They joke "Was it Paul or Peter the one that got mad at a coffee shop?" Yep, fame has its toll, and apparently Peter is on the short side of it. Paul wants to make a movie about twins, so he gets Peter into acting classes. But it doesn't work out. Producers want to use CGI to create the twins (like in The Social Network). And that does it - Peter has had enough, he hires a hitman. The audience is tricked to believe it's to kill Paul, but no... it he was hired by Peter to kill himself. Paul knows about the plan, tries to save Peter. The hitman doesn't know who to kill so he tries to kill Paul, and Peter saves him, but in the process his face is disfigured. Now Peter doesn't look exactly like his brother and is very happy about it.

We could also have secret twins - only the family knows they're twins, and everyone else thinks it's just one person. They never hang out together, they have one girlfriend, one goes to the school one day, the other the next day. The hardest part (and I haven't figured that out) would be why would the parents want to do that?. maybe one of them had an identical twin, they were bullied at school and he wanted his sons to avoid having that experience, so he carefully hid the fact they were twins. And now we have two identical twins sharing one identity. The other doesn't even legally exist.

I was thinking about the Social Network and how rare talented identical twins are, even though twins don't always look alike (my friends Stephen and Annie are twins and there's two feet of height difference between them... and don't forget about those twins who were born totally different skin tones). But I think audiences expect an uncanny resemblance. The best I can think of is James and Dave Franco (and those "acting class" videos they did), but there's a noticeable age difference between them). Maybe it's two actors who play the same type... some great casting could make a huge improvement, maybe actors who don't look totally alike but seem just "right" together. It's so weird, but for some reason I don't think of these twins existing in the real world at all... Alejandro brought up them being bullied in school and I NEVER imagined them at school. Maybe just a house out in the country somewhere. I don't know why. Probably because that makes it a very small, intimate world where they become way more important to each other. Gosh, I dunno what I'm thinking for this one... I'm really trying to counter what I would expect a movie like this to do.

This reminds me of two SNL sketches, one where John Malkovich and Rob Schneider played "all four" Menendex brothers and one from a few years ago (which I have no idea how to find) that was a DIsney Channel show with the premise of the two twins pretending to be the same girl, with either the ruse not working or backfiring drastically b/c they both have an incomplete education and are just f'ing stupid. I forget which. Oh, there's a Reddit thread asking twins about pranks they pulled... I'm sure there's going to be something interesting in there. I can't think of a good reason why the parents would pretend the twin doesn't exist... that's the big buy-in, so it has to work.

They're not that uncommon. Wikipedia (OK, it's not the most authoritative or reliable site, but it's a start) says "Monozygotic (identical) twinning occurs in birthing at a rate of about three in every 1000 deliveries worldwide." But one thing is science and another a movie. How could we make them believable? A "growing up" montage? I think The Social Network made a great work selling the idea of identical twins.

Quick ideas to sell that: -The rich, crazy grandmother's will said they would inherit a fortune if they only had one sibling. They get nothing if they have a second child... when they found out they had twins they had to hide one. -An alternate world (or China) where the government has a One-child policy. Probably that one could be interesting... -Save on school and college? You'd pay only for one.

That's a crazy grandmother! That one child policy in China really backfired, I don't know if they still have it anymore, but there's a huge gender imbalance there, way more boys than girls, so there's going to be a HUGE drop in the next generation of kids (sort of like the baby boom/bust). I don't think that's the population control they had in mind. But I always found that 1 child thing interesting, it's definitely worth exploring in fiction.

Yes, I recently watched a documentary about young men that wanted to marry but couldn't find a bride. Towns where there were 30 single men and only 10 women, so 20 would need to go somewhere else to find a couple or stay single. It really backfired. Interestingly citing Wikipedia: "Since there are no penalties for multiple births, it is believed that an increasing number of couples are turning to fertility medicines to induce the conception of twins. According to a 2006 China Daily report, the number of twins born per year in China had doubled." Worth exploring in fiction or documentary.

Interestingly, today I found out that Iran had an overpopulation scare and undid it with a simple birth control campaign... no mandates or anything, just availability. There's an interesting article about it on io9, so I guess that sort of future is possible without it being all dystopian. I mean, it doesn't really sound that bad.