Storytelling Week 11: Wanting to Be Famous

There once was a red-headed boy named Willard who loved to write music. He was very passionate about his lyrics and felt it was the perfect way to express himself. He was slowly becoming famous for his lyrics and passion for singing. He had been trying for very many years and it was finally paying off. Big artists were coming to him for his incredible songwriting ability.His first album was going to include a song called Cardboard House, which was a terribly complex song about his life before becoming famous. 
Before he brought this song to his producers, he ran into a man named Deacon at a park. When they ran into each other, he dropped all his things, including a paper with the lyrics of Cardboard House. He was in a hurry, so he managed to get all his things and go to the meeting. When he got there he realized that he had dropped the lyrics and they were probably still back at the park. What he didn't realize was that Deacon was a loyal fan of his. Maybe more than a fan, he was obsessed with him. See, Deacon looked just like him and always wished that he could just BE him. They could have been long lost twins due to the strong resemblance.  Now that he had a copy of Willard’s lyrics in his hands he was going to try to be him like he had always planned.

Willard left the studio, desperately trying to find these amazing lyrics that would make his album number one. Deacon left a note for him at the park because he figured Willard would soon be back to find his lyrics. The note read, "If you ever want your lyrics back, you can find them at the old soda warehouse twenty minutes north of town." He led him to this warehouse to distract him for a long period of time. Deacon went to the studio and was shocked to find that the producers did not even think twice about whether or not he was Willard. The producers sat with him and collaborated on how to make the song better. They decided that they would release this song as a single by making a music video out of it. They were very impressed in the newfound passion that “Willard” had.

As they began talking about the ideas, a man named Brandon on the team began noticing weird mannerisms that Willard now had. He decided he would test him by texting him an inside joke and seeing whether or not he read it and laughed. After twenty minutes had gone by and "Willard” did not check his phone, he knew this guy was a phony. He called him out and Deacon immediately broke down, saying all he ever wanted was to be Willard. They had him taken away by security and called the real Willard and went forward with their normal business. Cardboard House ended up being the most sold song on iTunes, no thanks to the acts of Deacon.  

Image Information: Picture of Ed Sheeran and Rupert Grint which are the two that inspired my story taken from The Daily Telegraph 

Video Information: Here is the video that I got the idea for the story from.
Author's Note: I made this story based roughly on the story of A Ghostly Wife. In the original story, there is a husband and wife. What happens is that the wife goes off into the forest and makes a ghost angry. The ghost beats her and leaves her for dead and goes back and impersonates her to the husband. She is very believable for a while until the husband's mother realizes that she is not the wife. I've been watching Ed Sheeran videos like crazy this past week so I made it based on his video for Lego House where Rupert Grint pretends to be Ed Sheeran throughout the course of the video. I think this made it pretty funny and works well in comparison to the Ghostly Wife. It is very unrealistic because I'm sure Willard would soon come back to the production studio but I wanted to make it a lot like the story so had him get lost. Instead of using a wife and a husband, I used a famous boy named Willard and his producer. Instead of using a ghost, I used a crazy obsessed fan of Willard named Deacon. Willard walks towards the production studio after writing a new song when Deacon swapped spots with him, which is supposed to represent the wife from the story getting beat up by the ghost. In the story the ghost leaves her for almost dead but I did not want to go that far so I just had Deacon distract him. In the original story the mother-in-law figures out that the ghostly wife is an imposter and in this story I had the producer realize the same by sending a text that he would normally send to Willard. In the original story, when the husband and wife are reunited, they have lots of babies and a great marriage. To parallel this, I had Willard get a number one hit when he was back to the studio.

Bibliography
Folk-Tales of Bengal by the Rev. Lal Behari Day (1912)