RANK: #19 |
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THREE
IDENTICAL STRANGERS
½
A documentary directed by Tim Wardle |
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I want you all to tap into the recesses of your imaginations to help me set up the new documentary THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS. Close your
eyes.... Imagine, if you would, that you're a bright and eager minded teenager about to attend your very first day of college. As a brand new student for the academic year you enter into post-secondary studies knowing...that you know nobody at this school. When you arrive on campus you can't help but notice that something just seems...off.Seemingly everyone around you treats you like they've known you for years.
Some smile and wave at you, whereas some even run up, hug, and kiss
you. Then, to make matters
even more bizarre, people start calling you "Eddie," even though
that's not your name. Finally, after one too many students call you by your
incorrect name one of them realizes that something's fishy. They ask you for your birthday and whether or not you've been
adopted. After some deductive
reasoning, this one student takes you on an overnight pilgrimage to an
off-campus home, and upon arrival you are greeted at the door...by your
exact identical double.
And at this
point you're emotionally rattled with the startling realization that you
have a twin brother that was separated from you at birth.
Pagin' Rod
Serling.
Now, this is
precisely how Tim Wardle's endlessly intoxicating, frequently mind
blowing, and sometimes shocking documentary THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS
opens. We meet a rather
unassuming and ordinary looking 56-year-old Robert Shafran, who recounts
in very specific detail attending his first day of college in 1980, experiencing what I just described, and at the end of the day he
discovered that he had a twin brother in Eddy Galland that was attending
the very same school. Now,
that kind of life altering realization would be stupendous enough for any
person, but that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg in terms of
startling revelations contained within THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS.
Of course, and because of the once in a million odds set of
circumstances, the story of Eddy and Robert's chance meeting started
making news headlines across the country, including coverage for Newsweek
magazine.
It's at this
point in this separation yarn when things go from incredible to full on
mind-blowing.
By some
monumentally fluke occurrence, one reader from across the U.S. read one of
these articles about Robert and Eddy and gasped when viewing the
accompanying image of the pair, both of whom looked exactly like her own
son, David Kellman. And just
when you thought this tale couldn't get more astonishing, it's revealed
that - wait for it - David was the long lost and separated twin brother to
Robert and Eddy, making them all separated at birth...and identical triplets.
Holy.
Shit.
All three of these young men were born to a troubled and single Jewish mother in 1961, and when she gave up her three babies to the Louise Wise Adoption Agency they were systematically separated and given to three different sets of parents, one upper class, one middle class, and the remaining lower class. Despite being raised by different people in different parts of the country and under different economic conditions, all three brothers had remarkably similar traits, mannerisms, and tastes. They all liked the same types of clothes, smoked the same cigarettes, drank the same booze, and all had the same taste in women. They become overnight media sensations, appearing on the Phil Donahue Show and the Today Show, where interviewers propped them up for the fascinating case studies that they were. Their story, it initially appeared, seemed to wholly support the notion that nature and not nurture was the predominant driven force in childhood development. Eventually, the trio were inseparable, ended up moving in together in an apartment in Manhattan, and partied as hard as media celebs and brothers could in the 1980s. They even managed to open up their own posh restaurant in the city and had a cameo in the Madonna movie DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN.Life could have
not have been any better for these young men.
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