City of Dupes
My report from a Shrek Look-alike Competition
In late October, a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest drew hundreds to Washington Square Park in Manhattan’s Lower East side. Many girlfriends forced their curly-haired, strong-jawed boyfriends to enter the competition in the hopes of winning $50, viral fame, and the humble brag of associating their partner with a handsome movie star. The crowds got rowdy, the cops tried to shut it down, someone was fined $500, and Timothée himself made an appearance.
Amidst all that chaos, the winner ended up being a guy dressed as Chalamet dressed as Willy Wonka, rather than a Chalamet dressed in his more typical blue jeans, black top, casual style. I personally think the winner should have embodied Timothée on a normal day, not a character he portrays in a movie.
The success of the look-alike competition has spawned many imitations across the country. Chicago fittingly hosted one for Jeremy Allen White. Dublin went hometown hero and Gladiator II star Paul Mescal. Austin chose the drawling Glen Powell, who already looks like a regular guy, so that one probably had many entrants and was impossible to judge.
Los Angeles, of course, joined the fray. My city has been running look-alike contests since the dawn of the Hollywood star. This is the town where both Charlie Chaplin and Dolly Parton lost to their own impersonators. We could not miss out
This weekend, we had four! look-alike competitions that picked up steam: Peso Pluma, Shohei Ohtani, Patrick and Art from the movie Challengers, and Shrek.
Shrek, held by the Shrek Rave, was taking place in my neighborhood, so I decided to stop by around 2 PM to see if anyone showed up. While walking to the event, I spied a very convincing Shrek parallel parking, and he immediately became my favorite contestant. It was about 10 minutes after 2, and he hustled over to the Echo Park Lake viewing area that overlooks the water—or should we call it a swamp?—to secure his spot in the competition.
There was actually a pretty decent turnout. Maybe 50 to 100 people were riled up to see Shreks compete for $500 (an enormous prize, considering that the other contests awarded between $20 - $50 bucks,) and a bag of onions. While we waited for the Shreks to line up, we could purchase t-shirts and lemonade from a bright yellow booth . Many guests were wearing Shrek ear headbands. One guy, who said I could take his photo, proudly wore a shirt that read “Slut” with a Shrek-ified “S.”
The sun was already setting on this short, fall day, so our lineup of five Shreks were backlit and hard to see. I held a hand to my forehead to make out the competitor’s costumes: the very faithfully recreated Shrek I had seen park his car; a Drag Queen Shrek with enormous breasts and knee-high stiletto boots, who had brought Fiona with her; a girlish Shrek who turned her pigtails into her Shrek ears and held a beautifully hand-painted “Beware of Ogre” sign; a lithe Shrek in a green Shrek-eared bucket hat and brown sweater and pants; and DIY Shrek who brought along Donkey, Puss 'N Boots, and the Fairy Godmother to help her campaign for the win.
Our Shreks competed over four rounds. First, they introduced themselves (“Hi, I’m also Shrek”), then they had to do their best impersonation (“Donkey!”), their best Ogre roar (the Drag Queen’s was a bit horny), then a freestyle dance to one of the franchise’s songs. Growing up, we had a well-worn Shrek soundtrack, and I’ve spent a significant amount of my childhood jamming out to Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out for A Hero during family road trips to national parks, so I greatly appreciated that round. The JBL speaker’s bluetooth fizzled, and Girlish Shrek had to groove to a popping staccato of Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation.
The Shreks were supposed to be eliminated at the end of each round, which was determined by cheers of “Shrek” for support and “Donkey” for elimination, but the judges couldn’t make sense of the cheering and let everyone advance to the finals. In fact, true to Los Angeles flakiness, two more Shreks arrived at the competition late, but were allowed to compete even though they missed the intro and impersonation rounds. I am a ruthless judge, and I would not have allowed it!
Using the amplitude of cheers as a voting metric, the judge finally narrowed down the finalists to Faithfully Recreated Shrek and Drag Queen Shrek. While I did think Drag Queen Shrek was incredibly saucy, and had the perhaps unfair advantage of having Fiona with her, Faithfully Recreated Shrek fulfilled the prompt of a look-alike competition, and I screamed as loud as I could to get him the win.
Luckily, he pulled it off. He got a medal, cash prize, and his bag of onions, which he held up high to more roaring approval. Everyone who entered the contest got a consolation prize of $100 bucks, which made me wish I had phoned in a costume with a bucket hat, too.
If you want to attend a look-alike contest, you can probably find flyers for the next one in your city’s hippest neighborhood. I already spotted one for Nosferatu, which will take place at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Christmas Day. That’s the same place where Chaplin lost his own contest. Some trends never go out of style
