Casting Earnhardt in Chick Lit?

Would you ever cast you're favorite celebrity in your fiction "chick lit" story?


On October 10th Dale Earnhardt Junior turned 36; I read a lot of superstitious comments on facebook and twitter, mostly positive comments like, “his birthday is 10-10-10 – maybe this will be the race he wins.” Sure, that’s an awesome thought; most people I know like to believe that when stars align and the date is something like, 10-10-10 that it’s a lucky day that can lead to a lucky year. Earnhardt started the weekend off on a positive note; he qualified 9th for the starting line –up; one position better than 10th (for more information about the race, check out the NASCAR journalists websites like: Bob Pockrass, Dustin Long, Nascar.com, Jeff Gluck)
According to all media pictures and articles that came my way, I read that he started his birthday in a good mood; he’s smiling in all of his photo’s. Since he’s quiet about his personal private life, only one can guess if he had a good birthday breakfast with a special someone but that’s not the point here. What I want to talk about are his fans.
I read a lot of comments & birthday wishes on his fan page, dalejr.com, Twitter, Facebook, Infield Parking as well as many other websites that allowed fans to leave comments in hopes he would read it.
In a few short months, I’ve researched everything I can about NASCAR. I can’t help but notice how committed and dedicated fans are; especially to Earnhardt. I’m forced to remember the days I lived in Boston and for some reason, the love and passion fans feel for this man is just as equal to how passionate Red Sox fans are.
The Boston Red Sox have a long flipping history of losing the chances to the play offs (as well as the World Series) to their rival, the New York Yankees yet Boston doesn’t care, they love the Sox and will root for them hell or high water; it took the Sox 86 years to win a World Series, let alone beat the Yankees to the play offs yet they didn’t lose their fans in Boston. They even wrote a movie about it, “Fever Pitch,” with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. I can’t help but notice how Beantowns passion is not much different than Earnhardt fans. He hasn’t won a race in since 2008, yet, Junior Nation still holds their breath as they root for him; believing he’ll win soon. It’s possible, I highly doubt it’ll take him 86 years to win a Championship; let’s also hope it’s not another 86 races before he wins again.
Earnhardt even has his rivals and just when I thought the Red Sox fans in Boston were the biggest jerks and meanest rivals to have, I learned quick that NASCAR fans, including Earnhardt rivals are probably as bad if not worse.
All of this stuff I'm talking about is material for a fiction story I've got going on.
I’ve been writing fiction since I was 13 years old. I’ve never once worked so hard on a single character or specific story as I have been since the Daytona 500 of 2010. In 2006, I created a character and a story – I’ve changed the protagonist’s journey a lot since then and finally, this past NASCAR season, my story his skyrocketed from fantasy to notes to 1st, 2nd, 3rd and now 4th draft. The story is taking on a new direction and it’s all thanks to Junior Nation, Red Sox Nation and the journalist who write for NASCAR, especially the women. I have more than the required 120 pages for a movie and I’m sure I could easily bang out 300 to 400 pages for a novel.
Then there’s the question of legality. When can a writer include an already established celebrity into their story? There are many thoughts to that one; I was told by two professional writers from my school (New York Film Academy) that I cannot add famous people in my story; it turns the producers off because that means they have to work harder to get the celebrity involved then it's going to cost a lot of money if the celeb agrees to be a part of it and it also means taking a chance of the said celebrity either not liking what you wrote or them accusing you of misquoting or hey, misrepresenting them.
With the internet blogs and freedom to post whatever we want about who ever we want, it does raise a question as to whether or not there’s a law protecting celebs from a novelist’s or scriptwriter’s story. I read Jeff Gluck’s blog on SBNation the other day and Earnhardt said he didn’t even know he was an animated character on South Park last Wednesday. So again, I question what I was taught. I’m assuming the teacher’s at N.Y.F.A are simply protecting their a$$es and I’m sure they know what they’re talking about, one of them is after all a director for Saturday Night Live.
To conclude this blog before it turns into a novel, I’m just going to say that as I start draft 4 of my story, I’m going to take some chances by adding some real events and real drivers. I don't have my hopes up nor am I holding my breath because maybe a draft will find a way to his hands; it probably won’t; maybe he’ll like it or maybe he won’t (heck he can burn it at that point) or maybe, he’ll have ideas of his own to make my story work. But I do know for a fact that the story is not intended to misrepresent anything about Earnhardt, NASCAR or his fans and certainly won’t misrepresent Boston.
Are you a fiction story writer, novelists or screenwriter, and what have you been told about including celebrities in your story?