When it comes to my family, Halloween is all about traditions: carving jack o’lanterns, picking crisp fall apples, and going door-to-door in costume with three-time Oscar winning actor Daniel-Day Lewis.
While it’s important to have fun during trick-or-treating, it’s also key to stay safe and manage the volatile emotions of a retired method actor who’s taking the holiday way too seriously. Here are a few guidelines to ensure a spooktacular and critically acclaimed Halloween:
- Make sure you give Daniel a chance to use the restroom before you begin. Depending on his costume, he might later insist something like “Optimus Prime doesn’t use the bathroom,” even if he really needs to go. You don’t want the star of There Will Be Blood to lose control of his bowels in the middle of your cul-de-sac. But that’s what he gets for drinking so many milkshakes.
- Rather than sticking to the traditional “Trick-or-treat, smell my feet,” Daniel has a tendency to ad lib each time he rings a doorbell. If he is feeling particularly verbose, you may only hit two or three houses the entire night. Other children in your group may get impatient, so encourage them to contribute to the scene using their own mastery of the Stanislavski Method.
- Some households get offended when Daniel refuses to accept any of their candy. Gently defuse the situation by explaining that Daniel is very picky about what he takes. In particular, he doesn’t do “rubbish like sequels or Butterfingers.”
- Stay away from houses that simply give out loose handfuls of change — especially pennies. Daniel will have an existential crisis if he sees too many portraits of Abraham Lincoln at once.
- Daniel may get tired toward the end of the night and demand that you carry him. Remind Daniel that he’s a big boy who can walk by himself, and that the production of My Left Foot wrapped about thirty years ago.
- There are plenty of rotten prankers out and about on Halloween, egging houses and tee-peeing yards. Daniel is quite impressionable, so keep him away from bad influences like Marty Scorsese or P.T. Anderson. He’ll do just about anything that those boys tell him to.
- The razor blade in the lollipop is basically an urban legend, but you really should inspect Daniel’s candy when you get back home. If he were to badly cut his mouth open while dressed as Dracula, he would probably say, “I actually like mouthful of blood because I am vampire. I do not vant an ambulance!”
- Once bedtime arrives and Daniel finally breaks character, he will deliver an impassioned monologue about how even though all the creatures he saw tonight were make-believe, the monsters inside us all are very real. Go into your closet full of Academy Award replicas and hand him one as you tuck him in.
- If at any point in the day, Daniel announces that he is permanently stepping away from trick-or-treating, just ignore it. You know he’ll probably be back again next year.
Dan Fitzpatrick 