Film Courage: Can we think of a film that has done quite well where if the character
hadn’t been so interesting or their transformation so stark…that if you hadn’t plugged in
that character, the story would be no good.
It was too simple or the story didn’t really work.
But because the character’s journey was so profound, it resonated with people?
Scott Myers, DePaul University Professor/Screenwriter/Creator Gointothestory.blcklst(dot)com: I think it’s
like almost any story.
I mean if the protagonist isn’t compelling, if we don’t have an emotional connection
to them, then what is the point right?
Like I’m a huge Pixar fan.
I’ve got sons that are 9 1/2 years apart and came along at a time where I was basically
forced to see every Pixar movie.
I say forced because they came out and the kids wanted to see them which was just a wonderful
blessing for me because Pixar is just phenomenal storytellers.
And I know because I know Mary Coleman who is the head of the story department there
at Pixar that nothing gets green lit there unless they know clearly what those points
of universal connection there are to the audience.
How is the audience going to tie into the story emotionally?
So I would say that any great movie or any great story, that traffics in that.
I mean there has got to be something going on even if it’s an anti-hero movie where
there is something human there.
Where we can connect with, that we can relate to.
TAXI DRIVER for example (Travis Bickle played by Robert De Niro).
Here’s a guy who is lonely.
He wants to go on a date.
He is living…it’s just loneliness right there.
Everybody at some point has been lonely or felt like an outsider or an outcast and so
that is enough right there that I’m interested in the guy to see how he is existing in one
of the most heavily populated places in the United States (Manhattan, New York).
So I would say that is absolutely critical.
You’ve got to find that point of emotional connection.
I’d say it even goes further than that.
You as a writer have to find how you are emotionally connected to the character because that is
the kind of passion that can manifest itself on the page where the words lift up off of
the page and into the imagination of the reader because you are so dialed into that character
that their experience infuses your own writing.
So it is absolutely critical.
People go to movies to think yes, be entertained yes.
But I think fundamentally they go to movies to feel something.
Film Courage: Well if we take slightly older movies, ones that had Humphrey Bogart (THE
MALTESE FALCON, CASABLANCA, etc.), how do we feel a connection even though we don’t
see ourselves as his character type?
His characters always had lots of confidence.
Maybe they were a little more jaded or cynical (they were always the truth tellers).
How are we tapping into those same Humphrey Bogart characters.
Scott: Okay so let’s take CASABLANCA which is the number one script on the WGA [Writers
Guild of America] Top 101 Greatest Screenplays which is ironic because they never finished
the script.
They never really had a complete script.
But what is his issue [Rick Blaine played Humphrey Bogart]?
He is in a state of disunity at the beginning.
He started off as a loyalist.
He was a passionate believer in good and the right.
He fought for the side of the loyalists in the Spanish Civil War.
He falls in love with Ilsa [played by Ingrid Bergman].
They have this wonderful ideals experience in Paris.
Then the Germans are coming into town.
He goes to the train station, she doesn’t show up.
His heart is broken.
So he goes to Casablanca and starts this business.
He drinks alone.
He plays chess alone.
He does have some sort of romantic dalliance with that one woman but there is no real connection
there.
And he’s a complete cynic at this point.
He has cut himself off from that idealistic part of himself that used to exist.
So that whole hard-boiled Humphrey Bogart “I came for the waters.
I was misinformed.”
That whole thing right?
That’s his mask, that is his cynical mask, that is his public persona.
Inside is his idealism, is his passion for life.
It’s still there but it’s buried.
Per [Carl] Jung it’s in the darkness of the unconscious, it needs to come out.
Which is why it happens outside as fate.
Who shows up and where?
Ilsa!
And he says “Of all the lousy gin joints in the world.”
Right?
Yes, it’s like the biggest coincidence in the world or is it?
It’s like fate.
Fate determines that she shows up there because he’s got to deal with his past.
She is clearly the attractor character for the protagonist right?
And so how do we relate to that?
How many of us have been jilted?
How many of us have had our hearts broken in a relationship?
That’s pretty universal.
I suspect that 90 percent of people have been in a situation where they have had their hearts
broken.
We can relate to that with this guy.
When you really boil it down on a human level, that’s what this guy is dealing with.
For all that bluster and all that business savvy and everything else and that cynicism,
he’s a guy who had his heart broken.
So there is a universal point of connection.
Then these set of characters show up.
There is Major Strasser who represents the Germans.
He is the nemesis character.
Because Rick’s got these letters of transit and originally he’s thinking about taking
he and Ilsa (once they connect) he’s going to take her and off they go to Casablanca.
But there’s the mentor figure, Victor Laszlo.
Who knows that Rick has that idealistic side.
There is a great conversation that they have where Laszlo comes in from a meeting and he’s
had his wrist injured and so Rick and he stand at the bar.
And Laszlo tells him as much, basically intimates that he knows that this guy can come back
and be on the side of the good side, on the right.
And you’ve got Captain Renault who is one of the great tricksters of all time.
“I’m shocked…shocked to find there is gambling going on here?”
He plays all sides for his own good.
So in the end Rick does get in touch with his idealism and he does reconnect with that
part of himself because he moves from selfish to selfless.
He gives the letters of transit and Laszlo and Ilsa go off and he is contributing to
the side of the good.
But the main point (circling back to your point), we related to him because he’s had
his heart broken and that’s a universal thing.
So even thought it’s Sam Spade [protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 30’s novel, The Maltese
Falcon] in effect there in CASABLANCA, he’s still a guy who has been crushed romantically
and emotionally.