Film Courage: What are the right ways and wrong ways to introduce a main character?
Troy DeVolld, Producer/Author: I said earlier that backstory isn't always story.
If you are slavishly devoted to spelling out everything that's happened to a person up to
the point that you meet them for the first time, it's a huge drag. You've saddled them
with a weight that is so heavy, the explanation of themselves that you can't just invest in whatever
moment you're introduced to them in if you watch a Bond film and you've never seen the James Bond
film before and the first shot you see is this guy jumping out of the helicopter on a parachute and
they were I bet you're wondering how I got here well my name is James and I went to school here
and this happened and then one day same somebody came up to me and said do you want to be in a
high school program for secret agent wannabes and I said sure and it was okay but it took a
long time and I wasn't really good with a gun at first but now I'm amazing I have a license to kill
and then the parachute comes back to you would hate that
so this whole thing about backstory and knowing everything about somebody before you see them
is is a is not a great way to introduce a character introducing a character during a
moment in which they are vulnerable is immediately engaging look at shows or look at movies Diary of
a Wimpy Kid I'm trying to think of an example that I would give you myself but I don't have one that
immediately comes to mind I'm 47 shows and several hundred episodes in I don't remember them all
sometimes I watch TV and I go I forgot I worked on that it's very rare but it does happen
thanks for reruns of shows I did 15 years ago that somebody said we'll never be able to re-air
it because there's no aftermarket for reality shows and that's why you can't have portable
pension and health through the Writer's Guild because we don't want to pay for something we
can only air one time then they run a marathon of it every Saturday for a year and a half
but I'll keep my personal wounds out of this because that's all backstory.
Film Courage: What is a character's flaw and why is it important for us to know that in the story?
Troy: The character flaw often is just is something to help you as the viewer identify
with a character that's why we have them I'm not perfect so I don't want to watch people who
are perfect when you watch movies Clueless where you watch movies Mean Girls you get to see what's
wrong with every character and the other thing the character flaw does is it allows you to project
onto them imperfect people that you already know in your life and you go oh that's so and so
that's the person who used to talk about me all the time in high school
and I always wished something would happen to them somebody would confiscate their burn book
it's real character for character flaws make characters identifiable to the laymen who are
watching the film what if somebody's too flawed in a movie if they're too flawed in the movie
to a point where I can't root for them that is a problem and I'm trying to think of a good example
if you watch if you watch a movie where somebody is so relentlessly crap at everything they do
you're not excited for them you don't root for them anymore Clouseau, the thing in the The Pink
Panther films that works with him is he is a bumbling idiot but he has regard for himself
and he wants to be seen as very successful that we can all identify with and that overtakes the flaw
so you you realize that this is a person who can fail if you don't think someone can
fail you can't identify with them and there are no stakes in place for them
during that film is a person who is nothing but a string of successes what a snooze
even in in a Bond film every once in a while somebody gets away on their little glider or
whatever and you're well he's going to get him the next time he's not going to get him
this time he's escaped so now we've got three more movies to watch to see if he ever gets to that guy
what's your favorite flawed character oh man
there are there are there are so many I think Peter Sellers as Clouseau is
pretty good Chance The Gardener who in being there who also was played by Peter Sellers is
a flawed character who is just not particularly mentally with it and he keeps stumbling through
these situations that he somehow not only survives but turns to his own benefit Without Really Trying
it's a lot of outside forces on the character which is also something I don't normally but
he's so likable as someone who is just trying to get through and be emotionally sensitive
and involved with the people around him that that kind of that kind of wipes away every everything
I think you just identify them because what it's to be in a situation where you can't control
what's happening so you can still identify with them even though he's not mentally very with it
why is it important for the main character to have transformation because if nothing changes
what did you just watch how can you not be affected by an hour and a half or two hours
worth of things happening to you transformation is important because we also we ourselves hopefully
as life progresses I am not the same person I was at 10. thank God what a nervous little runt I was
wanting to be somebody notable no 12 year old should be talking to his friends about his legacy
what am I leaving behind what will people remember me for
and who cares I did but I mean that was that was a pretty big flaw I'm not a big fan of younger me
the younger me was afraid of everything because everything I did was an opportunity
for me to humiliate myself in front of my peers I wanted to be a cartoonist
or a comic book artist which nobody I knew wanted to be or wanted to do and because it
was a different interest I couldn't find common ground with him on it so I was just the weirdo who
was always drawing in class who in middle school was having his drawings stuck on the wall in the
back of the classroom by my homeroom teacher I was five it was just a very strange place to be
what are the biggest mistakes you see writers make with their main characters they don't
think about them or they are trying to write to an archetype that they're they're not
creating a fully rounded character they're just they're creating a hero that could be
interchangeable with any other hero from any other film what are some of these archetypes
well the superhero the secret agent the ones that seem to be basically the same in every movie
these these infallible folks or somebody who's completely based on another character
and that happens a lot I remember when Tarantino movies first became a big thing
I read a lot of screenplays that my friends had worked on that were just these very long talky
things and just the most important thing was that somebody said every five minutes
or three minutes or two minutes or 30 seconds and they were just trying to emulate
what they had seen other writers write the main characters weren't individual
they weren't personal to the writer they weren't identifiable as actual people
is their their toys that are being made to follow a routine for this purpose of writing a screenplay
that feels something else that someone else had seen do you think that was just a trend the way
people try to emulate found footage horrible films people do it all the time I mean anything
that's successful becomes the thing that you try to emulate and I remember when I was younger I
used to oh man I was trying to write Woody Allen movies and every character I had was some poor
schlubby little Underdog that was with somebody who was way too pretty for them and was always
worried that his world was going to collapse at any minute because the pretty girl was going to
figure out that he was nobody that was a lot of my own insecurity because Woody Allen films were
very close to me when I was younger because I just was so into at a very young age it was
this is what life is really for most people it's this is a guy who's successful on a certain level
but he never thinks that he's ever won he's not he's not necessarily an underdog all the time
but he is also not not a particularly confident lead and I that because I didn't I didn't feel I
was hot stuff when I was started writing do you think that he he was the voice for what most
people think but they just didn't want to give the appearance that they didn't have it figured out
and that thing yeah and there's that great moment in in Annie Hall where he's standing in line for
a movie and some bloviating jerk is talking about the film and he says oh well I I don't
think you're right I mean he says oh well let's ask Marshall mcluhan and he pulls in one of the
greatest media scholars in the history at the time to debate this guy in the lobby of a movie theater
about was I was it Triumph of the will was the movie that he had dragged her to go see forgotten
sorry it's been a long time to see some Lenny riefenstall film and this guy was talking about
just pulling stuff out of nowhere trying to make himself sound educated and just pulled
this guy over he's well Marshall let's ask Marshall McClellan about that I don't think
half of the people that watched the movie knew who Marshall mcluhan was
but it's it's fun it's a little Easter egg for intellectuals to be oh cool.