Film Courage: Passive versus active main character?
Paul Joseph Gulino, Associate Professor at Chapman University Dodge College of Film and
Media Arts: Okay a passive person.
This is an opportunity situation because most people assume and most movies are about somebody
who is active and they’ve got to do something.
But there are successful pictures where you have someone who is not and how does that
work that’s what you look for everybody says do this and this one doesn’t and it
still works, so why?
What did they do that compensated for it.
Because obviously if you have an active main character it’s easy to watch.
You are going to see if they get what they want or not and it’s all taken care of.
But what about that?
What you’ll see is there has to be conflict.
As long as there is conflict you will be okay because the conflict will create the suspense
and the tension that evades us if you are using dramatic tension as the main tool.
Not all movies do.
There will be ensemble pieces that will be following a bunch of different stories and
different characters and the unifying element is the milieu like DINER.
It’s about a diner, it’s what happens in a diner.
And as long as it’s understood by the audience that that is what they are watching it’s
a signal about what it’s about.
In fact that movie is a 1982 picture.
I believe the opening title is The Week Before Christmas 1959 (something like that).
Maybe 1958?
It’s about cults or something.
But it gives you a sense right away from the opening that it’s going to take place in
about a week.
It actually starts Christmas Eve and it actually takes place in a week.
So that frames it and then you have an ensemble and there are competitive conflicts with those
but the overall conflict doesn’t utilize dramatic conflict as bait so it doesn’t
have that.
You have first acts involving different characters and different subplots and a subplot has its
own act structure (generally).
There are a couple that kind of dangle off and disappear (the main ones do).
But if we go back to the most common form which is a character with an objective and
there is obstacles an active one helps.
There was a famous editor I was told about and I don’t know who it was but that the
secret to the craft is that all scenes are either chases or escapes.
People are either trying to get something or trying to avoid something.
And a passive character is just somebody who is trying to avoid something and the key is
to build a circumstance where that is hard.
Like LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, we talked about that.
This is a movie where we have a passive main character where all he wants to do is…it’s
an escape story because the whole town has united to not let him do what he wants to
do by very indirect means playing along.
But you can see the tension is there and surrounds the question is he ever going to get better?
So that would be the passive main character.
Or I like [ONE FLEW OVER THE] CUCKOO’S NEST.
What does this guy want to do, he wants to avoid doing any work.
He wants to play cards!
He doesn’t have any agenda beyond that.
But the way the story is constructed it’s the worst possible situation for his unique
characteristics which is that he is a noble person and he wants to help people and this
world crushes him.
So that’s something you can look for.
Film Courage: THE GRADUATE…sorry.
Paul: THE GRADUATE, he doesn’t have to pursue her but I do have an analysis in the book.
He doesn’t have to pursue her, she is in his lap.
There is nothing there.
But what keeps us suspended there is that it’s not an escape movie, it’s dramatic
irony.
You look at the middle part of that movie example where the second act is actually not
that long, it’s about equal in size with the first and third act.
The second act is really about whether he will get caught and you have comic irony played
with (and sometimes dramatic irony) where the mother inquires “Where do you go every
night?”
He cuts himself while shaving.
You can see he is not comfortable answering “Oh I just drive.”
Or in the hotel where everybody recognizes him and he is with the girl and Catherine
Ross the actress at the hotel where he’s been having his liaisons and everybody knows
him and he’s trying to conceal from her what was happening.
SUNSET BOULEVARD is a movie about this guy who is trying to hustle this older woman (he’s
a writer) and after a certain point, really from the middle of the movie on, he’s really
passive.
He’s kind of avoiding the world.
But it’s an escape in that way, he’s trying to stay away from everything and the world
intrudes.
But largely that one is sustain by a little bit of tension about somebody trying to not
let him escape and a voiceover narration which keeps us…it is a form of telegraphing “This
is about to happen.”
Or little did I know this would happen so that we are anticipating.
So the answer to the question can you have a passive main character look for where the
conflicts are.
If the character is passive and never wants to do anything, can you put them in a situation
that challenges that and makes them fight?