Christopher Riley, Screenwriter, Author, and Instructor: And as we turned into the
entrance to the ER we looked at each other and I think Kathy was the one who said “In this moment
our lives are changing forever.”
Film Courage: You and Kathy have a new book that just came out.
Christopher: The Defining How Writers and Actors Build Characters.
Film Courage: Great and we're wondering if there are certain
chapters or a portion of the book that you can reference? First off
a moment or moments that damage or cripple a character. Do you have any references?
Christopher: We do because that's something that is critically important in storytelling because
we're so often dealing with characters who are damaged or crippled so Kathy and I talk about
from the film Finding Nemo the way Nemo's dad Marlin is damaged by the tragic loss of his
family to a barracuda but we also try to share some of our own defining moments because we
urge storytellers writers actors directors to delve into their own histories to find
the moments that have defined them in this case moments that have damaged wounded crippled them.
In the history of our family when we think of defining moments there's one moment that
stands above all the others and it was the moment when
our son Peter as a five and a half year old little boy was diagnosed with a brain tumor and
our pediatrician put the MRI films in our hands and said you need to drive to UCLA medical center
a brain surgeon will be waiting for you and he'll explain everything
and so Kathy and I got in the car and oh and the doctor said “And don't stop anywhere on the way.”
We put our son in the car, drove to the ER and as we turned into the entrance to the ER we looked at
each other and I think Kathy was the one who said “In this moment, our lives are changing forever”
and that was true. We now in our family talk about the moment before Peter got sick
and we talk about the moment after Peter's brain tumor. My daughter's life experience was different
from that moment on her best friend and brother suddenly was out of her life and in the hospital
and she wasn't seeing him and when she did finally see him after surgery he was changed
the tumor was gone but he didn't speak didn't walk he looked to her like a monster and
for Peter that was a defining moment it was a moment that crippled him that made him and Peter
many years later is alive but as a result of the surgery radiation which isn't good
for little boys brains and chemotherapy he's kind of a real-life forest gump pure of heart
and and he knows what love is and he struggles intellectually
so that was a moment of wounding for him it was the beginning of the death of the dreams
that we had for him we had to find new dreams to replace the ones that died and it took a long time
though we were the ones who were dragged kicking and screaming to recognizing
the dreams that were not going to happen now for him
even as we approached his 16th birthday and
people his age were going to get driver's licenses
none of us wants to live in a world where Peter Riley has a driver's license because he just
cannot process all of the information fast enough and he would get it right 95 percent of the time
but that's not that's not enough on the streets of la and so I had to eventually say to him Peter
you're not going to get a driver's license and so he's found a new dream he heard about the Google
car and so he's all about a self-driving car as soon as he can get one he wants a car that's
going to take him wherever it can take him we had to absorb a lot of of losses but a day came when
Peter had struggled along in school got to high school
and in California there's a test you have to pass in order to get a diploma called the California
high school exit exam it's a standardized test so no matter how much people at the school loved him
and helped him there was no way he was going to get a diploma if he didn't pass this
test and I remember the day that the results came in the mail and I just heard Kathy screaming in
the other part of the house she'd open the envelope and he had passed by like
a whisker and and so we got to go to his high school graduation
and I’ve been in high school and I know how it works people applaud based on how popular you are
when your name is called and so my family had all come to his graduation and I was telling
everybody you've got to like cheer your brains out because we have to be as loud as possible
and Kathy was just saying oh I just I don't care about that I just hope he doesn't fall
off the stage and they called his name and the entire senior class came to their feet
applauding because they all recognized what he had overcome in order to earn that diploma
Kathy and I look at that experience as a defining moment for us that was a moment of
healing it was a moment where we got back some of what we had lost and Peter still struggles
he had another defining moment where just in an afternoon he lost his hearing
and that happened recently further isolated him and made his life harder made our lives
harder it's really hard to raise your voice so that he can hear us and not feel angry when you're
shouting it's your body won't disconnect shouting and anger and so we're always struggling with
like how do I talk loudly enough for him to hear me and not have to apologize for it afterwards
we are not unique in experiencing moments of loss one of the things that experiencing loss has
sensitized us to is that everyone experiences losses and often those losses happen
out of view they're not visible when we go to the grocery store
and we believe it's true of our characters as well
I think that you can't work with characters in this way without becoming more compassionate
without becoming aware of what people are suffering and so in that way I hope this book is
is a humanizing force within our industry and helps people gain more compassion for one another
and also for their characters and maybe through their characters even the audience will will grow
in the kind of compassion and sensitivity and humanity that movies helped to bring to me our
business could probably do with some of that our world could probably do with some of that
Do you have a favorite chapter you and Kathy definitely I
you know I wrote a book about script format a few years ago and
this is a very different kind of book because so much of our heart
is on the page I think probably the the chapter that guides the reader through
discovering their own defining moments is my favorite chapter it's the chapter where we share
many of our own moments sometimes big moments like the brain tumor moment but also
smaller quieter moments that have also shaped us we do that as an encouragement to our readers to
be willing to look and find their own defining moments and we also do it as a way to model
what some of those moments look like and how you might describe them
I think this book in some ways is my response to seeing ordinary people all those years ago
experiencing a film that reached out and made connection with me as a human being
and this book is me reaching back out into the world to
connect in the way that I was connected with to help readers feel less alone
but this is a very specific group of readers these are these are our filmmakers these are
our actors and writers and directors and novelists these are the people who tell stories in our time
so I consider it a massive privilege to get to have
a voice helping to equip storytellers to tell stories that that will help connect us
was there any story you the two of you struggled to maybe leave in or leave out
was there one that you felt whether I mean you shared some incredibly personal stuff just here
and I think it could be beneficial for so many people but there's a risk right and and that's
yeah yeah I think that Kathy struggled with how much to tell about her relationship with her
dad which was not warm and close he he was a dad who never ever said the words to her I love you
and she wants to honor her dad her dad was a good man but he was not a warm man and so she struggled
with whether to put that story in her out of the book and ultimately the stories in the book
she did it in a way that was honoring to him she actually drew on what she words she said
at his funeral and for me I think speaking of this moment that I can't remember a moment
that seems to be of abuse in my early early childhood is that was one that
I hesitated to include and wanted to be very kind of wise about how how I told that story
but it's also one of the stories i'm most interested in sharing because I think it could be
somehow encouraging or beneficial to someone else and I think I found my way to understanding that
story through films and documentaries that I identified with and I was I was feeling
really powerful emotions watching documentaries in ways that didn't make sense to me that I
should be reacting that way and watching those films ended up leading me into a
counseling dialogue that has like really helped me put my finger on the lies
that had had crippled me and allowed me then to figure out what was actually true
so that's my hope is that in in sharing these stories stories become gifts that we give to
a reader to an audience and stories work in a way that is almost magical I can't explain how
stories work how each of us can hear the same story read the same book watch the same movie
and we connect with it in our in our own way we're moved by it in our own way we make very personal
application so as we send these stories out into the world I don't know what what will happen
but I’m hopeful and I look forward to getting some emails in return.