Film Courage: What is your favorite chapter in the book [Jill’s book THE NUTSHELL TECHNIQUE:
Crack the Secret of Successful Screenwriting]?
One that you are especially proud of or a topic that just really gets you going?
Jill Chamberlain, Script Consultant/Author/Writer: One of my favorites is the ‘Flaw’ because
I think the flaw is so important [Chapter 9 in the book - Flaw].
I think it’s the longest chapter in the book and I loved writing about it.
It just is an area that…it’s the one tool that I can give a new writer right off of
the bat that will make a huge improvement.
And a lot of writers don’t know anything about it.
It really is the most fundamental important thing for story building to realize the importance
of having a really strong flaw and it’s a rookie mistake sometimes I see that they
didn’t even know that there protagonist was supposed to have a flaw, right?
We are not used to thinking about our heroes as having flaws.
They are not flawed!
Everyone else is the one that is messed up.
But if everyone else is screwed up then you are making your protagonist just a victim
of these things happening.
It’s a deeper level to think about what is the flaw in them that is actually making
their problem worse.
That is one of my favorite things to talk about with writers, to explore.
It’s just one of the most fundamental things to understanding who your character is is
that one single thing - the flaw.
So it’s the longest chapter I try to explore it the most and I think it’s one of the
things that will give writers the most yield as far as understanding story and characters
to really give some thought to what is my protagonist central flaw.
Film Courage: Are there certain movies you recommend that they watch which show an especially
flawed character?
Jill: Oooh…I love movies with flawed characters!
Film Courage: LEAVING LAS VEGAS?
Jill: Hmmmm…I haven’t Nutshelled that movie but I would argue that it would be a
tragedy.
I would argue that it wouldn’t have a satisfying enough second act upturn.
But I’d have to go back and look at it to see.
I like movies that are more technically comedies so structurally they have a happy ending but
they have really flawed characters because it’s really easy and not very interesting
to have likable characters.
But how much more delicious is it to have a really unlikable character and then by the
end you have us cheering for them.
That’s really good writing.
So I’ll point out one movie that I love is the movie THE VERDICT.
It’s a Paul Newman movie and this guy, he’s a lawyer (you’ve heard of ambulance chasers?),
this guy is a hearse chaser.
He crashes funerals under the presents of having known the deceased and he just finds
them in obituaries.
He preys on these unsuspecting widows trying to get work.
He’s such a hardcore alcoholic that he can’t pick up his morning shot with his donut without
the shakes.
He’s got to lean over at one point to drink that.
At one point he punches a woman in the face.
The character is unbelievably unlikeable but by the end of the movie we are rooting for
this guy.
That is amazing screenwriting, that’s amazing screenwriting, right?
If you can get us to care about this guy.
And we do, we really care.
That is the depth of how great the screenwriting is and how great the performance is (it’s
one of Paul Newman’s greatest performances).
So I love unlikable characters that you can get us to like by the end.
That tells you something.
So really flawed characters like that.
Another interesting movie to me (a more recent example) is FLIGHT.
For me what was really interesting…so we have another alcoholic character (they make
good characters), nicely flawed characters.
They are great.
And by the way, alcoholism is not a flaw for our purposes.
You want to find what is the underlying flaw.
So it’s going to be different for different alcoholics.
In THE VERDICT he has no sense of self worth.
In FLIGHT the alcoholic has this incredible sense of entitlement.
So it’s going to be different.
You want to dig deeper.
What is the flaw underneath it?
And what I love about FLIGHT is has the most…it’s a wonderful example of the most surprising
yet incredibly satisfying third act.
I don’t want to give spoilers if someone hasn’t seen it.
But all just say that the character the protagonist is in…we want him to get off scott free
because we are rooting for this guy even though he’s an alcoholic and he’s got a lot of
issues and we kind of now he shouldn’t go free.
And things don’t go the nest possible way but it’s incredibly surprising and satisfying
and so it has a really unusual (particularly for a Hollywood movie) a really unusual third
act and ending where we have a character under outward circumstances you wouldn’t say on
paper that sounded like a happy ending and yet he’s the happiest we’ve seen him the
whole movie even though things didn’t go his way.