Christopher Riley, Author/Screenwriter: I really value stories told by writers who are able to
go out into life and experience it and come back and help make some sense of it.
Film Courage: Can you explain why a writer must understand their own story before they can
essentially understand any character stories that they may invent?
Chris: My wife Kathy took this idea of defining moments and pushed it
a step further by saying this isn't just about concocting moments for our characters it really
begins with us understanding our own story so she when she teaches young writers will say again and
again before you can understand your character story you have to understand your own story
so if we're going to understand the dynamic of the way moments can reshape us and transform us
the best place for us to look is in our own experience we have a front row seat
to our own invisible inner emotional life and so we've got to be willing to to draw on that but
before I can draw on my own life my own defining moments I have to actually locate them so while I
might not want to crack open an old dvd I have to crack open my own history if I'm going to tap into
the emotional riches that lie there for all of us because we all have in the words of author
Frederick Buechner wonderful and terrible things that have happened to us all and so
the idea is that we would look at those things so as an example a kind of moment that might define
us would be the moment a dream was born and so somebody who's pursuing acting directing writing
often that that's based around a dream and so the question that I would ask is
when was that dream born can you locate the moment of birth for that dream and sometimes
there is a moment and sometimes things emerge so gradually that we can't locate a moment we've got
glaciers that creep imperceptibly but then we also have glaciers when they reach the sea
that in dramatic fashion will cave a glacier in a moment
what we're interested in as dramatists are those dramatic moments so the tectonic plates of the
earth move milli meter by millimeter over the decades centuries millennia it's not
that interesting to watch but there is an instant when they rupture and we have an earthquake those
are the dramatic moments so there are times when changes happen in us by these gradual processes
and that we may not call those defining moments but there are these cataclysmic seismic moments
of change that make great stories but also really help to define how that change happened
so you might look back and say let me locate what is that moment where I became obsessed with
screenwriting when is that moment when I had to make movies or had to make television
we also think about characters and we think about people as being broken damaged
and so we can look back and say not only
I know I've limped like this for a long time but we can ask the question when did I get that limp
what was the moment of injury and if we understand that moment we get a great
story but we also understand maybe if this is how it happened with me
this may be how it happens with my characters as well
and I don't only want to tell bleak stories about people being injured and damaged I
am interested in a credible kind of hope and so I'm also interested in asking
like was there ever a time where I grew was there ever a time where I healed
that I overcame a fear what did that moment look like and if I understand that in myself
then I'm in a position to portray that in a character and that will be lifelike and
emotionally authentic because it's rooted in something that I've actually experienced so
I think that that is the vulnerability and the cost that comes with being a storyteller
is that we have to be willing to do that dive into our our own emotional story and be willing
disguised or not to to bring those stories forward and it's tough you go into a meeting at a studio
and you sit with a producer or an executive and you pitch this character arc and you say
I think this is where this character's damage comes from and what you're really telling is a
story from your own history you don't necessarily tell them that but if that gets shot down well
that's a little bit vulnerable that's sort of a rejection of you and your pain and your past
but there's also the possibility that the producer will say oh that's right something
like that happened to me and suddenly you've got a common point of reference for this character
and certainly when you are communicating with a big audience if those moments actually make
it to the screen you've created the possibility of connection with
thousands of people millions of people in a way that they really relate to and
when we connect at that deep level with characters we care we're invested emotionally in what happens
to them that's what gets us sitting on the edge of our seats it's not just that we've got spectacular
visual effects and characters zipping across the screen if I don't care about those characters
I'm bored with even the most spectacular visual effects if I identify with a character
and deeply care what happens to them then the tiniest movement either toward or away from danger
I feel viscerally so I think that's the value for writers in connecting with their
own defining moments so that they can then enrich their work with the insights they gain
some of our comments I've seen people mention that they didn't
have anything too tragic to write about but they were still able
to portray that in their stories and they said I didn't come from a dysfunctional family and I
had a great childhood but there's this myth that I have to be damaged in order to be a great writer
do you ever see people that are just too far on the spectrum either everything is just tragic
and what was me and there was no growth and then others that now everything was like Disneyland
I do encounter writers a lot who when I ask them to find moments that have shaped them
struggle with that and often discount their life experience as boring or low stakes and I had I had
one student who was not a 20 year old who came to me I knew that she was a pediatrician and but she
came to me with this problem of nothing's happened to me and I said well so your career is you work
in the hospital with desperately ill children and their families I think you have experienced
deeply emotional high stakes things and she thought about it and she said well
I guess it's true I am a 50 year old woman and no man has ever loved me
and I said then you you have lots of stories you have deep emotion but
i think we have to honor our own life experience and not dismiss it as unimportant
now somebody who only like who wallows in tragedy and damage I think that we I think that we want
more than stories of chaos I think we do want stories that help us make sense
of lives that often feel like chaos to us at least while we're in the middle of the story
and so I really value stories told by writers who are able to to go out into life and experience it
and come back and help make some sense of it even if it is not the neat Disney package
I think of Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country For Old Men
and there's not a ton of hope in that movie there's a line of I think it's Tommy Lee Jones
who says you can't stop what's coming referring to just the sort of growing evil that he was seeing
in the world as a sheriff or marshall in Texas that's kind of hopeless you can't stop what's
coming toward the end of the film Tommy Lee Jones character tells a story of riding out
into the wilderness I think it's a dream he has he's on a horse riding out into the
wilderness and his dad has ridden out ahead of him and has lit a campfire and he says
in his dream he's riding along and he catches sight far off in the distance of that campfire
and that's it that's all the hope that there is in that movie but it's enough to say somewhere out
there in the darkness there is warmth and there is light keep writing that can be for somebody who
experiences a lot of adversity that can ring true to them in a way that a Disney movie
never will that can be credible hope and so I value that kind of storytelling and I would push a
a writer who only sees bleakness to look harder in the same way that I would encourage
a writer who only sees happiness to be more honest with themselves and own up to whatever the pain
and disappointments have been that's hard to do I think sometimes that can only happen after some
therapy and after some years have passed and we can dare to crack open the package and look inside
but I think the audience craves that kind of
that kind of honesty you're trying to remember back to Patch Adams it's been a little bit since
I've seen it but speaking of a pediatrician I think at some point it's revealed why
the character wants to bring joy to these children and sort of this clown-esque type
yeah I think there's some tragic past which keeps it from being a silly movie it's not a silly movie
and it is it's the pain and the darkness that balances out the
the fact that he wears a clown nose to clinic he he knows something about pain and of course
Robin Williams knew a lot about pain was well acquainted with that and that undergirded
both his dramatic acting and as comic acting.