Film Courage: What's more important to story, the hero or the villain?
Donald F. Glut, Writer, Film Director, and Screenwriter: I think the villain is usually
more colorful, the hero can be very bland without the villain, you don't have a hero.
You’ve got to give the hero something to do that he can triumph them, triumph over at the end.
You don't want the villain to be, I mean people say that I would like to see the villain win for
a change but they don’t, it would leave them unfulfilled, unsatisfied missing something
and a kill a hero can be pretty he can be pretty boring actually but if you give them heroic things
to do that sort of livens them up but the villain can be outrageous in your flamboyant
well excuse me way over the top and a hero can't really do then unless you're doing a satire or
a Lampoon or something how does the villain reflect the hero well some some characters like
Batman and the Joker a lot of people point it they're really kind of reflections of each
other one is both they're both obsessive they're both go to no ends but there are not yin and yang
Frankenstein's monster and Victor Frankenstein has created is looked at the same way kind of like
two personifications Jekyll and Hyde where juggling height is all in the same person
I think that's a true to a lot of heroes that they are simply in some ways finding themselves
would you argue that the antagonist should be twice as strong as the hero it's always
best to make the the antagonist the villain the bad guy who have more advantages than the hero
either they're physically stronger in the case of superman they you know they were there what we're
going to do we can do anything you know nothing has happened that's when they came up with the
idea for Kryptonite and the old Superman radio show and then Lex Luthor was this Evil Genius
so he made up in brains with Superman made up in physical attributes yeah because you don't
want to have a hero that can just punch the guy and that's the end of it and you got to give him
adversaries that either smarter or more powerful than he or she happens to be give them challenges
that are even like a Greek mythology and everything the when the heroes will go on these
Odysseys and things they would have to be up against things that were greater than they were
other things otherwise they're not really so much as the hero they're more of a just of a bully you
know and there's a big difference how would you teach me to write an antagonist well I think I
learned how to write Heroes and the antagonists just by having a huge background of reading a lot
seeing a lot of movies seeing a lot of television shows listening to our radio shows reading
mythology and I'm a big fan of Joseph Campbell. He there was a series years ago on PBS that
who was it Bill Bill Moyer yeah Bill Moyer moderated that was just brilliant and
you know things about symbolism and things I wrote a book on symbolism years ago as an assignment
where I was working for a comic book company and they said we want you to put as many of these
values in as possible and little things like if you have the hero on in a ship and it's a voyage
going to this mysterious land you should have him if you can have him traveling from east to
west and said I mean west to east instead of east to west because what that sets up in your mind
of the reader or if you're watching it on the screen is if you're going east to west it's
contrary to the way you normally read a book your eyes go unless you're in from some exotic country
or something your eyes go from left to right and going against a grain sort of unconsciously
puts in your in your your mind the idea of conflict coming up and I try to do that as
much as I can I was making a this werewolf movie and my producer couldn't understand why
I wanted the evil villainous who was like the queen of the werewolves to have dark hair and
the innocent virginal well not so version but the innocent good girl who gets sucked into her cult
or her pack be blonde I said it's it's just like in the old Flash Gordon movie cereal when they had
Dale Arden his Flash's girlfriend with blonde hair and the evil queen Aura with black hair and they
which it was a complete switch from the comic strip it was opposite in the comic strip and I
said that's going to make people accept her more as the villain it's like in western movies with
the with the bad guy convoys with the black hats and the hero with the white hats the same thing
do you spend more time writing the hero or the villain well when I'm writing a story
I think it all just comes out in the wash and I just in a linear way go through the story
and if the villain has more pages or screen time that's the way the the plot worked out
I don't think I know self-consciously think about it I have more fun with the villains of course I
get you get to say a lot more outrageous things and do a lot more outrageous things and a lot
of times the hero is doing things defensively because it's the the villain who's initiating
the Mayhem or creating the threat you know so the heroes villains are always more fun
why is evil important in storytelling well without evil
and again if you wanna distill that a little bit just say negativity
is he as important in stories because without it you don't your story doesn't really work
unless you're writing some just some goodie tutu and that's going to be on
one of the cable networks you know that doesn't have any conflict in it you gotta have
good versus evil I mean that goes back to morale morality plays Greek mythology it's a
it's just it's just drama it's what drama is all about good versus evil or at least conflict if
it's a story about us school teacher or school principal and it's a school base he's got to
have some kind of a opposition whether it's the school is going to be closed down and you've got
to raise money some kind of a challenge something something to do to be become heroic what are your
favorite hero versus villain battles well you mean like in movies and things yeah or in a comic book
one one of my favorite movie battles of hero against villain I don't think villainy has
been ever has been ever I mean sure you can have movies of Hitler doing horrible things but I'm
turning just personality villainy and personality heroics was the climactic sword fight between
Errol Flynn his Robin Hood and Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy of Ginsburg or whatever that was
that five was just so and it wasn't that involved it was a sword fighting up and down these stairs
and they're down these days I forget which it was and also this fight between Zorro
as played by Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone again in The Mark of Zorro those are
perfect fights they end with the hero winning they don't leave up in the air like some of the
science fiction movies now the hero they just is legally open-ended and to me that's not the way
the heroes Village be they there's a scene in the original or that Boris Karloff Frankenstein too
where the monster and his creator confront each other out in the mountains and they just stare at
each other and that moment even though nothing is happening in it you just know there's the
conflict between the well if you want to call the Frankenstein Henry Frankenstein a heroic figure
at least he's trying to destroy the monster he created you know and but that looked at the two
of them exchanges is wonderful do most viewers or readers identify with the villain or the hero
I don't know who I identify with I like to say identify with the hero
and I like in the in the novel Frankenstein though where everybody identified if I was with
the monster because you're going through this awkward period of their teenage years and all
this then the misunderstood and everything I was asked by the BBC ones I was doing a an interview
for them on Frankenstein and they asked me who I you know about identifying with the monster and
I thought about I said wait a minute I never identified with the monster I identified with
Victor who created the monster even though he's a vile character in the book the reason being
he actually did some things he actually made some things I mean what he created got out of
hands but he did it and I was ever since I was a kid I like to make things I like to see things
being from start to finish being created that's really I love to tell stories I love to make you
know with crafts and things and I was always doing that sort of thing so I think I in that
one case more people consider the months are put upon and all this I mean and Victor Frankenstein
being the actual villain in that story I guess I identified with the villain in that story.