MONDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:
CHARACTER THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS
With MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS losing the war to Jim Carrey this weekend, I thought we'd take a look at another war movie - BLACKHAWK
DOWN... I had problems with the film. The
battle
scenes are very realistic, they make you feel like you're right there in the middle of the
fighting,
but I kept getting the characters mixed up. Sure, I knew Josh Hartnett and Ewan
MacGregor and
Tom Sizemore and the always good Bill Fichtner... but who were all of those other
guys? People
were getting killed right and left, and I had no idea who they were. Since I didn't know
them, their
deaths had no real effect on me. The guy that gets blown in half and the top half is still
alive and
talking? Gross, but not emotional. The guy who gets a mortar shell stuck in his gut and
might
actually explode? Gross, but again I didn't know him so I didn't care. The center piece
of the
film's end is a doctor (who I didn't know) bravely trying to keep a wounded soldier (who I
didn't
know) alive. When he dies, the music tells me I'm supposed to think it's a sad moment,
but the
moment itself has no effect at all on me. That guy was a stranger - it's sad he's dead,
but I didn't
know anything about him.
When Ebert & Roeper reviewed the film, Roeper complained that he didn't know
any of the
characters enough to care and that was Jay Leno's complaint when the two were
guests on his
show. Ebert countered by pointing out that the thumbnail character introductions in the
beginning
of BLACKHAWK DOWN turned all of the characters into war movie cliches - did
Roeper (and
Leno) want more of that? That was a good point - those quick introductions where we
get a few
seconds to peg this guy as the family man who can't wait to get home to his wife and
that guy as
the religious one and that guy as the ladies man turn all of the characters into
caricatures. The
whole thing is like that joke about the two people in the restaurant complaining that the
food here
is lousy... and they give you such small portions. What's a writer to do?
First - realize that there are more choices that "more cliche or less character".
Anytime both
answers are wrong you need to come up with some more answers! We agree that we
need more
character in the story, but there is more than one way to add character. The reason why
the
thumbnails don't work is because the writer is trying to cram a whole character into a
couple of
seconds of screen time. The result is exaggerated character - cliche. A better method
would be to
use relationships to gradually expose character a little at a time. We don't need to know
everything about a character in the first minute they are on screen - we can LEARN
about
character as the story unfolds.
But this is a war story, you say. After the first few minutes, it's wall-to-wall battle
scenes, No
room for characterization. Should we just stop the war so that a character can reminisce
about
their home life? Nope - that's taking us back to thumbnail sketch territory. We're going
to expose
character an entirely different way - through relationships.
A great example of this method can be found in James Cameron's ALIENS. There
are a
dozen Space Marines in the film, plus Ripley, plus Bishop the android, plus Paul
Reiser's
Burke... yet we have a pretty good idea who all of them are. Each character is shown
through
their relationship with another character who contrasts with them. Because conflict is
the fuel for
story, by pairing all of the characters with their opposites Cameron ends up exposing
character
through conflict, PLUS creating a character arc for each of them. As the are forced to
work with
each other through the crisis (the aliens), we learn more about the characters as their
relationships
evolve. When android hating Ripley first meets Bishop she freaks:
RIPLEY
You never said anything about an
android being here!
BISHOP
I prefer the term "artificial person"
myself. Is there a problem?
As the crisis intensifies, Ripley and Bishop are forced to work
together. When the team needs someone to remote land the shuttle, Ripley realizes the
right man
for the job isn't a man at all - it's Bishop. As the aliens take out team members
one-by-one,
Bishop, Ripley and Newt are the three left standing.. By the end of the film Bishop save
her life,
creating an emotional moment when she puts her hand on his shoulder and
says:
RIPLEY
You did okay, Bishop.
A simple line, but given emotional power from the set up 90
pages earlier. We have seen the relationship between these two grow over the course
of the film -
we have seen them set aside their differences and actually become friends. So when
Bishop gets
torn in half, we forget he's an android... we even forget he's an actor... Bishop has
become our
friend just as he's become Ripley's friend. Unlike the man torn in half in BLACKHAWK
DOWN, we care about Bishop.
Ripley also has a relationship with steely calm Marine Hicks (Michael Biehn) which
helps
expose both characters. Ripley is the civilian, Hicks is the ultimate Marine - lots on
contrast
between the two. Ripley is scared, Hicks is always cool. We would never know that
Hicks has a
sense of humor if it weren't for his relationship with Ripley. Initially Hicks objects to
taking
Ripley along on the mission, but as the conflict intensifies, their relationship grows. A
key
moment is when Hicks shows her how to use the pulse rifle - Ripley has gone from
baggage
Hicks thought he'd have to carry to an equal.
Hicks and Hudson are also paired in some scenes to show character. When they're
introduced both are in uniform and almost impossible to tell apart ("Yes, Hicks?"
"Hudson, sir.
He's Hicks.") but when the conflict erupts we can see that these two are very different
characters.
Hicks is always cool and quiet, Hudson develops a motor-mouth when he's
scared.
HUDSON
Well that's great! That's just
fucking great, man. Now what the
fuck are we supposed to do, man?
We're in some pretty real shit now!
HICKS
Are you finished?
We can see how calm Hicks is by comparing him to how
panicked
Hudson is. They bring out the character in each other whenever they are together... so
Cameron
keeps throwing them together in scene after scene. We may not know anything about
Hudson's
life back on Earth, but his behavior creates a fully fleshed out character. We really know
him.
When he's screaming "Game over man! Game over!" we laugh - but we also feel his
panic. We
care about him. Both Hudson and Hicks are real people because we've learned about
them a little
bit at a time as their relationship has developed over the course of the script.
But do we need to like the characters to care about them? The two most unlikable
characters
in ALIENS are tough female Marine Vasquez and wimpy new Lieutenant Gorman
("How many
drops is this for you, Lieutenant?" "Thirty-eight... simulated."). She's completely
antagonistic,
he's so pathetic it's hard to care about him. So Cameron sticks them together. They are
opposites,
and the contrast between the two brings their characters to the surface. Their
relationship evolves
throughout the script - hitting highs and lows. Nothing could be lower than when
Gorman
crashes the Armored Personnel Carrier - trapping them on the alien planet.
VASQUEZ
He's fucking dead!
She grabs Gorman by the collar, hauling him up roughly,
ready to pulp him with her other fist.
VASQUEZ
Wake up pendejo! I'm gonna kill you,
you useless fuck!
Hicks pushes her back. Right in her face.
HICKS
Hold it. Hold it. Back off right now.
Vasquez releases Gorman. His head smacks the deck.
Vasquez is aggressive, Gorman is ineffective (mostly
because he's
unconscious in that scene). But the script keeps throwing the two together, and each
brings out
the character in the other. This pays off when Vasquez and Gorman are trapped in an
air
duct together as an army of alien warriors approaches. She gives him the "power
greeting" she
only shares with a chosen few to show her respect. Gorman returns the greeting and
hands her
two grenades, keeping two for himself. When the creatures descend upon them, the
two who
were once enemies die together... as friends. And we care about both of them - we've
come to
know them and even like them. All through the power of relationships.
If BLACKHAWK DOWN had scuttled the thumbnail sketches and used relationships
to
expose characters, we may not have known which soldier has kids and which soldier's
dad is
overbearing and which soldier joined the army to help people... but we'd certainly know
WHO
they were even if we didn't know the details of their lives. We'd know what kind of
people they
were, even if we had no idea whether they could play the piano or not
And when they died, we'd care.
MY BLOG!
SCRIPT SECRETS STORE - time to monkey around!
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