FRIDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:
CHARACTER CONNECTIONS
Now that we know whether Keifer survived this season's 24... and what Tony Almeda's fate is, do you wonder what they're going to do next year?
One cool thing to do with the DVDs is a marathon - start watching the first season DVDs at Midnight and watch the real time show in real time! Instead of being 24 individual episodes it will
become one epic 24 hour episode. Elements planted in an early episode can be seen
paid off in a later episode.
One thing you'll notice is the way characters are connected through theme and central
conflict. Whether you're creating a TV series or a feature film, all of your characters
serve some story purpose. They aren't just created at random, they are created for a
specific reason - to illustrate some aspect of theme or the central conflict (which are
connected). In my Supporting Characters Blue Book I have a chapter on the Rear
Window Theory - how each of the characters in REAR WINDOW illustrate a different
aspect of the relationship problem that Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly's characters are
dealing with. Each supporting character helps to tell the story and explore the theme.
The same is true with 24.
In the first season of 24 Keifer Sutherland plays a government security expert trying to stop the
assassination of America's first Black presidential candidate, Dennis Haysbert. Though
Sutherland is the star, the show frequently splits protagonist duties between the two
men - giving a great deal of time to Haysbert's campaign and the election. Both men
were workaholics who sacrificed family for career - and that's what the series was
about. The central conflict is family versus career, and the decisions each man makes
uncovers the theme of the series.
In Sutherland's case, his wife and daughter are kidnaped BECAUSE of his career - and
his entire ordeal in the series dramatizes his family/career conflict. In Haysbert's case,
his family keeps getting in the way of his career - he's running for President and his son
has murdered someone and his wife out-Hilary's Hilary Clinton. Haysbert's story on the
series dramatizes his family/career conflict. Both stories and both protagonists tell
stories with the same central conflict and the same theme - but each story is different.
The characters make different choices and the situations are different. Sutherland's
wife is pushing for her husband to spend more time at home, Haysbert's wife is pushing
for him to spend more time at work. Because Sutherland has spent so much time at
work, his marriage is on the rocks and his daughter has fallen in with the wrong crowd...
because Haysbert has spent so much time on the campaign trail, he wasn't around
when his daughter was raped - and his son took the law into his own hands. Both men
deal with career problems and family problems over the course of 24 hours - and the
story explores how family and career pull us in different directions, and how we must
chose which is most important to us. A great theme for an hour long action show.
Oh, heck... let's look at the antagonist, too - Dennis Hopper's villain Victor Drazen is
also dealing with family and career issues. He's consumed by a need for revenge against
the people who killed his wife and daughter - Sutherland and Haysbert. He's another
character who explores the family/career conflict... who makes VERY different choices
than the other two lead characters on the show. All three are brothers under the skin -
dealing with the same issues in their lives, just in very different ways. All three are
government employees, all three are motivated by their wives and daughters, all three
have put their families in peril because of their job, all three have 24 hours to make a
critical choice between their family and their career. All three characters were designed
to explore the theme and central question of the story. They are connected by the story.
You may not have seen the connections over twenty-four weeks, but when you see all
twenty-four episodes of 24 over a twenty-four hour period it's hard to miss that
Sutherland and Haysbert and Hopper are all dealing with the same problems - should I
put my career or my family first?
There are no random characters in a screenplay - they are all part of the story.
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