The Difference Between A Good Guy And A Protagonist

I’ve always thought that the most realistic antagonists are convinced they’re not being bad. They honestly believe that what they’re doing is right. 

How else can you explain the despicable shit my ex-wife pulled during our divorce?

So when it comes to a story where a protagonist confronts an antagonist, it only makes sense that a legitimate argument can be made to root for either character. 

The trick is in the telling. And just the other day I stumbled onto a wonderful example. It’s by J. Matthew Turner and wow, is it a lesson in perspective. 

Production design is simple. At least when it's good.

Look around your place. Be honest. Are there things that don't fit?

You bet there are. Even in my place there are, and my wife and I both have pretty distinctive, pretty consistent taste.

There's a painting, for instance, that I hate. My wife likes it. So it's up. If you're married, you understand this kind of compromise.

It's not distinct enough from the other art we have to draw attention to itself. But it doesn't quite fit. So what does it say about us that it's on the wall?

If we were characters in a film, it would say that we don't have a really clear sense of what we like.

We're not characters in a film, which is why it's not a big deal. But in a film, it would be death. It's not consistent enough with the other art to define our taste, but not inconsistent enough to raise a question.

Communication depends on clarity.

If your character is neat, a little mess is not okay. If your character loves music, there's no reason for him to have a collection of shot glasses. Unless there's a reason for him to have a collection of shot glasses, in which case he needs to have them.

Let me hasten to explain that I'm not saying every environment in a film needs to be neat and orderly with only meaningful objects in it. What I'm saying is that you, Aspiring Director, don't have the luxury of developing subtle nuances of character in the same way that, say, a novelist does. A novelist can tell you about the shot glasses, then explain why they're there. Why they're perhaps ironic. Or a holdover from a time when the character felt a need to collect something. Or maybe a meaningful reminder to help a recovering alcoholic from falling off the wagon.

A novelist can even go on for pages about shot glasses that aren't there, that were there once, maybe, but had been tossed into a dumpster in a fit of rage by an ex-lover years ago and missed ever since. Shot glasses that might have precipitated the very breakup of the character and his lover from which he is only now, years later, beginning to recover.

You can't.

There are only two ways to communicate character in film: what people see and what people hear. And as Steven Spielberg can attest, you can never be too heavy-handed with what people see.

Keep it simple.

Is that clear? I know, I know. Clearer than my own living room.

Casting trick #6: Think of performance not in terms of right or wrong, but rather in terms of true or false.

My wife has an audition for a Gus Van Sant movie this morning, which is especially neat for me.

For one thing, I love getting a glimpse at how other, more famous, directors work. For another, my wife is amazingly good at breaking down a scene and constructing an entire world from the clues she finds hidden in dialogue or screen direction.

This time, though, I see the scene one way and she sees it another. And the reality is, neither one of us has a clue how Gus sees it. For all we know, we could both be totally off.

How is that relevant? Because your actors can't know what's in your head.

You can tell them. And you should. But even the most detailed explanation will leave them loads of room to interpret. This is a good thing, by the way. It's what actors get paid to do.

What that means for you doing casting, though, is that you need to think of performance not in terms of right and wrong, but rather in terms of true or false.

One of my wife's lines is, "Mind your business." Is she saying it with anger? Sadness? Frustration? Is she lashing out or muttering? Is she even speaking to the other actor or is she saying it to herself?

Who knows? At this point in the process, I'd be surprised if Gus Van Sant even knows.

My wife needs to fill in the blanks the best way she can, and if you ask me, the way to do that is to have a clear picture of her character first.

I like the idea of her character feigning ineptitude in order to avoid having to confront reality, but my wife is leaning more toward her putting on a false front of optimism in the feeble hope that she can control her fate. Whatever she decides will inform the way the line comes out. That, along with the way the line that precedes it is given to her.

If Gus is any good, and I happen to think he's pretty good, he won't care whether she lands squarely in his headspace. If he were me, he'd evaluate the decisions she'd made given the information she was provided and if he respected her reasoning, would then consider how she executed. Did she listen and react? Was she believable? Did she find the emotional beats?

In other words, was her performance true to the character?

Every once in a while you're going to have an actor walk in and nail exactly what you're thinking the first time at bat. When that happens, suppress the urge to high-five yourself. See what else he or she can give you first.

If you get another interpretation that's just as believable, then by all means, head to the nearest bar for a celebratory cocktail. But if you get the same thing again, you need to realize that if you cast this person, you're going to get what they want to give you, not necessarily what you want to get.

You're the director, after all. That means you're supposed to, you know, direct.

What makes an interesting protagonist (Part 3): Conflict between want and need.

I have a theory about stories. A good story is not just about the conflict between a protagonist and an antagonist. You tell a story like that to four-year-olds.

A good story is also about the conflict within the protagonist, between what he wants and what he needs.

I can't think of a better example of this than 'The Incredibles'.

If you haven't seen the movie, stop reading right now and go rent it. I'm serious. It's one of the most perfectly crafted stories ever and I refuse to teach you another thing until you've seen it.

Okay.

Where was I?

Right. 'The Incredibles'. The protagonist is Mr. Incredible. The antagonist is Syndrome. At its simplest, this is a story about the struggle between the two.

But there's more. What defines Mr. Incredible are two things: his want, which is to work alone, and his need, which is to save the world.

Until Syndrome comes along, those two aspects of his character are perfectly compatible. And even though he's no longer a working superhero, Mr. Incredible the insurance adjuster can't suppress his need to save the world –– he just does it one person at a time.

Syndrome changes everything.

First, he forces Mr. Incredible to come out of retirement. Then he forces Mr. Incredible to realize that he can't do it alone.

Ultimately, the conflict that has to be resolved is within Mr. Incredible. He has to decide whether his want is more powerful than his need.

Here's a tip. It never is.

Mr. Incredible's need to save the world is so great that he'll not only work with someone else, but work with his family -- the last people he'd want to put in harm's way.

In a really good story, like this one, by resolving the conflict between his want and his need, the hero experiences growth.

Even a four-year-old knows that.

What makes an interesting protagonist (Part 2): Familiarity.

Oscar makes an excellent point about my blog on the new Star Trek movie and since it's relevant to creating an interesting protagonist, I'm going to write a blog instead of a response. It doesn't matter how bad things get for your protagonist if you don't care about him.

So how do you create a protagonist that your audience will care about?

It used to be conventional Hollywood wisdom that your protagonist had to be a good guy. I don't know if it was 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' that changed it for Hollywood, but that's the film that changed it for me. Here you have two really bad guys--robbers, murderers, cheaters at cards--and yet you can't help but root for them.

Why?

A lot of people think it has to do with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, but I think most of the credit goes to William Goldman, the writer.

For me, it comes down to one scene. The one in which Butch Cassidy wants to see just how good a shot the Kid is.

Sundance misses. And then he asks, "Can I move?"

What Goldman did with that was to humanize Sundance. Sure, he's a bad guy. Such a bad guy that he's known for being an incredible shot, and you don't shoot tin cans back in the old west, you shoot people. But he's a bad guy who a) feels bad about missing and b) asks permission to try again.

From that one scene, we can build a picture of Sundance. We can imagine what he's like as a person, not just as a killer, and the secret about protagonists is that we like them because we feel as if we know them.

I'm not talking about giving your hero flaws, although flaws can help. I'm talking about making your hero familiar. A good actor can help a good writer, but only under the leadership of a good director. In this case, George Roy Hill.

What makes an interesting protagonist (Part 1): Single-minded determination.

It’s been said that art reflects life. It’s also been said that movies are art. If those two statements are true, then movies reflect life.

Which they don’t.

Movies reflect a distilled version of life. In simple terms, they take out the uninteresting. Or should.

Which brings me to the protagonist.

The difference between a movie protagonist and, say, you, is single-minded determination. The protagonist of a movie is attempting to achieve something against overwhelming difficulties. He might have to pick up his dry cleaning or try to figure out why his insurance company won’t cover his acupuncture, but if he does, it’s because those represent the overwhelming difficulties he has to face in order to achieve his goal. Not because these are the things he needs to take care of. And certainly not because it’s stuff he enjoys doing.

It’s an important distinction. Heroes have quests. And quests aren’t something you get to between meetings.

That’s not to say heroes don’t have shit to take care of. That shit is reality and if you’re creating a realistic hero, you can’t have him live in an unrealistic world. But for a movie to be interesting, you want to watch a hero pursuing a goal, not taking Thursday afternoon off to go for a hike.

Everything you need to know about crossing the line. Mostly.

Back when I was in film school, a lot of breath was expended on something called "the line." For those of you who have a better use for $80,000 than shoveling it at blowhards like me who are happy to tell you how to do what a lot of them can't seem to make a decent living doing themselves, here's a quick recap:

The line is an invisible boundary, beyond which the camera is never to venture. If it does, all sorts of bad things will happen, most of which involve an editor shaking his or head sadly and claiming there's no way to save your film.

There are a lot of complicated explanations for what the line is and where to draw it, but as with a lot of things, I find the simpler explanations better. So here's how I think of it.

Most scenes involve an interaction, and most interactions are conversations. Two people talking. That's your line.

If the camera is looking at Bob and Jeff in the wide shot, with Bob on the left and Jeff on the right, then when you get to the medium shot, guess what? Bob stays on the left and Jeff stays on the right.

When you go in for a close up, even if Jeff isn't in the shot, he's kept spatially consistent. So if Bob is looking at him, he's looking to the right.

What messes up a lot of people is that they misunderstand the concept of interaction. The apes in at the beginning of '2001, A Space Odyssey' are interacting primarily with the black monolith. So the line is between them and it.

Where this gets tricky is when there are multiple interactions in a scene. The thing to figure out is where the main interaction is and let that drive the line.

Let's say Miss Rutkowski is confronting a room of unruly third-graders. One end of the line goes straight through Miss Rutkowski, while the other end goes through the room of 8-year-olds. When Billy and Steffie pass a note, their line is between them. But you know how the line falls between them because you've established their screen relationship in the wide shot with Miss Rutkowski. So if Steffie is on the right of Billy in the wide shot, you keep her on the right when you come into the two-shot.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But Brian, I want to cross the line. I want to shoot Steffie and Billy passing the note from behind, with the note in the foreground and Miss Rutkowski in the background."

So do it.

This whole line thing is just a way to keep from jarring your viewers. Keeping the main interaction consistent makes it easier for your audience to follow the story when you make a cut. If you have someone looking to the right in one shot and then to the left in another, your viewers are going to have a harder time following what's being said.

So if you want to shoot the note close up in the foreground, it's probably because you want to emphasize the note. You instinctively feel that the image of the note being passed is more important than the dialogue being said.

I'm okay with that.