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. 

Exactly *not* the movie I wanted. Exactly the movie I needed.

I finally saw ‘Silver Linings Playbook’. I know. Back off. I’ve had a rough last couple of months, what with friends passing away and an increasingly vitriolic divorce from a woman whose moral compass points to an entirely different north from my own. 

So you can understand my reluctance to see a movie about a guy whose wife betrays him meeting up with a woman dealing with the death of her husband. 

It was exactly not the movie I wanted to see. But it was exactly the movie I needed. 

Why? Because it's a  good story. And at this moment in my life I've had so much bad that I need all the good I can get.

I have a theory about good stories. That good stories require a protagonist overcoming obstacles in order to achieve something.

That’s nothing new. All of us story geeks will tell you pretty much the same thing. Where I go a little different is that I look for one more wrinkle. I like to see the protagonist’s Want in opposition to his or her Need.

‘Silver Linings Playbook’ is a textbook example. 

The main character wants to save an unsavable marriage (hmmm –– that sounds familiar). What he needs is to accept the truth that his marriage can’t be saved. 

I’m going to tell you how it ends. He gets what he needs. But you know this already, even if you haven’t seen the film, because I said I liked it. For a story to be satisfying, the protagonist must fail to achieve what he or she wants in order to achieve what he or she needs. 

Yeah, there needs to be more. Otherwise, my going to see the movie would make a good movie. The Need has to be life-altering. The protagonist has to be single-mindedly dedicated to achieving his or her goal. The forces conspiring to thwart the protagonist must be formidable. 

This film had all that. Plus extraordinarily good acting, nice writing, and fresh, likable characters. 

In short, it does what any good film does: Provide an escape from our own miserable lives. 

I know, speak for yourself, Brian.

A story about a fish. Let it be a lesson to you.

A couple of years ago my parents, like a lot of elderly people, suddenly took to cruises. And in order to share their new-found love, they insisted that my wife and I join them on one.

My wife and I, just so you know, are more accustomed to kayaking the headwaters of the Amazon than standing in line at the floating buffet, so when we got an opportunity to take part in one of the "activities", we jumped.

We went snorkeling.

It's not that I'm bragging, but I've done my share of SCUBA diving. So the buoys they put up to mark the edge of the 12-foot-deep "safe zone" didn't keep us in. Before you knew it, we were free diving out past the jetty.

It must have been about 35 feet deep, but I have pretty good lungs so I had no trouble making it to the bottom and spending some time there. And that's where I saw the fish.

The fish was huge. About six and a half feet long, just hanging out above a depression in the sand. And he was beautiful.

So beautiful that I couldn't help but swim up at him, taunting him with silly "fishy fishy fishy!" grippy motions I made with my fingers as I came at him.

After the second time, I made my wife come down and take a look.

And this, among other reasons, is why I love my wife. She came. And not just as an observer, either. She came at the fish as enthusiastically as I did. Both of us coming at him broadside, our arms out in front of us, crunching up our little fingers over and over like we were aiming to tickle a two-year-old.

When we got about five feet of Mr. Fish, I had a sudden realization. I recognized him. I'd seen his kin, although they'd never been quite that monstrous.

Barracuda.

I gasped, grabbed my wife by the hand –– being sure to cover the engagement ring that –– even at that depth –– sparkled in a way that only a really expensive, flawless, colorless, perfect cut diamond could, and hauled her to the surface.

The barracuda never moved.

It could have. It could have taken off my wife's hand in an instant. It could have reamed me for having dared to enter its world. I think it was stunned by our –– my –– utter, complete ignorance of its power.

You're probably wondering what my point is. Well, I'll tell you.

This is my story. It's typical of the stories I tell, which often involve my doing something completely boneheaded but somehow managing to survive, whether it's hunting for an ATM in the slums of Buenos Aires or hiking up Half Dome with nothing more than a biscuit and a camera or climbing over the 20-foot fence at the Italian embassy in Tel Aviv to play tennis on their court.

We all have our stories. My father's stories all come down to how clever he is. My wife's stories are all about how people turn out to be surprisingly good.

I can't tell my wife's stories –– at least not with the authenticity that she can. And I don't want to tell my father's stories because I'd feel like an asshole for trying.

And here comes the part where this is relevant to film: You tell the stories you tell because they have meaning for you. And film is nothing more than pre-planned, structured, extraordinarily expensive storytelling.

What has meaning for me is the intersection of naive belief and responsibility. And if you look closely, everything I do –– every screenplay I write, every film I shoot, every story I tell –– is about that. Even my little tale about my exploits with the fish.

You don't need a dozen film credits to find out what turns you on, story wise. Think of your stories, the ones you tell the girl you're hoping to sleep with, the boss you want to let you off the hook for being late.

I'll bet that once you think of a half-dozen, you'll see a pattern.

Three really smart people, and not just because they agree with me.

Yesterday, I got to be on the receiving end of three opinions by three really smart people, each of whom probably has no clue that the other two exist. What's really neat is that these three opinions are superficially distinct, but manage to overlap in an area that's really important to you, Aspiring Filmmaker.

Let's start with my really smart friend Bill. We've been emailing back and forth about films for a while, and yesterday morning I got a message from him in which he contends that post-modernism accounts for the wealth of lousy films being made. His point is that most filmmakers these days are afraid to incorporate real themes into their work because real themes require taking a moral stand, even if the moral stand is unimpeachable: Work is dignity. The love of money is the root of all evil. Family is everything. That sort of thing.

By a perfect coincidence, just after reading Bill's email, I read really smart Seth Godin's blog about magician Steve Cohen. Seth's point was that Steve Cohen makes quite a good living by doing several things, one of which is, and I'm quoting here, "He tells a story to this group, a story that matches their worldview. He doesn't try to teach non-customers a lesson or persuade them that they are wrong or don't know enough about his art. Instead, he makes it easy for his happy customers to bring his art to others."

In other words, he incorporates themes that his audiences will not only find palatable, but will nod along with.

There's no denying that a lot of vacuous Hollywood films make money. Would they make more (an objective, if not entirely complete measure of success) if they actually stood for something?

I've always thought so, but what clinched it for me was something my buddy Jeff said.

Jeff is a another really smart person. He's a doctor –– a liver and kidney specialist. But he doesn't waste his brain theorizing about film.

Jeff's daughter is the same age as mine, and as we were talking yesterday he mentioned how much he appreciated 'Yertle the Turtle'. Especially its message, summed up in the last line of the book: "And turtles, of course ... all the turtles are free / As turtles, and maybe, all creatures should be."

So there you have it. Three really smart people who each in his own way says the same thing:

1) Your story needs a theme.

2) Your theme must be something your audience will connect with.

Oh, and don't give me that crap about how you don't need to bother with themes because you don't want to be Ingmar Bergman or anything, you just want to entertain.

'Pirates of the Caribbean' (the first one), 'The Incredibles', and 'Shaun of the Dead' are unquestionably three of the most entertaining films, well, ever. They also all happen to transcend traditionally mindless genres and incorporate powerful themes into their storytelling.

And 'Yertle the Turtle' is for three-year-olds.

Got it?

I'm gong to chew on this Ham Sandwich just a little more.

Thanks for all the emails pointing out what looks to be a flaw in my reasoning.

It's a valid point. If you have to be so much better to compete these days, how do films like 'Transporter 3' manage to get made?

Because 'Transporter 3' is a film the way a Big Mac is food. It does a lot of things a film is supposed to do, but it's made in a factory and sold to an audience that doesn't care a whole lot about quality. Or, rather, likes quality just fine, but cares a lot more about consistency: seeing a big-name movie star hitting all the beats of a story that's familiar enough to keep them comfortable.

You, my friend, don't own the factory. And even if you did, I wouldn't tell you to make films any other way. This is America. Like it or not, the formula for making the best-selling films is going to be exactly the same as the formula for making the best-selling hamburgers. The business of Hollywood is to make money, which means minimizing costs and maximizing profit.

So your movie has a big fat hole in it. So what? The movie is but one part of a marketing entity that involves several overlapping brands: The studio, the star, the director, and the franchise. Sure, you want to make a decent movie. But is an additional investment in quality materials really going to improve your return?

No.

I'm not saying all Hollywood films are crap, by the way. Some are utterly spellbinding. But that's because they're created by talented, super hard-working people who manage to apply their craft without costing the studios extra time, effort, or heartache.

But back to you.

Presumably, Aspiring Filmmaker, you want to make 'real' films. Meaning films that actually play for an audience beyond the 5 friends and other aspiring filmmakers who show up to see your masterpiece at a film festival. Which means your audience, until you break in, is Hollywood.

Take a minute to mull on that. Go on. I'll wait right here.

You ready? Let's go back to the food thing. You think the chairman of McDonald's has a Big Mac for dinner? Oh sure, whenever his picture is taken he does. But do you really think he doesn't "research" the latest uber expensive restaurant any chance he gets, just to, you know, see what those impetuous artists are up to?

My point is this. In order to break into Hollywood, you have to get Hollywood's attention. And there are two ways to do that. One is to be Hollywood –– meaning make a film that finds an audience so massive that Hollywood knows you can do what it does. The other is to be what Hollywood envies –– meaning make a film that's so good that Hollywood knows that you could make an acceptable piece of crap in your sleep.

I can't tell you how to do the first. Hell, even Hollywood doesn't know how to do the first, beyond throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at star salaries and marketing and advertising.

But I can tell you how to do the second.

A Ham Sandwich isn't what it used to be.

The world is a different place since Hitchcock either did or didn't come up with the idea of the Ham Sandwich (if you don't know what I'm talking about, read my last post).

Hitchcock died in 1980; VHS (a video recording format using tape, for those of you too young to remember) wasn't introduced in the US until 1977. What that means is that Hitchcock made his films for a world that couldn't rewind them to take another look at something.

More critical, people couldn't collect movies and watch them at their leisure. If people wanted to see a movie, they went down to the one movie theater in town and saw the one film that was playing. Period. Except at Christmas time, when 'Miracle on 34th Street' and 'It's a Wonderful Life' got broadcast on that newfangled contraption, television, most movies played in theaters and were more or less forgotten. Or remembered. But never really shown over and over again.

Today, as just about every media outlet enthusiastically exclaims, we live in a world of digital media. Technology has given us not only the ability to collect movies, but to realistically make them ourselves. It's also given us access to myriad channels to find stuff to watch. Not just everything that's being made, from the $200 million studio epic to the latest video of a dog sending a text message, but everything that's ever been made –– good stuff and crap –– all the way back to the first film ever made of a dog sending a telegraph.

What that means for you, Aspiring Filmmaker, is that you're going to have to work a lot harder to get –– and keep –– your audience's attention than Mr. Hitchcock ever did.

In the old days, a gaping hole in the plot might cause people to walk out of the theater, grumbling that they'd wasted 99¢. Today, it'll cause them to click over to something else, grumbling that they'd wasted, well, 99¢.

See how far we've come?

Jason Statham could use a decent Ham Sandwich.

I just rented the latest in the 'Transporter' series, which should put to rest any notion that I'm some kind of a film snob. I can't help but like Jason Statham, even though he's made an entire career as an actor –– movie star, really –– without ever once cracking a smile.

This is, of course, a blog dedicated to lessons in filmmaking and the lesson I want to deal with today is internal consistency. Or to put it in simple terms, The Ham Sandwich.

The Ham Sandwich is capitalized because it's a concept I learned about in film school. The notion was attributed by my professor to Alfred Hitchcock, although a quick Google search didn't bring up any relevant hits. So take it as an idea that may or may not have come from Hitchcock, by way of a teacher whose name I can't remember.

Enough premumble. The story, as I heard it, was that Hitchcock screened his latest masterpiece only to have somebody point out a logical flaw in the story. Hitchcock told him (or her, who knows?) that it was okay because it was a Ham Sandwich. The idea being that sure, it was a flaw, but it was the kind of flaw audiences wouldn't notice while they were watching the film. It was only later, while they were eating a ham sandwich, that the flaw would become apparent.

Which brings me to 'Transporter 3'. Frank Martin is coerced into transporting Valentina, the minister's daughter who's been kidnapped. He doesn't know she's been kidnapped, but she does. And she doesn't tell him until 3/4 of the way through the film, even though they exchange not only conversation, but bodily fluids.

My point is this: There are two flaws in the story. (Okay, there are a lot of flaws in the story, but I'm only going to talk about two of them.) The first is that a kidnapped minister's daughter needs to be transported in the first place, the second is that a kidnapped minister's daughter wouldn't think to mention to the guy who's clearly been coerced into transporting her against his will that she, too, has not chosen to be put in this situation.

The first flaw is excusable because, well, it's called 'Transporter'. I'd allow that to be a Ham Sandwich. The second flaw is a hole. A big fat hole. The kind of hole that doesn't wait until after the film to present itself to you.

I'm okay with a Ham Sandwich. Where I draw the line is with stuff that takes you out of the experience of the film.

No wonder Jason never smiles.

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.

Why JJ Abrams is worth every $#%&!!! cent he makes.

I just saw the latest Star Trek movie.

If you haven't seen it yet, go now. If you have, go again. That movie is a two-hour master class in one of the most important aspects of story you can learn.

I call it "Bad to worse."

What it means is that it's not enough to have a protagonist overcoming challenges on the way to achieving his goal. You do that and you end up with 'Taken', the Liam Neeson movie that's moderately entertaining, but totally uninvolving.

What you need is to have a protagonist trying to overcome challenges and failing. Or succeeding only to face bigger challenges. Preferably both.

I know. You want examples.

Okay, an example of the first is when First Officer Kirk tries to convince Captain Spock to pursue Nero. He doesn't succeed. He fails, so spectacularly that Spock kicks him off the Enterprise, marooning him on a desolate planet light years from where he needs to be in order to accomplish what he needs to accomplish.

An example of the second follows almost immediately. Kirk leaves his shuttle craft in order to hike the 14 kilometers to the Federation outpost, only to be attacked by some huge, mean, hungry creature. But he's saved, sort of, when a bigger, meaner creature takes out the first creature. And then starts chasing him.

The brilliance of this movie is that it does this over and over again.

In lesser hands (like Pierre Morel's -- the guy who directed 'Taken') Kirk would need Mr. Scott to transport the two of them onto the Enterprise while it's traveling at warp speed and it would work. With Abrams, it works, but Mr. Scott ends up in a cooling duct full of water, at risk of drowning if Kirk can't get him out. (To be fair, a lot -- perhaps most -- of the credit should go to Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the writers. But Abrams is the director, and therefore ultimately responsible for the story.)

One of my screenwriting teachers at the UCLA Extension used to say, "Put your hero up a tree, then throw rocks at him." JJ Abrams then sets the tree on fire and throws in an earthquake.