VALUABLE LESSONS - Nicholls + Vickers

Valuable Lessons 34
pointing out that something a character does, of course comes from
character, but something that happens to them comes from situation, and the
way they react to it defines or develops their character. I found myself
bringing this up in a test meeting with twenty executives in 2004. They just
stared. They didn’t even hear it. It was one weak axe-blow to the thick
gnarled base of the jargon tree – it didn’t shake the upper branches. You can
cite Bob Newhart and Paul Reiser and Jerry Seinfeld, passive witnesses all
to the madness surrounding them, they will keep insisting that “the plot
doesn’t come enough from (our main character).” The stories on I Love
Lucy came from character. Spongebob Squarepants’ dumb ideas often drive
his stories. But many if not most sitcoms follow the form of the Hapless
Character beset by Fate. I’ve tried Lucy-type shows – The Trouble With
Larry being a prime example – and when they see it they don’t like it. The
things the lead actor has to do to provoke crises big enough for comedy
make him or her “unlikeable.”
I had a spirited argument once with an exec after suggesting that
Roger O. Thornhill’s predicament in Ernest Lehman’s and Alfred
Hitchcock’s North By Northwest didn’t “come from character.” Rather, his
handling of the predicament into which he was thrown by chance limned his
character, revealing him as more resourceful and more serious than the tenminute
prologue had indicated. I said, “Put Buster Keaton in the lead –
certainly no Cary Grant – or Gretchen Moll, or Colin Farrell. The film still
works. How can you say character and not plot is the main thing here?” He
did.
If every plot detail in a movie comes from character, how come a
movie that gets offered to Nicholas Cage and then to Ralph Fiennes, and
then to Julia Stiles and then Adam Sandler still works when it’s released
starring Tom Hanks? These people do not project the same character. At
every stage of development there were people saying “Sean Connery? Of
course!” “Queen Latifah? Perfect!”
“More singles” was the byword for a while in editing. A single is a
shot of one character speaking or performing, even though he or she may be
with someone else or in a room full of people. A single emphasizes that
character and his or her lines and reactions, to the exclusion of the others in
the room/car/boat/tornado. I once got this note from the WB: “Let’s add
more singles in this sequence to emphasize the relationships between the
characters.” Which of course is the one thing it doesn’t do; it de-emphasizes
relationships because we don’t see the expressions on both faces during a
conversation. For a whole year, when you watched a show on the WB,
unless you came in at the top of a scene you had no idea who was on the set.