How Writers Develop Characters With The Defining Moment - Christopher Riley [FULL INTERVIEW]

can you tell us why the movie ordinary  people was a defining moment in your life   i think when i saw ordinary people i was  about 17 years old and it was the first   really serious movie i had seen you know after [Music] it also really spoke to who i was as a  kid i was a kind of a socially awkward lonely kid   and so i felt you know whatever  discomfort went with with that and   ordinary people showed this main character who  looked on the outside like he had everything   together and like he didn't experience the kind  of pain that i experienced but then the film   because it's a beautifully told story reveals his  secret life and in his secret life he's actually   just come out of treatment after a suicide attempt  and he's going to high school he's singing in   the choir he looks to everyone like he's one  of the ones who's really got it all together   and for the first time as i  sat in the audience i realized   oh it's possible that what's on the surface  isn't what's really going on um underneath   that's i guess something adults know i didn't know  that as a 17 year old and so that film showed me   that i wasn't the only one so that was that was  the first thing that made a huge difference uh   to me and then the second thing was i realized oh  so the people around me might actually be in pain   even though it's not obvious i need to treat  people differently and that is something that   has continued to shape me you know decades  later i look at people differently because   of what that film taught me about other human  beings and then the third thing for me was   i saw for the first time what a movie could  be and so i thought this is what i want to do   i want to tell these kinds of stories that reveal  characters and that move people that provide   meaningful emotion so for me seeing ordinary  people became a dividing line in my own   life on multiple levels and so for me that is a  defining moment and i assume you saw it in the   theater i did i saw it in the theater i owned the  dvd it still wrapped in cellophane because i can't   bear to go back and watch it i'm afraid it either  is not as good as i remember or it will be [Music]   i don't know i i don't want it to disappoint  me and so i just keep it under wraps yeah yeah   i can agree with doing so it's almost like it's  frozen in time there's something special there   that's exactly right yeah and i don't want  to disturb that memory because that memory is   vivid and is kind of a bedrock of the person  i've become and how were other people leaving   the theater after watching that film i think  other people were powerfully moved by it mary   tyler moore delivers a fantastic performance  as the sort of cold-hearted mother who is the whole time she's on screen you fear she's  driving her son to suicide and i remember wanting   to like take my shoe off in the theater and show  it at this throw it at the screen when she was   on screen which is you know what a testament  to to that performance so i think you know   other people were really moved i'm not sure  how many people uh would point back to that   experience as a defining moment in their lives  it's one of the things about film i think that   is fascinating to me that we all have  different responses to it that are   partly shaped by the film itself but partly  shaped by us and uh what we bring to the film   who are the characters and ordinary people so  you've got the dad uh played by donald sutherland   uh the mom played by mary tyler moore and then the  17 year old son and then there's a there's another   brother who's really absent from the movie because  he drowned um before the events of the movie that   was a defining moment for that family and each one  of these characters responds in a different way   mary tyler moore's mother character kind of makes  it clear to her surviving son that she wishes that   the other brother had survived and that becomes  the seed of his misery is that sense of being   rejected by his mother and his dad is trying to  figure out how to put his family back together   after the tragic loss of the one son and the just  the terrible chemistry that's going on between   mother and the surviving son played by timothy  hutton and they're all doing the best they can   but it it it feels so real uh at least to me  sitting in the theater it felt like this is   a real family i didn't feel like i was watching a  movie and uh and i think that that's also informed   even the way that i approach writing uh as a  screenwriter that's the tone i go for i love   naturalism i don't write big bombastic  comic book kinds of material because   that's not what speaks to me it is that sense  of i've gotten lost in a dream and this feels   in some ways more real than reality because a  great film reveals more of the characters than   sometimes i'm able to discover of the people  that i actually know and i find i really crave   understanding who's really there and so a film  that shows that to me i really love and i i strive   to do that as a storyteller as well to really peel  back the layers and reveal who the characters are   that we're dealing with i'm just curious when  did you purchase the dvd to ordinary people um   i probably bought that something like 10 years ago  you know i think i just came across it on a shelf   somewhere and um when i first had that thing in  my hands i thought well i should i should watch   this and that i just kind of felt resistance  uh in myself to that and so then it ended up on   my shelf of dvds and now it's even hard to find  a dvd player in the house if i wanted to watch it   can you give us a general explanation of what a  defining moment is kathy who's my co-author and my   wife and i first encountered the idea of defining  moments through a mentor of ours a television   writer producer named coleman lock and he was  mentoring us through a rewrite of a feature film   that we we had written early in our careers called  after the truth and um coleman made us work uh   really really hard he told us we would come to  hate him and i thought that that was hyperbole but   he was right he pushed us so hard we didn't come  to hate him we have a tremendous respect for him   but i remember foolishly asking him at one  point do other writers really work this hard   and i've come to find out yes they do the good  ones do but he he had this idea that he shared   with us and the idea was all of us have a handful  of experiences that have profoundly shaped us so   we live through lots of moments every day  in our lives but not every moment is equal   in terms of its impact on shaping us and coleman  believed that there were about maybe a half dozen   moments that each one of us could point to that  account for much of the person that we are today   and his idea was that the same would be true of  characters and if we wanted to deeply understand   our characters what drives them um how that broken  character got broken or how that broken character   eventually heals that we would locate that half  dozen or so moments that have defined those   characters and that that would actually be more  valuable than understanding how much change is   in the character's pocket or you know so many of  the infinite number of details that we could know   about about a character coleman's thought was it  is these moments that define the character that   tell you more than anything  else you could possibly know   and so kathy and i began doing  that work with our characters   looking into their pasts to discover the moments  that it shaped them and then looking into the time   of the story the time that's actually unfolding in  a movie or television episode and saying what are   the the moments that happened live in front of our  eyes that not only have formed a character but now   in in real time before us transform  the character into who they're becoming   so um for us what we discovered uh about defining  moments that helps us to locate them is they   always tend to create this boundary between before  and after we talk about the time before the house   burned down and the time after the house burned  down all of us on this planet will talk about   the time before the pandemic and please god  the time after the pandemic at some point so the planet can have a defining moment   individually we can have defining moments families  can have defining moments and certainly characters   if they are lifelike we'll have moments that  define them as well how many defining moments are   there in ordinary people boy you know in ordinary  people because it's been so many decades since i   saw the film that i can just say off the top of  my head there was the moment of the drowning so   when the oldest brother dies tragically that  is a moment that defines the whole family   and then also and so that happens before the  movie begins and then another defining event   is when timothy hutton's attempts suicide and  that creates another before and after moment for purposes of the film the impact  of that attempted suicide is that   we as the audience as soon as we know about that  are on the edge of our seats because we fear that   he's going to complete the act that he's  going to take his life and we like this   kid and we view that that would be tragic  and so we are rooting for that not to happen   we are infuriated by his mother's coldness to  him every time he tries to connect with her   she pushes him away and we just want to scream  at her don't you see what's happening don't   you see how much he needs you can't you  put your arms around your son all of that   is rooted in that defining moment of the suicide  attempt which is made known to the audience so   that we we get the good out of it we get  the emotional juice that flows from that   and then there's a defining moment of a  kind of connection if i am remembering   the movie correctly that happens between timothy  timothy hutton and his dad donald sutherland that   makes you believe that maybe  they're going to make it   and so it creates this other turning point  a kind of a kind of provisional healing   there may be more in there those are  the three that that remain in my memory   so it's a film of a lot of pain and  grief but it's also a hopeful film but it's bittersweet because the mom's character  doesn't get to participate in that reconciliation   and again if i go back and never crack open  that dvd i may find out i'm remembering wrong   but in my memory those are the three key defining  moments that uh immediately come to my mind   can you explain why a writer  must understand their own story   before they can essentially understand  any character stories that they may invent my wife cassie took this idea of defining moments  and pushed it a step further by saying this isn't   just about concocting moments for our characters  it really begins with us understanding our own   story so she when she teaches young writers we'll  say again and again before you can understand   your character story you have to understand your  own story so if we're going to understand the   dynamic of the way moments can reshape us and  transform us the best place for us to look   is in our own experience we have a front row  seat to our own invisible inner emotional life   and so we've got to be willing to uh to draw on  that but before i can draw on my own life my own   defining moments i have to actually locate them  so while i might not want to crack open an old dvd   i have to crack open my own history if i'm going  to tap into the emotional riches that lie there   for all of us because we all have uh in the  words of author frederick beekner wonderful and   terrible things that have happened to us all and  so the idea is that we would look at those things   so as an example a kind of moment that might  define us would be the moment a dream was born and   so somebody who's pursuing acting directing  writing often that that's based around a   dream and so the question that i would ask is when  was that dream born can you locate the moment of   birth for that dream and sometimes there  is a moment and sometimes things emerge   so gradually that we can't locate a moment we've  got glaciers that creep imperceptibly but then we   also have glaciers when they reach the sea that in  dramatic fashion will cave a glacier in a moment what we're interested in as dramatists  are those dramatic moments so the   tectonic plates of the earth move meter by  millimeter over the decades centuries millennia   it's not that interesting to watch but  there is an instant when they rupture   and we have an earthquake those are the  dramatic moments so there are times when   changes happen in us by these gradual processes  and that we may not call those defining moments   but there are these cataclysmic seismic moments  of change that make great stories but also   really help to define that change happened  so you might look back and say let me locate   what is that moment where i became obsessed with  screenwriting when is that moment when i had to   make movies or had to make television we also  think about characters and we think about people   as being broken damaged and so we can look back  and say not only um i know i've limped like this   for a long time but we can ask the question when  did i get that limp what was the moment of injury   and if we understand that moment we get a  great story but we also understand maybe   if this is how it happened with me this may  be how it happens with my characters as well and i don't only want to tell bleak stories  about people being injured and damaged i   i am interested in a credible kind of  hope and so i'm also interested in asking   like was there ever a time where i grew  was there ever a time where i healed   that i overcame a fear what did that moment  look like and if i understand that in myself   then i'm in a position to portray  that in a character and that will be   lifelike and emotionally authentic because it's  rooted in something that i've actually experienced   so i think that that is the vulnerability and  the cost that comes with being a storyteller   is that we have to be willing to do that dive  into our our own emotional story and be willing disguised or not to to bring those stories forward  and it's tough you go into a meeting at a studio   and you sit with a producer or an executive and  you pitch this character arc and you say i think   this is where this character's damage comes  from and what you're really telling is a story   from your own history you don't necessarily  tell them that but if that gets shot down well   that's a little bit vulnerable uh that's sort of  a rejection of you and your pain and and your past   but there's also the possibility that the  producer will say oh that's right something   like that happened to me and suddenly you've got  a common point of reference for this character certainly when you are communicating with  a big audience if those moments actually   make it to the screen you've created  the possibility of connection with thousands of people millions of people  in a way that they really relate to and   when we connect at that deep level with characters  we care we're invested emotionally in what happens   to them that's what gets us sitting on the edge of  our seats it's not just that we've got spectacular   visual effects and characters zipping across the  screen if i don't care about those characters   i'm bored with even the most spectacular  visual effects if i identify with a character   and deeply care what happens to them then the  tiniest movement either toward or away from danger   i i feel viscerally uh so i think that's the  value for writers in connecting with their   own defining moments so that they can then  enrich their work with the insights they gain   some of our comments i've seen  people mention that they didn't   have anything too tragic to write  about but they were still able   to portray that in their stories and they said you  know i didn't come from a dysfunctional family and   i had a great childhood but there's this myth that  i have to be damaged in order to be a great writer   do you ever see people that are just too far on  the spectrum either everything is just tragic   and woe was me and there was no growth and then  others that now everything was like disneyland   i do encounter writers a lot who when i ask  them to find moments that have shaped them   struggle with that and often discount their life  experience as boring or low stakes and i had i had   one student who was not a 20 year old uh who came  to me i knew that she was a pediatrician and but   she came to me with this problem of nothing's  happened to me and i said well so your career   is you work in the hospital with desperately  ill children and their families i think you   have experienced deeply emotional high-stakes  things and she thought about it and she said well i guess it's true i am a 50-year-old  woman and no man has ever loved me and i said then you you have lots  of stories you have deep emotion but i think we have to honor our own life  experience and not dismiss it as unimportant now somebody who only like who wallows in tragedy  and damage i think that we i think that we want   more than stories of chaos i think we do  want stories that help us make sense of   lives that often feel like chaos to us at  least while we're in the middle of the story and so i really value stories told by writers who  are able to to go out into life and experience it   and come back and help make some sense of it  even if it is not the neat disney package [Music]   i think of joel and ethan cohen's no country  for old men and there's not a ton of hope   in that movie there's a line of uh i think  it's tommy lee jones who says you can't stop   what's coming referring to just the sort of  growing evil that he was seeing in the world as a   sheriff or marshall in texas that's kind of  hopeless you can't stop what's coming toward   the end of the film tommy lee jones  character tells a story of riding out   into the wilderness i think it's a dream he has  he's on a horse riding out into the wilderness   and his dad has ridden out ahead of him and  has lit a campfire and he says in his dream   he's riding along and he catches sight  far off in the distance of that campfire   and that's it that's all the hope that there  is in that movie but it's enough to say   somewhere out there in the darkness uh there  is warmth and there is light keep writing   that can be for somebody who  experiences a lot of adversity   that can ring true to them in a way that a  disney movie never will that can be credible   hope and so i value that kind of storytelling and  i would push a a writer who only sees bleakness   uh to look harder in the same way that  i would encourage a writer who only sees   happiness to be more honest with themselves and  own up to whatever the pain and disappointments   have been that's hard to do i think sometimes  that can only happen after some therapy and   after some years have passed and we can dare  to crack open the package and look inside i think the audience craves that kind of   that kind of honesty you're trying to remember  back to patch adams it's been a little bit since   i've seen it but speaking of a pediatrician  i think at some point it's revealed why   the character wants to you know bring joy to these  children and sort of this clown-esque type yeah   i think there's some tragic past which keeps it  from being a silly movie it's not a silly movie   and it is it's the pain and the  darkness that balances out the   the fact that he wears a clown nose to clinic  he he knows something about pain and of course robin williams knew a lot about pain was well  acquainted with that and that undergirded   both his dramatic acting and his comic acting   how does a writer find defining moments in  their own life kathy and i have developed a   kind of a list of characteristics that we think  describe defining moments and that they help us   when we go looking for defining moments so that  list includes things like the moment a dream   was born it could be the moment a dream died uh  sometimes defining moments are moments of birth   or death and that can be a literal death or  it could be a figurative death the death of   a business the death of a relationship or  the birth of a relationship we think about moments of discovery so for a child who's  been adopted the moment they discover that   they were adopted might redefine  their understanding of themselves   a special kind of discovery is a lesson that's  learned so dorothy in oz makes the discovery   that there's no place like home and that  discovery becomes the mantra that allows her   to travel back to kansas it was the discovery  that she needed when she set out from kansas   she didn't think that the people at  home were special enough to cherish   she thought that real life lay somewhere out  there and along the way she makes the discovery   that there's no place like home and that redefines  who she is sometimes we're looking for a moment   when uh a wound was suffered  or a loss was incurred   other times we're looking for a moment of the  birth of hope or a moment of healing a moment of   deep emotional or spiritual change and with that  it's not a checklist but that those categories   we can look at our own lives and say well um  what was a moment of deep emotional change that   i've experienced if i'm a morose person um was i  always that way and if not when did that change   kathy uh [Music] found a an old black and white  picture of her dad when he was a young boy   and kathy's dad as i knew him  was a serious mechanical engineer   and not not playful that's the last word  i would use for him and yet this picture   showed this impish kid with this  like wicked smile on his face   and kathy and her brother turned to each  other when they found this picture and said   did you know that person and they both said no  i never met that guy well what was the moment   when he went from the playful imp to the very  serious very dour person that my wife grew up with that at least turns our gaze in the right  direction and we can start looking and see seeing   is there is there a moment like that now there  are times i think that uh we can't find the moment either because it happened when we were so young  that we have no memory of it or it may be so   traumatic that we have not allowed ourselves to  remember it uh but we know we walk with the limp   and i discovered in myself a sort of evidence of a wound that  i don't ever remember suffering   but i remember as far back as six  years old having having the damage   and so i don't know what that defining moment  was i just know that it exists and i know that   i learned from that experience that i must not let  people know the real me or they would not want me   uh i learned that men are dangerous and i had to  um i have no memory that accounts for those things   but i had to look at that history nonetheless  and recognize those lies as being so deep in my   in my firmware that i couldn't remember a time  where they weren't there and then i had to   i had to learn the truth that  would neutralize those lies and   i still feel like those lies are true but i now  know they're not and i'm able to tell myself   here's the truth there are people who  actually know you and they actually   love you and so the lie that if people know you  they won't love you that's a lie no matter how   how that feels and i've learned i'm not a little  little boy anymore and i don't have to be afraid   of grown-ups it's not actually dangerous to  have human encounters even though it still   feels dangerous to me well so i've just described  a moment of healing that's also a defining moment   i had to be more than 50 years old to experience  that moment of healing this to me is the advantage   that writers have with every passing year we keep  getting more and more life experience and so we   have more and more to draw on if you're 20 well  you've been through middle school so you have   you know you've come through at least one war  that's painful yes and so um you know i always   think of the popular kids i i i'm not sure they  exist i i i haven't met anyone as an adult who   says oh yeah i breezed through eighth grade it  was awesome my favorite year it's it's just awful but a 20 year old is going to have 20 years of  life experience a 40 or a 50 or a 60 year old   writer is going to have more life experience and  so while the industry may have a preference you   know for 22 year old writers because it's exciting  like it's exciting to get a new sports car mostly we give awards out to people with a little  more mileage on them and it's because in part   of the greater life experience which gives  you more access to these kinds of moments   you know you just jog my memory because  i knew someone who was considered very   popular and they worried their worry was they  thought hey everyone thought they were stuck up   and b they were worried about their image and when  they left the house how did they look to everybody   so to them that was a huge concern because they  were afraid of breaking that image and to me i saw   the person as had it all together and they had all  these people around them that wanted to be around   them but they were terribly concerned so i guess  you're right that to them it was still tragic i   i i do think about um [Music] people whose faces  are on magazine covers and um there is a burden   that goes with that now we might think oh you  know hoo you're you're beautiful and famous but   um there is a there's a burden that goes  even with the popularity that that rises   to the level of celebrity uh of an acquaintance  once said to one of my children you don't know   how hard it is to be so pretty and at the time i  thought that's a line i need to put in a script   but you know as you as you talk i think no that  actually for for this young lady she experienced   that as as pain and anxiety and um all of all of  that kind of human experience is interesting to me   both as a human but also as a storyteller  that's an interesting character   uh it's not that wasn't my life experience but um  it's it's an experience that's interesting to me   is there a limit on how many defining moments  someone can have in their life you know i've   been thinking a lot lately about defining moments  and uh i keep discovering more of them for myself   uh i'm not sure that the half dozen  is any sort of absolute limit at all i   you know i think that our lives don't continue  in a straight line uh there are reversals   uh there are moments of transformation our  lives seem to unfold kind of in chapters   we don't just do the same thing the  same way forever well the whole world   with covid has experienced that that things  actually change sometimes quite dramatically so i could probably put my finger on a dozen  [Music] moments that from my own life that are   pretty profound and create distinct moments  of before and after so i don't know that   there's an absolute limit i just think that  practically speaking when we come to characters we probably want to work with a manageable  number of them so we don't dilute   their impact and their power uh especially if we're thinking  of a standalone feature film   if we're talking about a television series  that goes for many many episodes then you probably could do justice to a  dozen defining moments over you know   100 episodes if anybody is  doing 100 episodes anymore at some point it um you know aristotle talked about how many  acts there should be in any any play   and he said well it just depends how long the  play is because an act has to do with a reversal   and there he says there should be a big reversal  in each act a life that is nothing but reversal   starts to feel not like a real life it would  be like a football game where there was an   interception or a fumble on every play it just  becomes absurd but he says you've got to have   enough of them to keep it interesting so that's  his formula he doesn't tell us you know how many   acts there should be in a one-hour television  pilot but the general principle is there should be   enough to keep it interesting but not so many that  it becomes absurd and i suppose the same could   be said of defining moments once a writer has  processed their own defining moments how do they   begin to apply that knowledge to the characters  that they create well when i think about applying   the idea of defining moments to characters uh i  think in terms of these categories so if i've got   a character who has a dream i've already looked  back at my moment of watching ordinary people   and seeing this dream of somehow getting  my fingers into the clay of filmmaking   so i know about how at least one dream was  born then i can come to my character and say for this character what does it look like when  their dream was born now their dream may be to   be an astronaut and so i would think  about well what is analogous from   my experience to their experience i was  watching a movie an astronaut dream might   have been born as somebody was watching a  shuttle launch or the tragic loss of a shuttle that immediately interests my writer's brain  because it's unexpected that you would see a   catastrophic loss of a space shuttle  and say that's what i want to do but   i think that's actually often how it  works i've described television writing   to aspiring writers and the atmosphere in the  writer's room and how you have to compete to   get your joke on the page and how cutthroat that  can be and i think i've just talked to everyone   out of wanting to be a television writer and then  people will crowd to the front and say that sounds   fantastic that's exactly what i want to do so that  tells me that sometimes it's even seeing [Music]   a story that seems like it would drive you away  that actually attracts the die-hard dreamer   so i i bring that sort of general  experience from life i kind of mix it up   with what i've observed in myself and i  i will often try to brainstorm a bunch of   different options uh of what that defining  moment might be until i find one that both   feels emotionally real and also it makes  an interesting story because i might   have the character tell the story or we may flash  back to see that story uh the writer bill marcilli   uh who wrote the film deja vu talks about his  discipline of brainstorming 20 options for   any creative choice and his theory he says is  that no one is smart enough to come up with 20   bad ideas in a row so one of your 20 ideas is  bound to be decent so i've taken the calling   that marcelli's rule of 20. it is a discipline  because often when we're coming up with say a   potential defining moment for a character we want  to just jump at the first thing that occurs to us   part of becoming a mature writer is recognizing  that it's not supposed to be that easy   and so we want to stick with it and keep coming up  with options so that we don't pick the first thing   that occurs to us which probably is the first  thing that is going to occur to everyone else   we want to get to something else further down  the line that's unexpected that we haven't   seen before and if i'm drawing from my own life  experiences that has a real chance of being fresh   because it's drawn from life not from the movies so that would be how i would go about finding  say one defining moment so a dream is born   maybe in the course of the  film this dream is going to die   so then i would look at my own life and also lives  of people around me that i know well and say where   have i seen a dream die and i can think for myself  a defining moment [Music] where dreams died and in my experience dreams die slowly  they die kicking and screaming   we don't want to admit that thing that  you dreamed is not going to happen and so i would draw on that and say how  do i how do i bring that to this character   and i would keep doing that until  i had that handful of moments   that gives me an understanding  of this character that makes them complex and relatable and interesting and when i  really i can feel myself when a character starts   to come alive in this way and i i know i want to  spend time with that character and i want to hear   the dialogue that they're going to say and i want  to see them get into whatever trouble the story is   getting them into and i want to see them struggle  to get out of that trouble to get to their goal   and i also want to watch them grow  over the course of that story either   for good or for ill they're going to change   and they're going to change in in these moments  these pivot points and so i just keep at it um   until i feel like i have this full character it's  it's an organic messy uh process definitely not   paint by the numbers but having my own history  and an understanding of myself to draw on   also having this sort of set of  characteristics of defining moments   helps me at least know where to look and then  i just i try to keep looking and until i found   what i need to find it's interesting because  we're talking about defining moments for various   characters and knowing them sometimes if i've  watched a biopic i feel as if the filmmaker has   tried to cram in so many defining moments that it  loses some of the impact of them and i think it's   because there's so much to tell yeah but then i've  seen documentaries where they also do the same   and for some reason it lands better i i don't know  why that would be i don't know i do think that um the best biopics tend to focus on a single  event i i think of spielberg's lincoln   and you know we know so much of abraham lincoln's  life and career and spielberg and tony kushner   the screenwriter chose to focus on just a single  vote in the u.s house of representatives about   the amendment to the constitution that outlawed  slavery and so out of everything you could look   at in lincoln's life and career the film focuses  on a single event and i think we get a bunch more   dramatic power focused when when we do that and  it can be really tempting if you're doing a biopic   because so many interesting things happened in um  in many people's lives if we were doing winston   churchill there'd be so many things to focus  on but the fantastic film darkest hour focuses   very specifically on the couple of weeks leading  up to winston churchill's speech to parliament   where he declares we're going to fight on the  beaches we're going to fight on the landing field   where he galvanizes the british people to oppose  the nazis those that that is a dramatic move   to to restrict yourself in that  way and uh at the risk of sounding disgustingly like a film professor  i'll go back to aristotle   one more time and aristotle as long  ago as that said that the drama   should be about a single event and i think  that i think he's right and i think that um for reasons i don't understand we are we are  geared toward a story of a hero struggling against   obstacles to reach a goal there is a unity to  drama that both focuses its power but also helps   to give it meaning because there's a there's a  configuration of events that becomes meaningful   these choices and these actions led to this  outcome so that's it gives us this sense of   completion that i think we was one of the  things that we long for from our stories   when we're developing a character how much are  we charting out all of sort of the wonderful and   terrible things that have happened to them  are we doing this beforehand before we get   into the actual story we're kind of coming  up with a checklist of defining moments this this is one of the confounding  qualities of storytelling   we don't have a linear process uh  where we do this first and the second   we sort of try we have to have we  have to approach the story somehow but i think that what we do is we i typically  have a notion for what is the story what maybe   in a sentence what is the story i want to tell  and that tells me something about a character and and also something about the plot that is  it's somebody like this trying to you know   climb out of a well and so um but then i  go back to the character and i said well   i have more questions for you character uh where  did you come from how did you get in that well   what were you doing in the  field in the first place and um sometimes the answers are really surprising to me   sometimes they come as sort of epiphanies as i'm  out for a run or taking a shower or lying in bed   often though they come as a result of  just the ditch digging of sitting and   asking these questions i know that this  person to be interesting needs to have   both strength and weakness when did  they discover they had that strength when did they first experience the the  crippling quality of that weakness and um then i come bring the character back to the story  and now they're doing more interesting things   that i didn't expect them to do because there's  more to that character and so i discover more   twists and turns that are potential within  say the events or the plot of the story   and then i go back to the character so i'm i  think i'm it's a very messy uh recursive process when i am finding these defining moments  for a character i don't know if any of them   will end up on screen at first i'm  just discovering what are these moments   and then so there are things i can do with a  defining moment i can just know about it and   it's going to inform how i write dialogue for  this character other times i'm going to say   if i were writing pixar's finding nemo i would  say oh that moment when marlin's whole family   gets eaten by a barracuda i think we should see  that that's really visual and exciting and tragic would pixar allow us to start a children's movie  with that kind of scene because if we were to do   that then we would really understand why  marlon is this overprotective father who   won't let nemo have any adventure have any fun  experience any danger and we won't view him   just as you know oh that neurotic marlin we  will feel with him well of course he is a   hyper-vigilant parent because this tragedy struck  him and we witnessed it we experienced it with him now when i first came up with that i didn't  somebody did if i was the one who had come up   with that i i wouldn't have known at first  does that make it into the movie or not there are other moments that we don't see   but a character talks about they just tell you the  story of what happened or they allude to the story   whatever makes great dialogue and then other times  there are moments right in the middle of the movie   where a character transforms and here i  think the great example is michael corleone   and the godfather so we know that michael is  a war hero just back from world war ii he's   the son who was not supposed to get mixed up  with the family's crime business he was supposed   to go on and maybe be a senator maybe even a  president but after his father gets gunned down   michael decides he's got to take matters  into his own hands and so he goes to meet   crime boss who had his father gunned down and the  police captain who protects that other crime boss   because to meet them at an italian restaurant  he has a gun planted in the bathroom he   excuses himself from the table goes  back to the bathroom gets the gun   and then there's this long pause as michael  smoothes his hair and sort of allows himself to make his choice am i going to step across this  threshold from which there can be no return or not   and then the director has set it up so michael  has to pass through three sets of doors   as he returns into the  restaurant from the bathroom   just to emphasize visually this is a threshold  there is a real boundary of before and after here   michael walks out into the restaurant guns down  the police captain and the other crime boss and   the rest of the movie and the next movie and  the next movie the die is cast for all of those   in that moment of the change  of michael's legal status   from war hero to killer there's also a moral  and a spiritual change that happens in him and   he thinks he's done this for all the best reasons  for family but in the end he becomes someone who   kills members of his family for  the family and he is undone by this   action by this choice that he's made in a  moment that defines him so you find that moment   and you think ah that's probably a scene in  the movie and in fact that becomes the fulcrum   of the whole movie the moment that uh defines  michael as who will become the godfather   so you you find all of these but they're like you  know their cards in your poker hand and you're not   sure where you're going to play them or even if  you're going to play them and that is the messy   organic artistic process i suppose of crafting a  story but you can't craft it if you don't have the   raw materials from which to craft it and i think  that defining moments are one of those really rich   materials that we have to work with when we're  telling stories about characters if we look at   forrest gump does he have defining moments  wow that's a really interesting question um so forrest yeah he experiences a moment that  doesn't transform his inner nature his inner   nature is is constant he is he's an innocent  that's his genius but when the movie opens   he's an innocent alone and the moment that  he climbs onto the school bus and meets jenny   defines his life his life will never be the same  after that moment that he climbs onto the school   bus and in fact there's dialogue in the film where  he says you know it's i can't quote it but it's   you know it's funny what a a person remembers i  don't remember my first pair of shoes etc he says   but i do remember the first time i heard  the sweetest voice in the whole wide world   and he meets jenny on the bus  she invites him to sit beside her   and he says in very defining moment language  from that moment on we was like peas and carrots   so he experiences a moment that defines him  even though it doesn't redefine his inner nature   it defines his experience of  life i think that when forrest finds out he's got a son that is a  transforming moment it redirects the   course of his life his life will now  be about caring for a little forest   and i think that jenny's death is also  probably a defining moment for him because   his life at least as told in the movie is  bookended by meeting jenny and then losing jenny   but receiving from her the gift of his son and  that then will define the rest of forrest's life   so defining moments don't always  transform say the nature of a person   uh but they can still change the course of of  their lives i think we see that with jack in   titanic jack is not a character who really has a  big need to grow and change rose definitely needs   to be transformed when we meet rose she's ready  to leap off the back of the ship to her death   by the time the movie's done  rose is all about surviving   so she has been transformed jack  is still kind of the same guy   but i think we could say that meeting rose is a  defining moment for jack and if he had not met her his certainly those whatever  three or four days of the voyage   would have been different and while that  sounds like a short period of time that was   that was his whole life that was all the life  he had left he might also say winning that   card game that got him the ticket on titanic  would also be a defining event in his life yeah so with forrest gump it seems as if there  were maybe stronger in some sense turning point   like in terms of the defining moments that  changed a lot of the people because if you look at   lieutenant dan you know he was so angry he  was so competitive he had so much vengeance   and then toward the end when  you see him at the wedding   he's he's a different person he's  transformed yes so for lieutenant dan   his life was on a clear course toward what  he thought was his destiny which was to   die heroically in battle which that was what his  family did and forrest intervened and pulled him   out of danger and uh disrupted the course that  lieutenant dan thought his life was supposed to be   on so that was a moment that redefined lieutenant  dan's life in a way lieutenant dan despised and   then lieutenant dan was on that course of being  completely unhappy with a life that he saw   as a he's been cheated so all he's got now is  just emptiness until he is on the shrimping boat   in the middle of the hurricane with forest and he  climbs up the mast in the middle of that hurricane   and has a screaming match with god over his  destiny and forrest tells us that in that moment   he believes that god and lieutenant dan somehow  came to peace with each other and lieutenant   dan is a different person after that which makes  possible lieutenant dan showing up at the wedding   now he's got new legs he has a wife and he's no  longer the bitter person he's been made whole   and we within the movie we have the two pivot  points the rescue which denied him his destiny   and then the confrontation between lieutenant  dan and god in the midst of a hurricane   which then makes his growth possible so we can  only understand lieutenant dan's character arc   through those two pivot points and then with  jenny or she recommends for forrest you know   to run to run from the bullies but really that's  a metaphor for what she'd been doing all her life   and so we don't see her toward the end until  you know she comes back and she's changed   but we just know that she was a runner yeah  herself and then she's she's much different   yes and in many ways the moment that  made it possible for her to come home happened off screen we we understand well  we see her hit bottom when she when she   climbs up on that railing of a balcony at a new  year's eve party i think and so we understand   that uh either we've seen a defining moment or  that she is in the zone where those things kind   of happen her return to forrest is evidence that  she has had this transformative kind of experience   but i think it shows us  the defining moments can be   uh kind of if we're talking about playing cards  they can be played in different ways they can   be played on screen off screen um through just  a character recounting something that happened   or um we we end up with more defining moments than  we can actually use it's one of my frustrations i   was working today on my next feature screenplay  and the last two pages after fade out are a nice   little dialogue scene that tells the story of my  main character's defining moment and i know that   that's going to fall out of the script because it  just it doesn't need to be in there but i needed   to know what that moment was so that i could write  the rest of what that character says and does   so even when these defining moments don't end  up on screen they still enrich my understanding this is also something that can be really valuable  for actors for them to understand not only that this is true of my character  but why this is true of my character   so i'll tell a story out of school when i worked  at warner brothers in the script department   the movie twister started shooting  before the script was fully written   and [Music] producer ian bryce called me up and  said can you send a script typist to oklahoma   to work with the writer as he finishes  writing this movie while we shoot it   and i said that sounds like too much fun i'll  send myself so i was on a plane the next day   to oklahoma city and i ended up out in the middle  of a farm field with 300 vehicles and making this   big tornado action movie helen hunt plays a  meteorologist who's chasing tornadoes obsessively   for reasons that no one knew at the moment  because that scene hadn't been written yet   so she's having to go out and try she's  trying to put this psych scientific instrument   place it in the path of a tornado so it'll be  sucked up and they'll learn all kinds of things   about tornadoes she's putting her life  at risk putting her relationships at risk   and at some point they know will  write the scene for her backstory   the defining moment that made her a tornado  hunter but they didn't need to film that   for several weeks into the future and  they didn't seem to take into account   that helen hunt as an actor would like  to know why she's doing all these things eventually they came up with what we would  describe as a defining moment a moment from   her childhood when she experienced a killer  tornado and that birthed in her the dream   that she would someday make the world safer by  getting people more advance warning of tornadoes   my argument is it would have been a real service  to helen hunt as an actor to know what that was   while she was chasing those tornadoes and that  i i'll just use as a metaphor for the way that   an understanding of defining moments can be of  use and a value to actors certainly directors   editors cinematographers everyone  you know i described the way michael   corleone is in the bathroom in that  pivotal defining moment for the godfather   you can see evidence that everyone on the  team appreciated what that moment meant   for that character and for the film the production  designer had to design three sets of doors for   the character to walk through the cinematographer  had to arrange the shot that way the editor the   composer had to all support that moment not cut  past it because oh my gosh how much time are we   spending in this bathroom nothing's going on in  here but everybody recognized that yes this is   where michael is going through this metamorphosis  and so we have to support and dramatize   all of the interaction that is happening outside  of our view somehow we have to make that visible   on the screen and the entire team understood  intuitively or not what a defining moment that was   and built an entire film around  that moment we've talked a lot about   defining moments in drama but in comedy as well i  mean we could think of so many john hughes films   that had great defining moments uh whether it  was 16 candles or home alone or something i mean   there's just is there a difference in the way that  a comedic defining moment is done you know i think   i i am not a comedy writer uh i it just gives me  terrible anxiety to think about exchanging money   for laughs and i i have friends who specialize  in comedy i think it's a gift that i don't have   but to the extent that i understand comedy  comedy works a lot like drama except it's just   funny you know we laugh so when a character is  pursuing a goal they pursue it to absurd lengths   in a way that you wouldn't do in  a drama but the character arcs still often have to do with  character transformation i think that the deepest and like most satisfying  uh comedies really are dramas with laughs and so   i i i think that these defining moments absolutely  exist you might need a moment a defining moment to   help us understand why a character would  do the absurd things that they do uh but   so that you know they may be a of a different  quality when i brainstorm my 20 possibilities   i'm going to pick a different defining moment  in a comedy than i am in a gritty drama   just for tone but it's still performing  those functions of either explaining   why the hero wants what they want why they  need to grow and change the way they need to   or that's showing us the transformation as it  unfolds step by step you and kathy have a new   book that just came out the defense the defining  moment how writers and actors build characters   great and we're wondering if there are certain  chapters or a portion of the book that you can   reference first off a moment or moments that  damage or [ __ ] a character do you have any   references we do because that's that's something  that is critically important uh in storytelling   because we're so often dealing with characters who  are damaged or crippled so kathy and i talk about from the film finding nemo the way nemo's dad  marlin is damaged by the tragic loss of his   family to a barracuda but we also try to share  some of our own defining moments because we   urge storytellers writers actors directors  to delve into their own histories to find   the moments that have defined them in this case  moments that have damaged wounded crippled them in the history of our family when we think  of defining moments there's one moment that   stands above all the others  and it was the moment when   uh our son peter as a five and a half year old  little boy was diagnosed with a brain tumor and our pediatrician put the mri films in our hands  and said you need to drive to ucla medical center   a brain surgeon will be waiting for  you and he'll explain everything   and so kathy and i got in the car and oh and the  doctor said and don't stop anywhere on the way   so we put our son in the car drove to the er  and as we turned into the entrance to the er   we looked at each other and i  think kathy was the one who said   in this moment like our lives are changing forever  and that was true we now in in our family talk   about the moment before peter got sick and we  talk about the moment after peter's brain tumor   my daughter's life experience  was different from that moment on   her best friend um and brother suddenly  was out of her life and in the hospital   and she wasn't seeing him and when she did  finally see him after surgery he was changed   the tumor was gone but he didn't speak didn't  walk he looked to her like a monster and for peter that was a defining moment  it was a moment that crippled him that   made him and peter many years later is alive  but as a result of the surgery radiation   which isn't good for little boy's brains and  chemotherapy he's kind of a real life forest gump pure of heart and and he knows what  love is and he struggles intellectually so that was a moment of wounding for him it  was the beginning of the death of the dreams   that we had for him we had to find new dreams to  replace the ones that died and it took a long time   though we were the ones who were dragged  kicking and screaming to recognizing   the dreams that were not  going to happen now for him even as we approached his 16th birthday and  people his age were going to get driver's licenses   none of us wants to live in a world where  peter reilly has a driver's license because   he just cannot process all of the information  fast enough and he would get it right 95   of the time but that's not that's  not enough on the streets of la   and so i had to eventually say to him peter  you're not going to get a driver's license and so he's found a new dream he heard about the  google car and so he's all about a self-driving   car as soon as he can get one he wants a car  that's going to take him wherever it can take him we had to absorb a lot of of losses but a day came when peter had struggled  along in school got to high school   and in california there's a test you have to pass  in order to get a diploma called the california   high school exit exam it's a standardized test so  no matter how much people at the school loved him   and helped him there was no way he was going  to get a diploma if he didn't pass this   test and i remember the day that the results came  in the mail and i just heard kathy screaming in   the other part of the house she'd open  the envelope and he had passed by like   a whisker and uh and so we got to  go to his high school graduation and uh you know i've been in high school and i  know how it works people applaud based on how   popular you are when your name is called and so  my family had all come to his graduation and i   was telling everybody you've got to like cheer  your brains out because we have to be as loud   as possible and kathy was just saying oh i just i  don't care about that i just hope he doesn't fall   off the stage and they called his name and  the entire senior class came to their feet   applauding because they all recognized what  he had overcome in order to earn that diploma kathy and i look at that experience as a  defining moment for us that was a moment of   healing it was a moment where we got back some  of what we had lost and peter still struggles   he had another defining moment where just in an  afternoon he lost his hearing and that happened   recently further isolated him and made his life  harder made our lives harder it's really hard   to raise your voice so that he can hear us  and not feel angry when you're shouting it's   your body won't disconnect shouting and  anger and so we're always struggling with   like how do i talk loudly enough for him to hear  me and not have to apologize for it afterwards we are not unique in experiencing  moments of loss one of the things that   experiencing loss has sensitized us to  is that everyone experiences losses and   often those losses happen out of view they're  not visible when we go to the grocery store   and we believe it's true of our characters as well i think that i think you can't work with characters in  this way without becoming more compassionate   without becoming aware of what people are  suffering and so in that way i i hope this book is   is a humanizing force within our industry and  helps people gain more compassion for one another   and also for their characters and maybe through  their characters even the audience will will   grow in the kind of compassion and sensitivity  and humanity that movies helped to bring to me   our business could probably do with some of that  our world could probably do with some of that   do you have a favorite chapter  you and kathy definitely i you know i wrote i wrote a book about  script format a few years ago and this is a very different kind of  book because so much of our heart   is on the page i think probably the the chapter  that guides the reader through discovering   their own defining moments is my favorite  chapter it's the chapter where we share um   many of our own moments sometimes you know big  moments like the brain tumor moment but also   smaller quieter moments that have also shaped us  we do that as an encouragement to our readers to   be willing to look and find their own defining  moments and we also do it as a way to model   what some of those moments look  like and how you might describe them i think this book in some ways is my response  to seeing ordinary people all those years ago   experiencing a film that reached out and  made connection with me as a human being   and this book is me reaching  back out into the world to   connect in the way that i was connected  with to help readers feel less alone   but this is a very specific group of readers  these are these are our filmmakers these are   our actors and writers and directors and novelists  these are the people who tell stories in our time so i consider it a massive  privilege to get to have   a voice helping to equip storytellers to  tell stories that that will help connect us is there any story you the two of you struggled  to maybe leave in or leave out was there one   that you felt whether i mean you shared some  incredibly personal stuff just here and i think   it could be beneficial for so many people but  there's a risk you know right and and that's   yeah yeah i think that uh kathy struggled with how  much to tell about her relationship with her dad   which was not warm and close um he he was a dad  who never ever said the words to her i love you   and she wants to honor her dad her dad was a good  man but he was not a warm man and so she struggled   with whether to put that story in her out of the  book and ultimately the stories in the book uh   she did it in a way that was honoring  to him um she actually drew on what she   words she said at his funeral and for me i  think speaking of this moment that i can't   remember a moment that seems to be of abuse in  my early early childhood is uh that was one that   i hesitated to include and wanted to be very  kind of wise about how how i told that story   but it's also one of the stories i'm most  interested in sharing because i think it could be   somehow encouraging or beneficial to someone else  and i i think i found my way to understanding that   story through films and documentaries that  i identified with and i was i was feeling   really powerful emotions watching documentaries  in ways that didn't make sense to me that i should   be reacting that way and watching  those films ended up leading me into a   counseling dialogue that has like really  helped me put my finger on the lies that had had crippled me uh and allowed me then  to figure out what was actually true so that's my hope is that in  in sharing these stories um stories become gifts that we give to a reader  to an audience and stories work in a way that   is almost magical i can't explain how stories work  how each of us can hear the same story read the   same book watch the same movie and we connect with  it in our in our own way we're moved by it in our   own way we make very personal application so as we  send these stories out into the world i don't know   what what will happen but i'm hopeful and i  look forward to getting some emails in return   can we talk about moments that heal or repair a  character i love moments in film where there is   restoration of some kind that happens in a  way that seems believable that doesn't seem   shangri-la i think about uh the film blood  diamond in this regard so there's really two   stories that happen in blood diamond um we have  the story of a south african diamond merchant   played by leonardo dicaprio who is trafficking in  these blood diamonds i think this the movie takes   place in sierra leone and so he's on the hunt for  this giant diamond that he's heard has been found   out in the mines that are run by the rebel  military and the rebel military conscripts   boys as child soldiers both to fight  for them but also to work in these minds   the other main character is played by jimin hansu  and he's the dad of a boy who has been abducted   and taken away from his village made  to be a soldier who commits atrocities   so this young boy 10 years old maybe has  been made to do horrible things and his dad   is determined to find his son and  somehow bring him back to the family   and as he's doing that he gets forced into working  digging for diamonds for the people who stole his   son from him and he finds this massive diamond  and he buries it out away from the camp and   uh continues looking for his son leonardo  dicaprio finds out simon hansu's got this   massive diamond hidden and at gunpoint takes  him to dig up this diamond and just as they're   digging for this diamond jimin hansu's son  shows up and is holding a gun on both men leonardo dicaprio alerts jimin hansu who's  digging for the diamond that his son is here   and so this father turns to his son who now turns  the gun to him and is calling out the sons calling   out for help and jimin hansu says you're not  one of them you're my son and i'm your father   your mother waits for you your sister waits  for you the wild dog who listens to no one   waits for you at home you're not a bad boy i  know they made you do bad things but you are   going to come home to be me and be my son again  and i'm going to love you and in the midst of this   the father is walking toward his son walking  toward the barrel of the gun and the son   begins to cry and slowly lowers the gun and  allows himself to be embraced by his father   that is written directed and acted  in a way that you believe that that is a moment of restoration and recovery  that maybe shouldn't even be possible   that it would be that you could recover a child  who has been put through those experiences   the film presents it with a kind  of emotional believability that   certainly represents a defining  moment for that boy and his father   that is going to be the pivot point  certainly this kid's going to need   probably lots of therapy and lots of love  over lots of years to completely emerge from   that awful darkness but in that moment you  believe that there is real hope and that this moment represents a before and after  that they will look back 10 years from now   and see that is the moment that the healing  began that the restoration began and that   love began to eclipse hate in the life of this  boy i think healing's like that it doesn't   usually come in a moment usually it comes a  little bit at a time but it has a beginning   and as storytellers as filmmakers we  have the capacity to aim the camera   aim the attention of the audience  at even the minutest movements   so that we are able to perceive the moment  when [Music] a process of healing begins   and actually allow the audience to to  see feel and appreciate what's happened   in a way that if we were on stage  and we were looking at the proscenium   like you'd miss it you'd never know what was  happening we we have the capacity to uh to zoom in   on these massively significant movements  of character that are almost imperceptible   somebody has said that the job of the artist is  to see and then to show others what they've seen   and for me this is an example of that  of looking closely enough to see this   monumental thing that's happening in this tiny  little frame and blow that up so that we see   it we understand it we we appreciate its meaning  and we feel it and it seems that combination of   meaning and emotion are another of the things  that we we just really crave from our stories   just out of curiosity what was the leonardo  dicaprio character doing during that moment he was   he was standing and watching he  had he had his assault rifle and   i think he was ready to shoot the boy  if he felt he needed to uh but he was   he was also witness he was bearing  witness to this miracle moment so even i i haven't seen the film but because  his intentions sounds like they were not that   honorable either okay so he but he's seeing  this and do you see a little bit of change   in that character at all yes yeah after that he  he discovers that actually he's been shot in the   fire fight that happened just before this scene  he ends up really sacrificing himself to help   father and son escape so yeah it does actually  um transform him to have witnessed this moment   before you and kathy wrote the defining moment  what was your process for writing characters   kathy and i approach character from lots  of different angles because characters are   slippery critters that you know have  a lot of facets a lot of dimensions   for many years we have asked these questions about  what are the moments that define these characters   so that's a really important part of what we've  always done we also we have a set of what we call   the hero questions where we ask things like what  does this character want because every character   is driven by by some intention uh and then we ask  how does this character need to grow and change   because the most interesting characters  uh very often do transform in some way or   even adjust not all characters and all genres  transform but uh often there's at least a small   growth or adjustment in them and that's that's  satisfying that's where some of the emotion comes   from for the audience we ask what terrible thing  will happen if the hero doesn't get what they want   and that helps us zero in on the stakes of  the story uh for the the external stakes   and we ask what terrible thing will  happen if they don't grow and change   in the way they need to and that gets at  the internal stakes and we ask how's the   audience going to relate to this character what  are they going to be rooting for in relation to   this character because we're really convinced  that if we are not rooting for our protagonist   we're not going to be invested emotionally in the  outcome of the story and so if we don't care we're   bored we also um we've got a list of character  qualities that i've stolen from my friend uh   dr sydney showers and so i call those dr showers  eight character traits and she is a list she's a   gifted writer who's just compiled this list of  character traits and they include some of the   things that are included in the hero questions  but she asks some other things she asks about a   character's drive and by that she means what is  that motor even outside of the specific problem   that's being solved in this movie there's a killer  asteroid headed toward earth and so our goal is to   save the earth well what what drives  that character the rest of the time   are they a person who's  all about protecting people   throughout their lives everywhere or is it about  they're driven by recognition and so i want to   save the earth because it'll make me famous and  so that's that's the idea of the character's drive   she thinks about the character's genius  and her ideas that every character has   some strength or genius whether it's high iq  or in the case of forrest gump it's not high   iq but it's purity of love purity of  heart could be your great cello player   it's um it's something that is a strength  a character has and then she thinks about   uh characters flaw and also their weakness as two  different things the weakness she thinks of as   uh just an inability to do something i don't  write comedy that's my weakness i'm sure   one element in a very long list the flaw  she thinks of more as a moral failure   a person's proud cruel selfish  fearful something [Music]   all of all of these are just questions that prompt  me prompt kathy to think about our characters   and then we also get some insight into  our characters by letting them talk so   when i was writing with kathy  our german film after the truth that's a movie that's about the  auschwitz doctor joseph mengele and i knew that i needed to capture his voice as  part of his character what kinds of things does   mengelis say and so i sat down one afternoon and i  just kind of wrote a rant in his voice i just sort   of allowed myself to inhabit that character i read  everything i could find out about him every word   that we knew he had written and and i inhabited  that character and just wrote in his voice   and i wrote a lot it wasn't dialogue it was more  of a kind of a blog post from joseph mengele   and and then i whatever the opposite of  inhabited disinhabited that character   and i never went back in there but i  was able to just go back to those pages   of journal entry or blog post in that character's  voice as kind of a tuning fork that allowed me to   write in that character's voice and i've done  that for other characters as well as a way of   pinning down a character's voice  and being able to then draw on that   it's almost i don't know anything about  making sourdough bread but i think that   you've got this starter and you just you  keep you just need a little bit of it to get   the dough going and that's how that works you've  got that starter and that allows you then to   write dialogue for any scene from that  character it's it's a messy iterative process   often i will think about a character  as i'm going to sleep at night   and i'll wake up and have some new insight into  them i i really think that it's just it's we need   different strategies to just get us  coming back over and over and over again   to our characters and giving us ourselves the  opportunities to make more discoveries about them   and just to go back to this metaphor about the  the sourdough starter if i understand it correctly   that you can keep some of the starter still there  in a cupboard covered up so it sounds like two   maybe there's with this checklist that's like the  starter that you're keeping because you're you're   gonna go back to this checklist that you talked  about in the book that you have what is it like 20   questions or so yeah so the i don't  even know how many hero questions   plus if we add dr showers eight character  traits that probably does get us to about 20.   um yeah right writing a movie especially or  writing a tv series it's a massive project   and having a starter is uh is a big help  uh just a place to grab that first thread   and and start pulling so it's it's not a formula  it's not paint by numbers but it at least is a   way to say here's how i'm going to start my work  today and make contact with this character i've   for the first time in my life i  directed a short film recently and so i   had to write the script i did all of my  write it writerly character stuff but then   there were weeks of prep and pre-production  casting working with actors and then shooting   which allowed me to just keep coming back to  these characters over and over and over again   what i discovered is you keep learning new things  every time you sit down with your characters   you learn more and more and more and  eventually it's more than you can fit   in the movie so things start overflowing and  falling out but far better to come at this work   with this overflowing just richness of character  and knowledge about these characters that you   can't even fit it all into the movie i think  that's what the audience wants is a real   density of ideas we just keep discovering  more and the only way the audience   is going to keep discovering more is if we have  before them discovered more and more and more   how has the defining moment changed the way you  write characters i think that i began my writing   life as a pretty lazy guy with low ambitions i  wanted to be just good enough to get to play in   the game which is ridiculous because nobody who's  aiming to be mediocre gets to play in the game kathy is much more about let's not do  the least we can let's do the most we can   so from the the moment that we  learned about defining moments   kathy has been all about let's do our homework  let's really dig into these characters and i've   i've had to grow into the discipline of it and  as i've as i've been willing to invest the effort   into spending time to really deeply understand  my characters rather than rushing ahead because   i can't wait to write that scene where the thing  blows up my writing gets better and deeper [Music]   so i'm excited now every time i approach a new  character because i am i'm just asking i'm asking   all these questions and requiring myself not to  rush ahead but to take the time to really enrich   the characters enrich the script the script  i'm writing right now i'm actually in a   rewrite process where i'm i i paused and did all  this defining moment work because i felt like a   hypocrite you know having written the book i need  to actually do this made wonderful discoveries   and i'm now in the process of of enriching  the script with all of those insights so for me it's it's made my writing i think  objectively better richer more emotional   and the character is just more interesting so  when you you first started as a writer what   were some of the characters what were some of the  the films that you wanted to emulate aside from   you know we talked about ordinary people yeah  so besides ordinary people um the deer hunter   was also a film that was uh very influential on me  and then this is completely from a different genre   raiders of the lost ark that's just for me so  much fun uh steven spielberg really understands   how to tell a story with action it's not random  action and we are really with the character in   the midst of it we understand what's going on  what has to be achieved what all the threats are   and then he tumbles you in that film out of the  frying pan into the fire time after time you end   one action sequence and you tumble  into the beginning of the next one   so that one for me is just a lot of fun  and teaches me the movie movie going can   be fun it doesn't have to just be you know  this emotional um ripping open of the soul the elephant man is a film that i  really love and um a real character   study a study of the connection between  two characters who are very different and   in that movie it's the audience that's transformed  so the first time that the elephant man   is seen on screen we like cover our faces  and turn away and horror at his hideousness he doesn't change but by the end of that  movie we are like on a close shot of his face   and all we can see is his beauty he didn't change but we changed and i love that  film that story can do that that it can change   what we see chris we had this comment come in  overnight and so beautifully written i wanted   to read it it's from user half xbreed23 and they  write i think a lot of writers have an obsession   with their characters which keeps the story from  growing because they're too in love with them   nothing is greater than the story nobody  is greater than the story story is the sun   characters are flowers the story allows characters  to bloom i love that i love that awesome yeah i   i think that's right uh characters are in  service to story and by story we don't mean plot   the story is the totality of the characters  doing what they do as they struggle with all   of the challenges they face and a beautiful line  that doesn't support the story has got to be cut i i i think one of the great challenges is after  i've said we should you know dig into our own   defining moments when we base a character on  ourselves and it becomes too autobiographical that   can limit us because one of the things we have to  look at are the characters flaws and complexities   and i don't want to think about my complexities my  contradictions where am i a hypocrite put that on   the page for the world so if um if i'm not willing  to let the character and the story go where they   need to i can end up kind of wrapping duct tape  around that character uh and preventing them from   pursuing their own life and this  sounds absurd unless you're a writer   characters will surprise us characters say  things we did not know they were going to say   that's such an electric exciting moment when that  happens i can't quite explain how that happens   and yes if we treat our characters like um you  know the whatever antique barbie and ken dolls   that we don't want to take out of their boxes  because they're too valuable in their perfection we will hamper the story that that could  unfold if we let them cut loose a little bit   it's a great analogy yeah so being too  precious like you have your collection up there   and you can show it um but you can't really do  anything with it right yeah you got to get the   dolls out of the boxes and play with them um  and that's the point of all of this character   development is to get to the place where  we can now get them out and play with them   and put the astronaut doll in the gemini  capsule and blast it off and see what happens   and you know let barbie and ken fight it out  and see what happens that's that's the play   that happens when we get past all this character  development and we actually start writing pages   that's that's where the fun is that's where the  life comes so character development is not an   end in itself the story is the end chris i heard  you say and maybe a michael we see video that   a story is a hero's struggle against an obstacle  to reach a goal yes so i first came across   that quote from television writer bill eidelson  reading an article in the writer's guild magazine   and i just have found that to be the e equals  m c squared of the physics of storytelling it gives us three elements gives us our  hero gives us a goal and then the obstacles   against which the heroes struggles that's  not everything that happens in story   but it allows us to understand at an elemental  level what is happening in the story so   in steven spielberg's lincoln it's the  story of abraham lincoln struggling against   all of the forces of the u.s house of  representatives who don't want to outlaw slavery   to pass an amendment to the united states  constitution outlawing slavery now i didn't try   i just gave you the hero gold  obstacle but i gave you a log line   for the movie and the log line was just the  hero goal obstacle dynamic put into a sentence it brings the story into focus   it'll it identifies the single action that  aristotle said that a drama needs to be about and it puts the focus on the character's  struggle so if a story is the hero's   struggle against an obstacle to reach a  goal then the story juice is in the struggle   and we so we want to spend most of our  page count dramatizing that struggle   that gives us force and focus  uh for a story it helps us know   what the story is so we can judge what serves  the story and what doesn't what's a distraction i i just find it to be such a clarifying  lens a story is not only that there's also claudia hunter johnson wrote a great book called  crafting short screenplays that connect and she   talks about the power of connection and  disconnection between characters and how   much emotion comes from connection you can  think about a touch a kiss as a connection   or two characters whose eyes meet and they realize  against all odds they're actually on the same side   or a disconnection of betrayal and just  to say betrayal we we feel the emotion   that goes with that and then  there are missed connections near misses longed for connections that  never happen all of that swirls around   heroes struggling toward goals against obstacles  so i find that to be um so so useful when i'm   figuring out the structure of a whole movie or  the structure of an individual scene we can think   about even the sprawling three movies or three  books of lord of the rings it's all about frodo   carrying a ring to mount doom to destroy it  struggling against all the forces of mordor   it's a single action across all  three three hour long movies and   the filmmakers never lose sight of what the  story is the story is frodo struggling against   the forces of mordor to destroy the ring lots  of stuff happens in that movie and we also we   actually kind of feel the energy drain when we  step away from that central thread when we're   with mary and pippen in the trees uh we sort of  feel the temperature turned down on the urgency   and the focus of that tom bombadil which  for readers of the book um they know   there's maybe a hundred pages about some guy named  tom bombadil has nothing to do with frodo trying   to get rid of that ring and so rightly that just  falls out of the movies because it doesn't serve   the imperative of movies which is all about what  happens next and hero goal obstacle helps us to   know what we mean when we say well what happens  next is what happens next as the hero's struggling   toward the goal and forgive me you talked about  this other movie and that is that blood diamond   yes okay and i have not seen it but um if  i'm keeping with what i believe you said   was sort of this premise it seems  like they're all their common goal   is this diamond or these diamond mines  and having access to them well so   each in this case we've got two protagonists  we've got leonardo dicaprio whose goal is   make all the money he can from these  diamonds and then jimin hansu whose goal is   rescue my son and so here we've got two stories  that intersect and so we could call that uh i   think robert mckee calls that a multi-protagonist  story which is which is to say you've got multiple   protagonists each with their own goal and they  succeed or fail individually you can also have   buddy movies or movies with several people  on a team all struggling toward the same   goal and they succeed or fail together and  mckee calls those plural protagonist movies   plural protagonist movies are more of the classic  structure that we see in say hollywood movies   multi-protagonist movies are more art  house things they're much harder to do   but you know those movies like crash and traffic  and magnolia that's where you see uh and babel   multi-protagonist movies and i think  that's what's going on with blood diamond   right and so the real goal though isn't  this this diamond the real goal is is   the realization that this father loves  the son and he's trying to save him from yeah so it's an interesting thing  you've got um sort of your stated goal   i i'm going to rescue my son i'm going to get that  diamond some characters have the wrong goal or   their need for growth is far more important  than their stated goal leonardo dicaprio's   goal he's got the wrong goal he just wants to  be rich he wants diamonds that's the wrong goal   what he really needs to do is find something  that is worth more than diamonds and that's   people that's love and he does so the audience  recognizes that and they say oh you didn't get   your goal but you grew in the way you needed to  so i can still feel good about that but if you die   along the way it's bittersweet and so that's cool  you know it's it's not the the neat bow um whereas   jimin hansu the dad who's looking to rescue  his son it's not really a story about his   inner growth for him we are invested in him  actually achieving his goal of rescuing his son   which will require his son's transformation  so that's where we get the transformation   and the emotion that accompanies  that in that story and those two   end up being intertwined uh at the end but they  uh they unfold independently for the first uh   good part of that movie you said that mostly  art house cinema does sort of like these multi   protagonist films well if you've got a  multi-protagonist film it is going to be   probably less of a blockbuster and so yes you may  end up having an art house film if you do that um mostly studio films are going to be the more  classic single story that we're telling whether   with one protagonist or many working together  so like a multi or a plural protagonist story a   lot of protagonists working together would be the  oceans 11 12 13 movies you've got a team of people   who are all trying to pull off the same  heist and they succeed or fail together   do villains have defining moments i think  that they certainly can uh sometimes we get   villains who are very cardboard cutout  just you know gleefully wreaking havoc   for for the heck of it but i think of  a of a classic film spider-man 2 and   there doc ock has a defining moment he isn't  evil for the sake of evil he is a man who is   wounded through the death of his wife that's  the moment that defines him and in spider-man 2   written by the same writer  who wrote ordinary people we get a villain who actually has an  arc and who transforms and in the end   is able to take a step back from [Music] the  evil and to actually sacrifice himself uh   to join with spider-man and to save the  city so yes i and i think that spider-man 2   plays a really important role in the  history of superhero action films we look back and uh we may not recognize  that because we're used to superhero action   films that have rich character development but  spider-man 2 really took that up a huge step by in part looking deeply in to the character  of their villain and by providing   the uh the depth and complexity  and dimension that defining moments   afforded that character and when we do see  these defining moments for these villains is it to have the audience turn  to to have some empathy toward   that antagonist or is it just to further  understand sort of the arc of the story   i think the effect is that we actually do  have some empathy uh for that villain and   and it's not to say that we like the villain  or we agree with the evil the villain does   but it's to say that we recognize the villain's  humanity and we say oh you are at least a   little bit like me we are the same species and  there are a lot of different ways to approach   villains we can approach villains as other just  completely different from me and outside of me but you think about pinocchio so if we go way back  to a very disturbing children's animated film   a scene where pinocchio is at the pool hall and  he and the other boys are drinking and smoking   cigars and playing pool and being transformed  into donkeys that's a vision of evil that   says oh there is no difference between  us and them we are them and that   is a cautionary tale but it also does lead to a  kind of empathy where we can recognize oh that   villain is really broken and what they're doing  may be horrible and actually we may call it evil   but they are also one of us and  uh for my storytelling money   that's uh that's closer to what i resonate  with as like yeah i think that's how it is   how are the decisions of the villain different  from the hero in many ways the hero and villains   decisions are the same they're driven by the  way they see the world and what they want when i   am writing [Music] an antagonist and i will often  think in terms of antagonist as opposed to villain   because villain [Music] is more  condemning than i think i'm   i'm ready to be with most of my characters  joseph mengeles certainly was a villain and did pure evil and he was a human which is what  made him so interesting to me as a character what allowed us to write  joseph mengele in a way that i think was so disturbing and ended up getting the actor best actor nomination for the european film award   was that um we approached him as a  character who thought he was the hero   and i think that everyone sees themselves as  the hero of their story they do what they do   for the reasons they do them and even when they do  something that they would recognize is like okay   that was bad but you have to understand i had a  really good justification why i had to do that   it's part of the genius of  michael corleone's character   we understand with every choice he makes why he  makes it and we cringe because sometimes he's   killing family members but we always recognize  the reasons that he does it and it creates this   cognitive dissonance for us because we're saying  oh no that's like don't you shouldn't do that and   at the same time i totally understand why you just  did that i think that gives us really fascinating   antagonists and villains if we do we do  the same character development for them   that we do for any other character i  don't think that means we have to have   really fuzzy moral judgment i think  we can still recognize evil as evil and recognize the humanity of the people who  are doing the evil at the same time it's um   it's a more nuanced approach i think it's  more interesting and i think again i think it   it rings true to me for how people actually  are i haven't like i don't think i've ever met   a villain at vaughn's you know i i  i've i've met people doing dumb things   and being irresponsible and uncaring um  but they think they're right and um so i i try to approach all my characters  with love even the ones that are wicked   how do writers get audiences to care about  the villains i think that on the one hand   you could get away with the audience not caring  about the villains even gleefully rooting   for the destruction of the villain but the example of spider-man 2 shows us that  there is emotional gold to be mined in providing   a glimpse into the humanity of a villain so the in  the same way that we would reveal a character say   a heroic character to the audience so that they  can understand where that character's coming from   we can use those same tools to reveal  who this villain is and why this   villain is how what journey this character  has been on to arrive at their villainy the i think the emotional experience then  becomes really complex because now [Music] i am i recognize that character has to be stopped   uh i'm thinking of the camp commandant in  schindler's list where we really do get some insights into this character into his  vulnerability into there's there's a moment where   he toys with showing mercy to people and then  he pulls back from that it's like that's not me   i'm not i'm not going to  be that guy who is merciful   but the fact that he had that moment  where he could have been merciful colors the way we feel about him when  he's executed at the end of the film   it makes it more complicated in a way that i think  enriches the experience never confuses us about   the evil that he's perpetrated the film never  has any confusion about that the evil is evil   but it does show us the complexity of  the person perpetrating the evil which does i think make for a more  interesting storytelling experience   do you have any practical exercises that writers  can do for defining or redefining their characters   i do actually so in in the book  we approach practical exercises in   uh a variety of different ways so the  first set of practical exercises has to do   with walking writers through a  discovery of their own defining moments and that can be that can be a pretty emotional  thing to do to go back and and really touch those   moments that have shaped us in wonderful ways and  terrible ways and then we also provide a set of   exercises that walk a writer through discovering  their character's defining moments and those are   very kind of practical here's the thing to do  now set this much time on you know on the timer   and start writing and keep writing until the timer  goes off i i'm a kind of a believer in what um   anne lamott talks about small  assignments and in her book bird by bird   writing can be really daunting uh  because it's it's like running a marathon it's just so much you can't imagine how much  it is and so starting can be really really hard   every day when i start writing it's  still that's the hardest thing i do   requires the most discipline and once i've  tipped over into writing then i'm going   but it's like taking that first plunge into the  cold swimming pool in the morning you just kind of   have to give yourself a push in the back and these  exercises are designed to say all right blank   sheet of paper pick up a pen here's your prompt  now go i find that when writers do that they end   up writing things they didn't mean to write they  uncover things they didn't know were there and i really love it when [Music] we just start  writing and require ourselves to keep the pen   moving now this is a very  physical way to approach it   apart from a keyboard i think somehow  there's some value in actually writing with a   pen or pencil and paper and so a prompt  might be you know think of your character   think of how they need to grow and change now why  have they not grown and changed in that way yet   or think of the way your characters say  your character's strength or their genius   when was the first time they realized  that they had that strength or genius   write about that for five minutes and so you  might start by writing i'm not even sure like   he knows how good he is at the trombone and um i'm  not sure why he doesn't know or why he's playing   the trombone in the first place and then you  eventually if you just keep writing you stumble   upon something that you didn't know you were going  to stumble upon and what is it about the trombone   that is just perfect for his personality what's  happening when he's playing the trombone what is   he feeling and that's a really terrible example  but it um it it shows how just doing exercises allows you to start finding these little  starters that will lead to bigger things one of the chapters i think we start with  the sentence characters start at zero meaning   as the storyteller i don't know anything about  the character when they first pop into my mind   nor does the audience know anything about  a character just before they step on stage   and i will only know what i know about a  character through what i discover about   them and the audience will only know about  a character through what i reveal about them   so i have to somehow get myself to engage with  this discovery process and once i've mounded up   all of this raw material then i'm ready to start  writing and doling that out in a strategic way   as i tell the story these exercises are designed  to give writers and actors and directors   practice thinking about and working with  characters in this way so that all of us   can make the discoveries that are going to make  for rich and lifelike characters who can transform   before our eyes you know when you mentioned  anne lamott's bird by bird i believe the title   if i remember correctly is based on a conversation  she had with a grandfather or uncle where you just   take it a little bit of a time bird by bird  yes i think she had to write a report about   birds and she was looking out the window maybe  at a flock of birds and she was just overwhelmed   how am i going to do this i think her dad was a  professional writer or professor and he said well   ann just take it bird by bird and i think that's  just some of the best advice for any writer how   can an actor use defining moments to build their  character kathy and i interviewed several actors   as we were writing this book because  we really wanted to understand how how these ideas could be  useful to actors we talked to   two-time emmy winner tony hale and talked  to him about this and he said you know um   i have found that when i will dig into my own  moments that have shaped me and defined me   the performance changes in a way that is  appreciable he had just come from recording   a voice for an animated project and he said and i  did that i tapped into something that was really   real and deep for me and you could just tell the  energy in the booth changed when i did that and he   said i don't know why i don't do that all the time  i suppose it's costly emotionally to do that but he absolutely recognized that   by thinking about the single character  that he's embodying and portraying seeking to understand what are the moments that  really have shaped and define this character   how do those moments connect with my  own life experience he's able to infuse   greater depth and complexity into those  characters he said when he auditions   he seeks to bring himself in that way to  the role and he says i you know i may not   when i audition for that role may not be  the tallest or the this or that that they're   looking for but i can guarantee that i will have  delivered an audition that nobody else delivered   because they can't they don't have access to  his inner life only he does that is the unique gold that he can mine and bring forward  in auditions and performances and   i think any actor uh can benefit from that and and what i think is so useful for  me as a writer and for actors is that   we're talking about a limited number of things  that we need to discover about the character   we don't have to know everything about every  year of their lives we just need to locate   those moments that have most shaped them  and it gives us this deep understanding that   gives all of us access in an empathetic  way to the humanity of that character   but possibly the actor could have a history  in their back pocket and it might lend to   a heaviness here a relief here yeah exactly  and and that's that's for me as a as a writer   a really exciting thing i'm collaborating with  an actor to create this character i do my part   first and then i pass the baton to the actor  and the director and they bring their resources   which are different from my resources and when  it all works the way we dream it will work   then you get this really rich character who  does things that the writer never even imagined   and the actor has got to hope that  the writer put on the page enough   for them to work with and then they can  pick up that baton and carry it further

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 18,003

Keywords: Screenwriting tips, screenwriting 101, screenwriting for beginners, screenwriting techniques, screenwriting advice, writing a screenplay, how to write a movie, writing advice, writing tips, writing characters, how to write characters, Christopher Riley, the Hollywood standard, the defining moment, filmcourage, film courage, interview, kathy riley

Id: BDRQCxLBGx8

Length: 146min 5sec (8765 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2023