Embrace Your Inner Villain

Most of us who've been at this storytelling thing for a while know that it's important to understand and show the motivation of not only your protagonist, but also the bad guys.

And while I already understood that, this is an area where I sometimes cop out... "Because he's evil!" LOL And one other tidbit I remember from that Paul Haggis talk was about understanding villains. He made me see that it shouldn't be a surface level thing.

He said that for every character he's written, who does something most of us would consider "bad", he works hard to put himself in that character's shoes and write the scenes with the understanding of why the villain truly believes he/she is doing good. That is, it's not enough for a villain's motivation to be the hero deserves this for I am evil, or for I want revenge, or whatever... Better if the villain truly believes he/she is doing the right thing and for the writer to explore and understand that.

This discussion came up after we watched a clip from Crash. It was the scene early in the movie, where Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton are pulled over by the Matt Dillon cop character (when she was giving her husband a BJ while he was driving) and the Dillon character basically uses his power of authority to sexually molest Thandie Newton.

Stepping back for a second, the amazing thing about Crash, for me, is how Haggis forces us to see two sides to every character in that movie. The people who initially seem bad, we see good things and vice versa. But listening to him talk about how he developed all that, I realized it was more than just showing the sympathetic side of the "villains". It was his understanding why each character thinks his actions are not villainous.

For example, he reasoned that in that scene Matt Dillon truly believed he was doing Thandie Newton and Terrence Howard a favor. He wasn't just wielding his power to get off on it. He believed he was teaching them an important lesson to keep them safe. He thinks something like: Fool around while you're behind the wheel of the car and there could be dangerous consequences. This, what I'm doing now? Is nothing compared to what could have actually happened if you'd crashed the car or hit a pedestrian. Me doing this to you now, humiliating you both, will help you remember those consequences and think twice before you act recklessly again.

Sure the audience doesn't get all that. We see a cop we assume is a racist arrogant asshole using his power and position to put his hand on Thandie Newton's private parts in front of her husband who's too afraid to do a thing about it... But listening to how Haggis thought about it and talked to Dillon about it on set, and then thinking through the other things that happen with his character (until he ultimately saves the Thandie Newton character from a car crash...) it all resonated deeply for me. And I think I understood a bit more why I love that movie.

And from now on, I'm going to work harder on thinking about my villains' motivations and why they truly believe they are doing the right thing.

BTW When asked about the coincidences in Crash, which didn't bother me at all when I first saw that movie -- to me, that movie was like a miracle, but Haggis's response (and I'm sure he's been asked that questions a million times) was that Crash was meant as a parable. But that modern audiences can't recognize a parable in a modern day setting. Some people might not buy that and might think he's making up an excuse after the fact, but I buy it. The story was about connections, lives colliding into each other, so the conicidences of their meeting was part of that overall story. (Crash is one of my top 10 movies...)

One final thing on Haggis. He also talked about how furious fellow Canadian director David Cronenberg was with him for using that title. (Cronenberg has a 1996 film also called Crash.) Haggis said Crash was actually just a working title he didn't plan to use, but the distributor liked it. And Cronenberg... Really mad. I was lucky enough to be at the world premiere screening of Crash about 15 months before it hit theatres and when Haggis introduced the film he didn't say much, if memory serves, except that we were the very first people to see it (not even any industry screenings before) and then he apologized to David Cronenberg for using that title.

How much do you think about your villain's motivations? Do yours think they are doing the right thing?

Faking Human Interactions

I promised to blog more about the Paul Haggis talk and while this post isn't about a light bulb storytelling secret, it was one of the things I liked about his talk.

Turns out Mr. Haggis likes to work in public--just like me. (Oh, I have something in common with a really successful writer!) Sounds like he has several coffee shop haunts and hotel lobbies he uses as his "offices", setting up for the day with a laptop and madly writing. (Aside: Hotel lobbies! What a great idea. I'll bet I could find some great ones to work at in downtown Toronto...)

Anyway, he said that he likes to work in public so he can pretend he's part of humanity, fake that he actually interacts with other people while he's writing, feel as if he's part of the real world. And that actually did set off a little moment of self-realization for me. I think that's exactly why I like it, too.

Writing is such an isolating profession and when I'm in full-on writing-cave mode, even if I'm out in public during the day, I start to forget how to talk to other people--that is, how to use my mouth instead of my keyboard to communicate. I forget how to form sentences without editing them.

That's one of many reasons I'm really starting to love the little routine Molly and I have started of meeting once a week for a few hours and sitting across from each other in a coffee shop. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we don't. But I feel like I've actually interacted with another human being on those days.

Maybe this isolation thing is a bigger problem for someone like me who lives alone, but I think I'd feel this way even if I didn't. I find it hard to write around people I know who don't "get" what I'm doing. For me, anyway, I get self conscious or annoyed if they want to know how it's going, or even if they're trying too hard to be quiet (clearly I'm easily annoyed)... But writing in the midst of strangers? Or with a trusted writer-friend? Magic.

And even if I spend six hours in a Starbucks (like I did today) without saying a word to another living soul (which I also did)... I can still pretend I'm a member of society. And really, as fiction writers, isn't what we do largely about faking it?

Chasing Failure

Last week I went to see Paul Haggis being interviewed at the TIFF's new permanent location. I have to admit, it was pretty cool and he said a few things that made me nod my head and think, oh, I should do a DWT blog about that! But clearly I'm getting old, or I've been very distracted, or both, because I forgot most of them.

But one comment was during the Q&A. Someone asked about him about the importance of failures. Haggis had talked during the interview about a few TV shows he'd developed that he really loved and believed in that either never got picked up, or got canceled right out of the box, like EZ Streets. And he also talked about how he'd been shopping the scripts for both Crash and Million Dollar Baby for years before he managed to get the money together to produce them. 

And his answer to the person who asked (a young filmmaker) was: run hurtling toward failures. Pursue failures, because that's the only way to succeed.

I thought this was good and brave advice... because really, if we aren't doing this in some way, aren't we playing it safe?

I dunno. I suppose it's just another way to say, take risks, pursue your wildest dreams, do it the way you want to do it... but I think it is kind of freeing to think about chasing down failures. Hey, don't we writers actively pursue rejection and criticism in a way?

Is this too negative a way of thinking about this? I can't decide...