Creating Unforgettable Characters (10 page)

Often when we think about character psychology, we think about the abnormal personalities in films such as
Sybil, The Three Faces of Eve, David and Lisa, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,
or
Rain Man.
But underlying motives and unconscious forces are important with any character you create.

To understand how character psychology might be constructed, let's look more closely at the two
Rain Man
characters Charlie Babbitt and Raymond Babbitt. Although Raymond is the character who demanded the most specialized research, understanding Charlie's psychology was at least as important— since it drove the story. Throughout this chapter, we will hear from the writers on the project: Barry Morrow, who created the story, and Ron Bass, who did the rewrites.

"When Steven Spielberg came on the project [Spielberg was one of the several directors slated to do the picture before Barry Levinson], we discussed Charlie as analogous to an autistic personality," says Ron Bass. "We looked on the film as a story about two autistic brothers, one who was clinically autistic and the other who had all the levels of autistic features that so-called normal people have. The universal story of
Rain Man is
about how difficult it is to make human connection, yet how necessary it is. We tell ourselves that we can live without it and that we're better off without it and that we're safe and more secure behind our defenses—but we're wrong."

We can better understand the psychology of Charlie and Raymond by looking at four key psychological areas that define the inner character. They are: the inner backstory, the unconscious, the character types, and the abnormal psychology. These are the most important for the creation of any character.

Much of the material presented in this chapter you may already be familiar with, either intuitively or from studying psychology. Understanding these categories is important, but it's just as important to remember that characters are always more than their psychology. They are constructed not clinically but imaginatively. A familiarity with these areas can shed light on the character. It can help you solve character problems, add dimension, and answer the questions, Would my character do that? Say that? React that way?

HOW THE INNER BACKSTORY DEFINES CHARACTER

In Chapter Three, we looked at some external circumstances that influence the character, including past events. The ways people internalize these events, sometimes repressing them or redefining them, based on the negative or positive emotional effect they've had on their lives, is equally important. Often it is not a particular circumstance that determines a character's psychological makeup; rather, it's how she or he
reacts
to the circumstances.

When Sigmund Freud formed his psychological theories, he discovered the tremendous influence that past events have upon our present lives. They shape our actions, our attitudes, and even our fears. Freud saw traumatic events in the past as the cause of the complexes and neuroses of the present. He believed that most abnormal behavior comes from the repression of these events.

The psychologist Carl Jung realized that influences from the past could be a positive source of health, rather than the seeds of mental illness. Sometimes we regain our mental health when we rediscover the values from our childhood.

Many writers use their understanding of childhood influences to help construct a character. Coleman Luck says: "When I was teaching screenwriting there was only one area of psychology that had been extremely important to me— understanding the child of the past. If there is one area that is more important than anything else in applying psychology to writing, it is understanding that the full-blown adult still has the child of the past inside. And if you can understand the child of the past, you can create the critical events of that child's experience that influence your character."

In his studies of childhood, psychoanalyst Erik Erikson found key issues that people must confront at certain ages in order to be healthy, whole, well-adjusted people. As long as these issues remain unresolved, they will continue to exert control over the person's development—at times negatively.

One of the first issues a child confronts is that of trust. An infant needs to feel secure in the world, and this begins with trusting the parents. If this trust is lacking, the child will go through life unable to trust others.

In Rain
Man,
we see both negative and positive events from Charlie's past. Ron Bass tells of these early influences that changed Charlie's ability to trust:

"When Charlie was two years old he lived in a house where his father was a very busy, successful businessman and paid no attention to him at all. But that didn't really register on Charlie because two-year-old Charlie had a loving, caring mother and he had the Rain Man, this brother who was sixteen or eighteen years old, who lived in the house, who never went out, who adored him, and who cuddled him and sang to him.

"But suddenly his mother died, which would be an unbelievably traumatic event for any two-year-old child and especially for a two-year-old boy who was not having a warm, loving relationship with his father. Almost immediately thereafter the only other source of love and comfort he has in the family is sent away and it's a very tearful departure, 'Bye-bye, Rain Man, bye-bye, Rain Man.' So we set up a kid who has all of his emotional supports knocked out from under him at the age of two. "

Charlie has a small memory from years ago of this special "Rain Man." When he returns home for his father's funeral, he suddenly thinks of his special friend. He tells Susan:

CHARLIE

I just had this flash of something. You know how when you're a kid . . . you have these sort of. . . pretend friends? Well, mine was named—what the hell was his name? Rain Man. That's it. The

Rain Man. Anyway, if I'd get scared or anything, I'd just wrap up in this blanket and the Rain Man would sing to me . . . sing to me by the hour. Now that I think of it, I must have been scared a lot. God, that was a long time ago.

SUSAN

So when did he disappear? Your friend?

CHARLIE I don't know. I just. . . grew up, I guess.

If the child has not found trust as an infant, it will remain an issue in other relationships throughout one's life. If there is a change in the stability of a person's life at some later time, the trust issue may reemerge.

While writing
Gorillas in the Mist,
Anna Hamilton Phelan felt she heeded to understand more about obsessive behavior, since much of Dian Fossey's behavior seemed obsessive. She spoke to a psychologist who asked, "Where was she when she was eleven years old? What was she doing at that age?" When Anna further researched Dian's biography, she discovered that her mother had remarried when Dian was that age and that this marriage had changed the child's ability to trust her world. "Dian was left alone when she was eleven. I think that's the first time that she was turned away from people and had to be by herself. She ate by herself in the kitchen with the help. I think she was just kind of pushed in the bedroom and kept pretty much away from her mother and her new stepfather. She learned to be alone. She learned at that point to mistrust human beings. She learned to be more comfortable with animals than with people. And she mistrusted human beings forever—till the day she died."

If in early childhood there is not security, love, and trust, children will experience an absence of support, and with it a lack of belief in themselves. Criticism may be substituted for love in the family. When children enter school, they may either turn the criticism against themselves, becoming rigid, overcontrolled, and rule-oriented, or they may feel ashamed and become defiant, wanting to get even. This rage will be turned either inward ("I'm no good") or outward ("I hate you").

The lack of self-esteem and self-confidence will affect the issue of identity. If children are constantly criticized, their identity is formed by what the parent thinks of them, not by who they really are. The identity issue becomes particularly strong in high school, when teenagers prepare to enter adult life and make adult decisions.

Many teenage films focus on this identity issue.
Risky Business, The Karate Kid, The Breakfast Club,
and
Pretty in Pink
all deal with young people who are trying to discover their own ideas and feelings, often in contrast to the values and ideas of parents or a conventional/conservative society.

Erikson says that children with a healthy background are more likely to become autonomous. If the opposite is true, the child (and later the adult) will be less free to make decisions for fear of being criticized or rejected.

In
Rain Man,
the key issue in the years to follow was Charlie's desire for his father's affection. Throughout his early years, Charlie was "overcontrolled," trying to please his father in order to win his father's love.

Ron Bass says, "The father's response to Raymond—the abnormal child—was to lock him away and treat him like some kind of freak who didn't deserve to be treated normally. But he treated his normal child in much the same way. Nothing that Charlie did was ever good enough. Charlie couldn't be perfect. The father had one son who was imperfect, who was autistic, so the second son had to be perfect and fill his life—and his second son wasn't perfect. True, he was terrific—he got good grades, he was handsome, but that wasn't good enough. Nothing he could do was ever good enough because Charlie's father felt that the world had owed him some kind of perfection.

"I don't think that Charlie was a rebel at all when he was younger. Because he so instinctively felt the need for his fathers love and affection, the less love the father gave him, the more Charlie craved it. So I think that Charlie spent his childhood busting his butt to be perfect for his father. And nothing was ever good enough."

When Charlie was sixteen, he had one moment of rebellion—to test whether his father would still love him, even if he were "bad. " Charlie discusses this moment with his girlfriend, Susan.

CHARLIE

Tell you one story. Just one. Y'know that convertible out front. . . ? His baby. That and the goddam roses. Car was off-limits to me. That's a classic, he'd say. It commands respect. Not for children. Tenth grade. I'm sixteen. And for once ... I bring home a report card . . . and it's all A's. ... So I go to my dad. Can I take the guys out in the Buick? Sort of a victory drive. He says no. But I go anyway. Steal the keys. Sneak it out.

SUSAN

Why then? Why that time?

CHARLIE

Because I deserved it. I'd done something wonderful. In his own terms. And he wasn't man enough to do right. So we're on Lakeshore Drive. Four kids. Four six-packs. And we get pulled over. He'd called in a report of a stolen car. Not his son took the car without permission. Just . . . stolen.

(beat)

Cook County Jail. Other guys' dads bail 'em out in an hour. He left me there. Two . . . days.

Drunks throwing up. Psychos all over me. Some guy tries to rape me. Twice. That's the only time in my life ... I was gut-scared. Shit-your-pants . . . heart-pounding-right-through-your-ribs . . . can't-catch-your-breath scared. The guy knifed my back . . . that's the . . .

SUSAN . . . scar. By your shoulder.

CHARLIE I left home. I never came back.

With this incident, Charlie learned the truth—that his father didn't love him.

Ron explains, "And so he defies his father and deliberately makes a very clean break in his life. This is a central moment in his life—at sixteen when he walks away out of his father's life forever. And in doing this, he gave up on all the things that he worked hard to achieve—such as college. Charlie is a bright guy, he's a guy who could have been a young yuppie executive somewhere, but he had to rebel against his father and strike back at his father by denying him the pleasure of vicarious success that he knows his father wanted. And in the process of rebelling against his father, he destroyed his own life.

"So what do you say to yourself when you're bright and you want the finer things of life? Your father is successful, and a millionaire, and you've spent sixteen years chasing that, and so it's not like you've always wanted to rebel against that. All along you've always wanted to achieve that and make your dad proud of you. So what do you say when you walk away from that? You can't say that you're deliberately destroying yourself to hurt your father—people don't realize that at that level—instead you say, My father's a fool, and what I thought I wanted all my life was shallow and materialistic and false and who needs to take that robotic path to success? I'm better than my father ever was and I'll do it fast and easy and cheap. I'll go out with only myself to rely on—I can do it!'

"And that's what he went out to do and that's when he became a hustler. He was smart, and this car business that we see him in is probably only the last in a long line of things. He 's not in the gutter, he's not broke, because he's so darn smart that even doing it the wrong way he's been able to have modest successes. But Charlie's a guy who wants to fail. He's always believed in the back of his mind that his father was right. So as much as he hates his father on the surface, he knows somewhere deep down in his heart his father is right, and when his father says he's a loser he must really be a loser."