Last night I went to the DGA program honoring Kathryn Bigelow for her achievements as a director.  I went with my friend Sister Rose Pacatte, who writes a popular blog on cinema and spirituality.

She was a VIP guest, having been on the first jury to make an award to The Hurt Locker, Bigelow’s break-through multi-Oscar-winning film.  The Ecumenical Jury at the Venice Film Festival was the first to launch the critical acclaim that would carry the film to an historic win for Bigelow as Best Director at the DGA and the Oscars.

The reception was lovely and the program was heart-felt and was a wonderful tribute to an amazing woman.  But I couldn’t help remembering a Women in Hollywood article I had read the week before.  It recounts the rather dismal reality in the aftermath to Bigelow’s stunning achievement.

Let’s look at the last couple of winners:

Danny Boyle – 2008 winner – is back in the running with 127 Hours ($18 Million budget) and is also the artistic director for the London Olympics opening ceremony.

Joel and Ethan Coen – 2007 winner – are back in the running this year with True Grit ($35 Million budget).

Martin Scorcese – 2006 winner – released Shutter Island this year ($100 Million Budget).

There are two women still in the major discussions for possible Oscar nods — Debra Granik and Lisa Cholodenko.  Though it would be another huge deal if another woman gets a nomination for best director this year, the truth is that women directors still have little commercial power.  As LA Times said: “nearly all of the beloved indy female directors are unemployable at major studios…”

Okay– So am I incredibly small minded for not just enjoying the evening?  But the truth is all this wonderful director could line up after her win was an HBO movie.

As far as my search revealed her next film (at a low $10 million dollar budget) may or may not be financed a year after taking home the Oscar.  Reports are conflicting.

http://allreetnow.posterous.com/directors-roundtable-when-a-scene-doesnt-work

Here is Robert McKee’s views on Best Screenplay and on stories based on history, fact or actual people’s lives.   Like McKee, I believe that a writer’s first duty is to the emotional truth of the story, not factual accuracy.  That’s why it’s FICTION. Documentaries also have to be shaped in terms of emotional truth.  The definition of “to be entertained” is to feel something.”  Unless there is a deep emotional truth at the heart of the story we feel nothing and are not entertained.

(H)is highest marks go to Aaron Sorkin’s Social Network because the life in question, that of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, “doesn’t give you a great ending the way The Fighter did, so you have to make some ending about some other thing that changed and make audiences care about it.

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Sorkin had a great challenge because he had a protagonist who is not particularly empathetic because he’s awkward and closed-off socially. But he did a brilliant job of making the hows and whys of what he did quirky enough so that the process really intrigues us. He knew exactly where to create tension in the audience’s mind. You don’t have a big climax, but you have a big resolution.”

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Journalists are busy debating the veracity of such movies as King’s Speech and Social Network, but McKee has no patience for that. “I will never understand that debate,” he says. “All story is fiction. Autobiography is fantasy. Biography is fiction in the sense that you have to make choices. And out of the enormity of the material, the sliver of choices that you make is an interpretation of what could be dozens of contradictory interpretations. And they are all more or less true.

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“All we ask of biographers,” he adds, “is that they make a fair, heartfelt and honest interpretation of their characters, knowing that 99% of the facts will be cut out, certain things will be merged and the chronological order of certain things will be changed.”

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He adds: “Journalists get trapped because they don’t understand the difference between fact and truth. They think fact is truth, but fact is not truth. Truth is how and why what happened; it’s always an interpretation. If you don’t like it, go write another movie.”

The whole article is here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/race/screenwriting-guru-robert-mckee-rates-96935

Film

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
The King’s Speech

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
Christian Bale, The Fighter

Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble
Inception

Television

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Drama Series
Boardwalk Empire

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role (TV Drama)
Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (TV Drama)
Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Comedy Series
Modern Family

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role (TV Comedy)
Betty White, Hot in Cleveland

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (TV Comedy)
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role (Miniseries/TV Movie)
Claire Danes, Temple Grandin

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (Miniseries/TV Movie)
Al Pacino, You Don’t Know Jack

The Social Network is a fascinating look at a cold, superior, technical genius, Mark Zuckerberg the FaceBook billionaire. In the film, Zuckerberg is personally disconnected from human warmth, emotion and compassion.  He became the world’s youngest billionaire by helping other people connect with each other via technology.  The Black Swan is the story of a young dancer who is a cold, dispassionate and disconnected but technically perfect ballerina.  She is chosen to dance the dual leads in Swan Lake and descends into madness preparing for the role.

I liked The Social Network but despised The Black Swan, although I did admire the stunning visuals.  The truth is, Aronofsky’s film  infuriated me and pushed my buttons like no film I’ve ever seen.  I had an intensely personal reaction to it.  It spoke to me about the biggest problem in my own life.

Both Power of Reason films were horrific in their own way.  Let’s start with the professional analysis before getting personal.

Here’s how Richard Corliss writing in Time Magazine describes Zuckerberg in The Social Network, “Zuckerberg, incarnated by Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale, Zombieland) with a single-mindedness so cool as to be lunar, isn’t inhuman, exactly; more post-human, a series of calculating algorithms. He is his own computer code — complex, and to most of those who know him, unfathomable.  (He is) a brilliant, prickly loner — ‘He doesn’t have three friends to rub together,’ a rival says — who created a website that gave him, at last count, 500 million friends.”  Kenneth Turnan writing in the Los Angeles Times says, “(A)s played by Eisenberg, protagonist Mark Zuckerberg is introduced as extremely unlikable rather than heroic, a self-absorbed and arrogant 19-year-old Harvard sophomore who is as socially maladroit as he is fearsomely smart.”  Each of these descriptions is a text book depiction of a Power of Reason character.

The monstrous tragedy of  The Social Network is that Zuckerberg cold-heartedly dumps his only true friend and first supporter.  He does so for calculated business reasons.  Zuckerberg is surrounded by people or “friends” but is utterly alone.  Now that he is on his way to becoming a multi-billionaire, how can he ever know for sure that someone likes him for himself and not for his money or influence?  The more successful he becomes the more isolated he becomes from authentic friendship and genuine human connection.

Other examples of Power of Reason characters, like Zuckerberg, are Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in the Star Trek franchise, Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) in the television series House and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) in the television series The Big Bang Theory. Cooper is a comedic version of the Character Type and Parsons won a 2011 Golden Globe for his portrayal.  Spock, House, Cooper and Zuckerberg are all Power of Reason characters and have a similiar temperament, outlook and world view.  They function in exactly the same way in each very different story setting.

With the addition of  madness, delusion and horror, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) in The Black Swan portrays the Dark Side of the Power of Reason Character Type.  Issues concerning the boundaries of sanity, the limits of order or of logic, the genesis of evil, the ever-present potential of irrational chaos and the overwhelming nature of unbridled emotion or desire  are very much at the center of all Dark Side Power of Reason films.

Andrew O’Hehir writing on Salon.com describes Nina as:  “(A) dancer whose prodigious technique is a little cold, mechanical and even fearful… (And) Nina can’t tell the difference between the real world and what’s in her head.”  In the film, she is described as “technically brilliant” but devoid of passion or sensuality.  A key exchange between Tomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) and Nina explains the dilemma:

Nina: I came to ask for the part.

Thomas Leroy: The truth is when I look at you all I see is the white swan. Yes you’re beautiful, fearful, and fragile. Ideal casting. But the black swan? It’s a hard fucking job to dance both.

Nina: I can dance the black swan, too.

Thomas Leroy: Really? In 4 years every time you dance I see you obsessed getting each and every move perfectly right but I never see you lose yourself. Ever! All that discipline for what?

Nina: (whispers) I just want to be perfect.

Power of Reason characters are technical geniuses who are disconnected or alienated from others (and often themselves). They fear being inadequate to the task at hand, not having enough resources to deal with a situation in a rational, logical or technical manner. They fear being overwhelmed by emotion, engulfed by passion, or getting caught up in chaos or forces they cannot control or contain.  The duality of Power of Reason films concern Connection vs. Alienation, Man vs. Monster, Sanity vs. Madness, Natural vs. Unnatural and Purity vs. Contamination (or debauchery).

Rick Groen, writing in The Globe and Mail, discusses these themes:  “Nina must destroy the sweet, pure girl in order to liberate the bold, mature artist. But that idea terrifies her, and with good reason – as we know from horror movies, metamorphosis can be deadly.”

“Nina becomes so consumed with becoming this monster seductress that her body simply begins to turn her into one. Her skin is pimpling like a chicken’s. Her shoulder blades are scarred. Is her body repaying her for those bulimic bathroom breaks? Aronofsky situates the entire film so deeply inside Nina’s fraying psyche that we’re unsure whether to believe the figurative monsters Nina concocts. Is (her mother) Erica (Barbara Hershey) a gorgon because that’s how Nina sees her? Is the company’s fading star (Winona Ryder) also its (crazy) Norma Desmond? … Is the more socially limber Lily a (sinister) frenemy or just the girl with a dragon tattoo?”   asks Wesley Morris writing in the Boston Globe.

Other examples of Power of Reason characters confronting the Dark Side of their fears and their madness are Dr. John Nash (Russell Crowe), a brilliant but cold and superior scientist who is overwhelmed by schizophrenic visions and delusions, in A Beautiful Mind;  Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) a troubled and alienated teenager who has visions and delusions about a giant rabbit in Donnie Darko; and Dr. Jekyll (Spencer Tracy), a brilliant, obsessive and aloof scientist who wants to discover the nature of good and evil, in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

In A Beautiful Mind and Donnie Darko salvation comes from embracing and connecting with others.  Nash’s salvation is his wife, son and the students he formerly disdained.  Darko finds salvation by selflessly sacrificing himself for the girl he loves and who would have died in his place.  Jekyll finds no salvation.  He is consumed by and transformed into pure evil.

.Nina Sayers is like Dr. Jekyll.  Metamorphosis doesn’t help her face and transcend her fears.  Instead, it makes her one with them, consumed in madness and the malevolence of murder/suicide.  What the film seems to be saying about art and artists is what pushed my buttons.

A major problem in my own life has always been balance.  I am a bit of an obsessive myself.  I laughed when I saw the opening of Romancing the Stone. Writer, Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) finishes her book and sobs, completely caught up in the emotion of her characters and story.  When she reaches for a tissue there are none left in the box.  There is no toilet paper in the loo to substitute either.  There is nothing in the fridge and no food in the cupboard.  Joan is a writer so obsessed with what she does that she has no time to live life.

I’m afraid I can too easily become that obsessed writer.  I struggle to maintain a healthy balance between work and play, creativity and regeneration, losing myself in the story and being present in the here-and-now of life.  The thing that disturbed me most about The Black Swan is the idea that to be a great artist we must sacrifice everything including our humanity.  Every major character in the film is monstrously selfish, insular, obsessed and willing to sacrifice themselves and others without thought, care or any sense of compassion.  Is that really what creates and makes great art?

Where in The Black Swan is the sense of joy in creation?  Where is the fun and exhilaration in doing what you love? Where is the transcendence in art?  How does it elevate the human spirit?  How is it life-affirming?  There is nothing of any of those concepts at work in The Black Swan. There is no humanity here and no generosity on display anywhere in the film.

I’m not alone in abhorring this depiction:  “The Black Swan says that a dancer must enter into the irrational and the erotic—even destroy herself—in order to make art. That is, if you don’t get laid, and you aren’t ready to kill your rival or yourself, you can’t be a great dancer… (The film) is a pompous, self-glorifying, and generally unpleasant interpretation of an artist’s task.”  David Denby, The New Yorker

Diana Byer, the artistic director of the New York Theater Ballet, says that:  “A person who doesn’t live life can’t bring anything to a ballet. You have to live life to create an art form.”  Sarah Maslin, The New York TImes

“Nina is just a collection of neurotic behaviors… nearly all the conflict on screen derives from her victimization (or perceived victimization?) at the hands of others. We never understand what’s at stake for her as an artist, other than sheer achievement for achievement’s sake. With this movie’s curious inattention to the question of why performing matters to its heroine, it could just as easily be a movie about a girl’s brutal struggle to become Baskin Robbins’ employee of the month,”  writes Dana Stevens in Slate.com

Richard Corliss says in Time Magazine:  “The Black Swan isn’t an advance. It’s a throwback, in three ways. First, to what Freud called ‘the return of the repressed’ — that repressed desires created severe neuroses. Second, to the Method cult notion of empathizing with a character until you become it. (As Laurence Olivier legendarily told Dustin Hoffman when the younger star was agonizing over his motivation in the tooth-drilling sequence of Marathon Man: ‘Dear boy, why not just try acting?’) Third, and most reductively, to the ancient commandments of the horror genre, which teach that a young woman is either a virgin, who’s pure enough to fight the demon, or a whore, who somehow deserves to be killed (especially when she’s just had sex). The idea of a healthy eroticism is alien to these films; they allow no middle ground. I’m pretty sure this is a guy’s idea of a woman’s sexuality. The Black Swan had women in front of the camera, men as the director and writers and cinematographer.”

A movie about male ballet dancer has a completely different take on what it means to be an artist.  Billy Elliot, a Power of Idealism character, portrays the joy, verve, inspiration and freedom that great dancers bring to their art (along with their drive, determination, hard work and sacrifice).  Billy also loses himself in dance but he does so with love, exuberance and joy.

Tutor One: What does it feel like when you’re dancing?

Billy: Don’t know. Sorta feels good. Sorta stiff and that, but once I get going… then I like, forget everything. And… sorta disappear. Sorta disappear. Like I feel a change in my whole body. And I’ve got this fire in my body. I’m just there. Flyin’ like a bird. Like electricity. Yeah, like electricity.

Coincidentally, when Billy’s father, brother and best friend come to see Billy perform as an adult in London he is dancing the lead in  Matthew Bourne’s… Swan Lake.  It is a ballet performed by all men.  See the YouTube video clip of Billy’s performance here.  When told his family is in the audience, Billy smiles backstage.  Moving into the spotlight he literally jumps for joy and my heart leaps with him.

Billy Elliot may be a sugar-coated fairy tale or fable version of a film about artists.  It may not be a serious, complex or “important” film, but I wonder what it says about the state of our society when business AND the arts are portrayed in such an unrelenting, obsessive and monstrous way. Or am I just tragically unhip?  I would love to hear your thoughts. Comment here or on my FaceBook page.

Mad Men won 2010 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series. The show is about the world of advertising; a world of illusion, sleight of hand and outright deception. It is a quintessential Power of Truth story and is anchored by a wonderful Power of Truth protagonist, Don Draper/Dick Whitman (Jon Hamm). Surface laughter, glamour and the sophisticated tinkle of ice in a cut-glass tumbler of scotch obscures the dark and tangled subterranean underpinnings of both the man and the profession.

The show follows Don, a man with a shadowy past who stole another soldier’s identity at the end of the Korean War. He is an ad man, a slick master of mis-direction in an industry that thrives on selling half-truths and the manipulation of perceptions: “What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.”  He is adept at deception (and self-deception), twisting words and images to suit clients’ sales pitches. This is especially true with main client Lucky Strikes.  He and his client both know the product is poisonous but Don finds a way to make it attractive: “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is OK. You are OK.”  Don, himself, is anything but OK.

He has trouble coming to terms with the truth about himself, his failed marriage and even one of his target markets: ”What if women want something else? Inside. Some mystery wish that we’re ignoring?” He is acutely aware that more lies beneath the surface of things than he understands or is willing to inspect.  When the new firm Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce brings in a female psychologist and focus group expert, Dr. Faye Miller (Cara Buono), to help determine what exactly women want, Don is hostile.  He refuses to participate in her work or answer any of her survey questions.  He rejects her notion that people’s childhoods are a predictor of who they are and what will influence or inspire them. Dr. Faye defends her research and says she can’t change the truth: “That Glo-Coat ad came from someone’s childhood.” Don cannot afford the truth. His entire life is based on the desire to make something true that isn’t, and vice versa.

In addition to issues of perception, illusion and deception, Power of Truth stories are also about issues of loyalty and betrayal. They ask: What exactly is loyalty? What is betrayal? How do we betray ourselves? How do we betray others? Can you be loyal to someone and betray them at the same time? When should you let go of old loyalties and move on?  How is the ground shifting beneath you?  Who or what can you trust? When does loyalty look like betrayal?  When does betrayal look like loyalty?

These themes are especially relevant to Don’s evolving relationship with Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss).  Their relationship is quite similar to one in another Power of Truth story, Million Dollar Baby.  Frank Dunn (Clint Eastwood) and Maggie Fitzgerald (Hillary Swank) also have a powerful mentor/protege bond.  Frank is a Power of Truth protagonist who is hiding from his past as well.  His parish priest observes: “Frank, I’ve seen you at Mass almost every day for 23 years. The only person comes to church that much is the kind who can’t forgive himself for something.”

Initially, both Frank and Don are skeptical about a woman being able to “do the job” no matter how hard she works.  But both grudgingly admire the tenacity and raw talent they see in their young protege.  They want to toughen her up but yet somehow protect her.  They berate her and insult her but genuinely care for her.  Neither man is able to show affection that doesn’t also include harsh words (or hard truths).  Their relationships have a Father/Daughter dynamic that is profoundly meaningful to them both.  In making Peggy into a brilliant advertising executive Don could almost be following the advice of Eddie Scrap-Iron Durpis (Morgan Freeman) as he describes Frank’s coaching techniques:

Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris: “To make a fighter you gotta strip them down to bare wood: you can’t just tell ’em to forget everything they know, you gotta make ’em forget even in their bones… make ’em so tired they only listen to you, only hear your voice, only do what you say and nothing else… show ’em how to keep their balance and take it away from the other guy… how to generate momentum off their right toe and how to flex your knees when you fire a jab… how to fight backin’ up so that the other guy doesn’t want to come after you. Then you gotta show ’em all over again. Over and over and over… till they think they’re born that way.”

The technique works on Peggy, who says to Don after a particularly rough exchange: “You know something. We are all here because of you. All we want to do is please you.”  Those words are truest of her.  Peggy only really hears (or cares about) Don’s voice.  But Peggy is no push-over and that is what will make her great in her own right someday.  Eddie describes that quality: “All fighters are pig-headed some way or another: some part of them always thinks they know better than you about something. Truth is: even if they’re wrong, even if that one thing is going to be the ruin of them, if you can beat that last bit out of them… they ain’t fighters at all.”

Peggy has her own stubborn streak and sense of independence and fairness.  She confronts Don over her lack of credit on the Glo-Coat ad, talks back to him, refuses to get him coffee and is the only one who seems able to see and accept him for who he is.  She is the only one Don trusts enough to share bits of his past.

Peggy would rather be at work with Don than doing anything else. His world is the only world that truly interests her. It is the only thing she really wants: “I know what I’m supposed to want but it never feels right or as important as what happens in this office.”  Maggie Fitzgerald (Hillary Swank) says basically the same thing to Frank Dunn: “Problem is, this the only thing I ever felt good doing. If I’m too old for this, then I got nothing. That enough truth to suit you?”

Here is a wonderful montage of clips that clearly delineate Power of Conscience character Peggy Olson.  Notice how many times the issues for her are fairness (or unfairness) (“I don’t know if you read in the paper, but they passed a law that women who do the same work as men get paid the same thing.  Equal pay.”); integrity (“Pete, just tell the truth. Don’t worry about the outcome.  People  respect that.”); propriety (“I’m from Bayridge, we have manners”); judgement (“I know what people think of you.  That you’re looking for a husband and you’re fun.  And not in that order.”)

Peggy is a good girl who sometimes does bad things. She is definitely the moral compass of the show. She even goes so far as to confront Don and demand that he hire the smarmy kid whose tag line Don drunkenly misappropriated for a Life Cereal campaign.

http://www.nerve.com/entertainment/2010/08/31/the-evolution-of-mad-men

Hillary Swank is a Power of Idealism character.  She is much more passionate than Peggy and much more willing to bet everything on a single glorious moment. Peggy is more grounded and controlled even when she is acting out or being rebellious.  When she strips to call a lazy unctuous creative director’s bluff, it is about doing the work (and her work ethic) not being seductive.  Her sense of morality may be the one thing that Don can’t beat out of her.  Even if it is the ruin of her it is also what will make her great.

Pixar won the 2009 Oscar for Best Animated Feature with Up. All seven Pixar films released since the creation of the category have been nominated. Five have taken home the Oscar: Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up. Three of those five Oscar winners— Up, The Incredibles and Ratatouille— are Power of Idealism films.

The protagonist in Power of Idealism film wants to stand out from the crowd, to be unique or special or to live an extraordinary life. These characters often play the role of the rebel, the romantic, the outsider, the iconoclast, the artist, or the maverick.  Power of Idealism stories are about rebellion, loss, longing and transcendent love.

The protagonist in Up is curmudgeonly Carl (Ed Asner), the last stubborn holdout in a large urban renewal scheme.  His beloved wife is dead and he seemingly has nothing to live for.  When he defends his home with his cane, actually drawing blood from a construction worker, Carl is legally ordered into a retirement home.  Instead, he makes an extraordinary and dramatic escape.  But let’s back up a little.

The film begins in the era of newsreels and the amazing derring-do of movie serials.  These 1930’s stories are filled with exotic adventures and handsome heroes who conquer far-off lands to bring back strange and exciting discoveries.

As a little boy, Carl is mesmerized by fantastic tales about the famous explorer, Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer).  The newsreels show Muuntz celebrated and lionized and then humiliated.  The skeleton of Muntz’s greatest discovery, a large flightless bird from the wilds of South America, is denounced as a fake. As Carl walks home from the movies, he longs to be a legendary explorer.  He imagines a crack in the sidewalk to be a yawning canyon and leaps it in a single bound while an imaginary newsreel breathlessly narrates his “great adventure.”

Up is a delightful adventure story for kids and a powerful adult story about how regret, loss and grief are, at last, resolved.  Over the course of the movie we see Carl cling to his belief Ellie was denied her “Big Adventure.”  He feels responsible and is determined to plant the house he promised her at Paradise falls.

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Carl and Russell slowly and painfully drag Carl’s heavy empty house behind them.   When the house is nearly in place Carl finally reads Ellies “Big Adventure” book.  In it she says her ordinary life with Carl was the very best and very biggest adventure of all.  At the end of the movie, Carl is able to sacrifice the dead house to save the living Russell.  Carl finds his next “Big Adventure” with Russell and his mom as a treasured part of a new family.

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Pixar’s The Incredibles tackles some of the same themes about what it is to be ordinary and what it is to be extraordinary. Stripped of his status, Mr Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), is in the government equivalent of the witness protection program for decommissioned superheroes.  He is stuck in a boring, dead-end desk job.

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Mr Incredible chafes at having to hide his superpowers and pretend to be ordinary. Finally, he is tempted out of his enforced “retirement” by the lure of one last assignment.  It is a trap.  The villain of the movie, Syndrome (Jason Lee), created himself when Mr Incredible rejected him as a sidekick years earlier.  Mr Incredible, haughtily said at the time:  “Like most heroes, I work alone.”   This rejection festered in Syndrome.  With evil in his heart, a cunning wit and brilliant technology in his hands, Syndrome grows up to turn the tables on all superheroes.  In the end, after defeating Syndrome, Mr Incredible finds that his most extraordinary adventure of all is the ordinary love and support of his family.

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Ratatouille is about an adventurer of a different kind— a rebellious and artistic mouse gourmet.  “There’s something about humans, they taste. . . . They discover!” realizes Remy (Patton Oswalt).  Rejecting the usual diet of garbage, French country rat Remy decides that in order to eat as well as humans he needs to learn to cook.

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Early on in the film, Remy is separated from his family.  In his imagination, he meets his hero Gusteau, a famous chef.  Gusteau teaches Remy the lesson that Carl learns in Up.

Gusteau: (appearing as illustration in a cookbook) If you are hungry, go up and look around, Remy. Why do you wait and mope?

Remy: Well, I just lost my family. All my friends. Probably forever.

Gusteau: How do you know?

Remy: Well, I…  You are an illustration. Why am I talking to you?

Gusteau: You just lost your family. All your friends. You are lonely.

Remy: (sarcastically) Yeah, well you’re dead.

Gusteau: Ah, but that is no match for wishful thinking. If you focus on what you left behind. You will never be able to see what lies ahead. Now go, get up and look around.

The lesson of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, imparted in both Up and The Incredibles, is delivered by Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole) the famous food critic in Ratatouille.  Remy serves the difficult to please gourmet the simplest and most humble dish— ratatouille, a dish of mixed cooked vegetables.  The meal sends Anto Ego back to his childhood, remembering the fragrant, comforting and flavorful dish his mother used to prepare for him.  The critic concludes:

… (T)here are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, and the new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: “Anyone can cook.” But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more.

The themes in Power of Idealism films:  childhood heroes often are not what they seem; to resolve loss we must look beyond the surface, cherish the positive and let go of the rest; longing for what you don’t have (or what you are missing) prevents you from experiencing and enjoying what you do have in life, and the secret to happiness is to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.  Power of Idealism characters must learn to find the sparkle and passion in the small details of life like family, friends and the magical but mundane moments of living and loving (and cooking).

Two of the most talked about characters in Oscar-nominated pictures this year are emotionally damaged men deployed to handle bombs in people’s lives.  Their approaches to this assignment are very different.

In Up in the Air, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) uses platitudes and a smooth, calm, professional manner to defuse the explosive news that employees are being fired or laid off.  He travels through the gutted terrain of corporate America, ravaged by the financial down-turn and the corporate slash and burn policies of downsizing.

In The Hurt Locker, Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) uses a cocky, shoot-from-the-hip, iconoclastic style that is all his own to defuse roadside explosives hidden in sand, cars and the occasional corpse.  He travels through the gutted terrain of Iraq ravaged by war, poor planning policies and the smash and burn fury of insurgents.

Although equally emotionally closed, these two characters are very different.  This is an object lesson in the importance of understanding why a character does or refuses to do what he does.  Although neither man has close intimate family or personal relationships (and in fact both flee from them) these two men represent very different approaches to life and love.  The end result might be the same but their motivations and psychological profiles are very different.

Up in The Air – Power of Reason

Characters driven by the Power of Reason are most often the expert, technician, scientist or professional observer in a story.  They have an excellent grasp of details and often have terrific memories and great powers of recall.

In Up in The Air, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is an expert at what he does— firing people.  He is a consummate professional, calm, skillful and dispassionately pleasant.

He displays an amazing ability to recall the contents of his subjects’ personnel files.  He surprises his colleague Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) by remembering a person took cooking lessons earlier in his career and uses that information to terminate a highly charged interview successfully.

Power of Reason characters dominate a story situation by force of their special expertise, independent thinking, superior knowledge, keen analysis and cool self-containment.

Here Bingham displays his mastery of the airport security line:

Ryan Bingham: Never get behind old people. Their bodies are littered with hidden metal and they never seem to appreciate how little time they have left. Bingo, Asians. They pack light, travel efficiently, and they have a thing for slip on shoes. Gotta love ’em.

Natalie Keener: That’s racist.

Ryan Bingham: I’m like my mother, I stereotype. It’s faster.

Power of Reason characters don’t believe in getting personally involved or emotionally entangled.  They always try to maintain a sense of professional distance.  They value their independence and their self-sufficiency above all else.

Here Bingham lectures on “How to Empty Your Backpack of Needless Relationships”:

Ryan Bingham: How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life… you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home… I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office… and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.

At the end of the movie, Bingham abandons his lecture and makes a leap of faith to connect emotionally and romantically with Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), a woman he meets on the road.    She tells him early on that “she is him only female”.

Bingham falls for her, shows up at her door and has his heart crushed by this cool, detached and emotionally unavailable woman who strictly compartmentalizes her life.  She has a box for home and family as a busy working wife and mother and another box for her life on the road as an unattached high-powered female executive.  She coldly calls Bingham “a parenthesis” in her life.

Beneath their superior or distant exterior Power of Reason characters, like Ryan Bingham, are actually quite sensitive and deeply fear being overwhelmed emotionally.  These characters experience the rush and intensity of personal emotion as annihilating.  This response is the exact opposite of Power of Idealism character’s reaction.

The Hurt Locker – Power of Idealism

Characters driven by the Power of Idealism want to stand out from the crowd, to be extraordinary, unique and special.  They are rebels, iconoclasts, mavericks and artists of all kinds.

Power of Idealism characters are intense, passionate and rebellious. Everyone in the story immediately recognizes and acknowledges that their role is somehow heroic or “larger than than life.”  They don’t play by anyone else’s rules.

Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) in The Hurt Locker is a quintessential Power of Idealism character.  He is intense, cavalier and is moving swiftly toward becoming a legend.  In this exchange, his reputation grows:

Colonel Reed: You the guy in the flaming car, Sergeant James?

Staff Sergeant William James: Afternoon, sir. Uh, yes, sir.

Colonel Reed: Well, that’s just hot shit. You’re a wild man, you know that?

Staff Sergeant William James: Uh, yes, sir.

Colonel Reed: He’s a wild man. You know that? I want to shake your hand.

Staff Sergeant William James: Thank you, sir.

Colonel Reed: Yeah. How many bombs have you disarmed?

Staff Sergeant William James: Uh, I’m not quite sure.

Colonel Reed: Segeant?

Staff Sergeant William James: Yes, sir.

Colonel Reed: I asked you a question.

Staff Sergeant William James: Eight hundred seventy-three, sir.

Colonel Reed: Eight hundred! And seventy-three. Eight hundred! And seventy-three. That’s just hot shit. Eight hundred and seventy-three.

Staff Sergeant William James: Counting today, sir, yes.

Colonel Reed: That’s gotta be a record. What’s the best way to… go about disarming one of these things?

Staff Sergeant William James: The way you don’t die, sir.

Colonel Reed: That’s a good one. That’s spoken like a wild man. That’s good.

A. O. Scott, writing for the New York Times describes James like this:  “Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) is something else, someone we recognize instantly even if we have never seen anyone quite like him before. He is a connoisseur, a genius, an artist.”

The artistic temperament— and the yearning or longing for or to be “something more extraordinary” creates a white hot intensity of feeling in these characters.  In contrast, long-term relationships and the comfortable companionship that committed loving couples (and families) share seem suffocatingly pedestrian.

Power of Idealism characters, operating in their Dark Side, are unprepared to make the ordinary, small, everyday sacrifices real long-term every-day love requires, especially when there are children involved.

In this exchange James explains to his infant son:

Staff Sergeant William James: You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your Mommy, your Daddy. You love your pajamas. You love everything, don’t ya? Yea. But you know what, buddy? As you get older… some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-a-Box. Maybe you’ll realize it’s just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And then you forget the few things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. With me, I think it’s one.

James’ character reminds me of another Power of Idealism character addicted to the drug of violence, the Narrator (Edward Norton) in Fight Club.  He feels dead in his ordinary every-day life and must witness extreme pain in support groups to find release, catharsis and peaceful sleep.  Soon, even that isn’t enough.

The Narrator (with disgust):  “This chick Marla Singer did not have testicular cancer. She was a liar. She had no diseases at all. I had seen her at Free and Clear my blood parasite group Thursdays. Then at Hope, my bi-monthly sickle cell circle. And again at Seize the Day, my tuberculous Friday night. Marla… the big tourist. Her lie reflected my lie. Suddenly I felt nothing. I couldn’t cry, so once again I couldn’t sleep.”

He must then inflict pain on himself and others, through brutal beatings in Fight Club in order to feel anything or even seem alive.  However horrific, this violence has an intensity he finds satisfying.  Better to feel this than nothing at all.

In Trainspotting, Power of Idealism character, Renton (Ewan McGregor), recounts his Dark Side experience with heroin.  The drug’s effects are also intense but horrific.  The adrenalin rush of  Staff Sergeant James’ work seems much like Renton describes heroin:  “Take the best orgasm you’ve ever had… multiply it by a thousand, and you’re still nowhere near it.”

Kenneth Turan sums up this feeling writing about The Hurt Locker in The Los Angeles Times:  “The film starts with a celebrated quote from the book War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” It’s easy to understand this thought intellectually, but by the time this remarkable film (The Hurt Locker) comes to an end, we feel it in our souls.”

Power of Reason characters withdraw from the intimacy of love and family because they are afraid they will feel too much.  Power of Idealism characters withdraw from the intimacy of love and family because they are afraid they won’t feel enough.

This is from Cynopsis a great newsletter on the Television business.

The reason each of these shows is successful is the clarity and consistency of the major characters. Each protagonist is written with authenticity and “feels real.” The storylines track the characters’ major life questions and the audience is compelled to watch how the drama unfolds.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the Emmy nominated shows and protagonist Character Type.

Big Love is the story of Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), the head of a polygamist family of three very different wives (and three sets of children). Bill is a decent God-fearing man who tries to be a good husband and father. He is a quintessential Power of Conscience character. Bill’s stoylines and the dramatic throughlines of the show revolve around questions of “what is the higher duty,” “what is right, just and moral” and “how much wrong-doing is permissible in pursuing what is right.” Bill is caught in circumstances where he must continually decide who and what to put first in a long list of conflicting demands and duties. His nemesis has been Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), a Power of Will character who will stop at nothing to expand his territory and control of the Juniper Creek “family.” Bill is challenged to uphold his own moral standards and personal integrity while fighting Roman.

Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer. He is given two years to live. Walter “has a brain the size of Wisconsin” and uses his scientific expertise to cook and sell crystal meth. He is a Power of Reason character. Like the title characters in Dexter and House he is alienated from his career, his family and his life. He is filled with a sense of his own superiority and a bitter contempt for others. Even after an improvement in his diagnosis he still seeks the release and intensity of feeling that comes from his criminal activity.

Damages tracks the relationship of a young lawyer, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), with her brilliant but ruthless boss and professional mentor, Patty Hewes (Glenn Close). The setting is the law firm Hewes runs in New York City and various cases the firm handles involving double-dealing, duplicity and conspiracy. Ellen is a Power of Truth character and the series is about “who can you trust,” “what is really going on” and “who is betraying whom.” Nothing is what it seems and it is folly for Ellen to fully trust anyone.

Dexter revolves around the life of Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a serial killer who is also a crime scene forensic expert specializing in blood spatter patterns. Dexter is brilliant but alienated from his feelings and doesn’t even feel completely “human.” He is a Power of Reason character and continually wonders if he is a “man or a monster.”

House chronicles a brilliant, superior and very alienated Doctor House (Hugh Laurie). He is an unparalleled expert medical diagnostician. House is a Power of Reason character like Dexter and Walter White. He is contemptuous of humanity in general and dismissive of any sentimentality or warm human feelings toward others. Others on the show quite frequently wonders if House is a “man or a monster.”

Lost is about a group of people marooned on an island after an airline crash. The survivors, led by Dr. Jack Sheppard (Matthew Fox), try to make sense of their predicament. The island is filled with mysterious forces that can’t be explained and which erupt at unpredictable moments. It is chaos. Jack is a Power of Reason character, a man of science. The survivors defer to his expertise. Jack starts the show alienated from his wife, his father and the patients in his practice. His stoylines and the dramatic throughlines of the show revolve around questions of “How can I make sense from a world gone mad?” “Do I have enough information to understand the situation?” “How can order be restored from chaos?” “Will I be overwhelmed (emotionally or otherwise)?”

Mad Men follows protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm), a man with a shadowy past who stole another soldier’s identity at the end of World War II. Don is a Power of Truth Character. He is an ad man, a master illusionist, twisting words and images to suit clients’ sales pitches. He has trouble discerning the truth about himself, his wife and his target marketing audience: (“What if women want something else? Inside. Some mystery wish that we’re ignoring?”) He works in a cutthroat environment where duplicity, betrayal and infidelities are everywhere. He doesn’t fully trust anyone including himself.

That’s a quick line up of the Emmy Nominees. Each show has a clear, sharply defined protagonist at the heart of its story. That’s the key to success in any series or feature film. Each character in the nominated shows is a complex fully formed human being. Each character “feels real.” Each character is true to his or her type. Defining Character Type is a first step in creating great characters.