kiwichick made an interesting observation in another thread:
“Clint’s “give-the-horse-a-drink-first” moment reminds me of Jean Reno in The Professional – he’ll take out anyone that needs taking out but don’t you dare touch his plant. Nothing more appealing than a broody ‘closed shop’ of an alpha male who really does care deep down. Who really does respect life.”
The reference to Jean Reno in The Professional is spot on. It can often be something simple to dimensionalize a character, even a villain. Remember in Three Days of the Condor, Max von Sydow’s hit-man character had that one moment where we saw him hand painting tiny military figures with classical music softly in the background. Or in Diva, the hit-man was constantly listening to something on his headphones, only revealed at the very end, I believe when he was shot and killed, to be opera music.
There’s a great line, I can’t quite place where it came from, but it’s, “All villains have mothers.”
It’s so easy to create stereotypical “bad guys” when it doesn’t take much digging and imagination to give them some depth, some distinctive personality traits or quirks, that reveal their humanity. And if you can get a reader to identify with a villain’s humanity, that always makes for a more interesting character.
Now I’m seeing these moments everywhere …
Mark Wahlberg in ‘The Shooter’. “They shot my dog”. Aww.
Denzel in ‘American Gangster’ – the dressing table that he had made for his mother. Something that was taken from her when he was five years old. He’s held on to that awful memory, made it a new and beautiful one.
Okay, I’ve got it. Now to just give my character a fresh and original take and bury it deep so you hardly know it’s there. Should be easy, right …
Those are great example, kiwichick. What about the movie Throw Momma From The Train, where Owen (Danny DeVito), whose goal is to kill his mother, has a private moment with Larry Donner (Billy Crystal) in which Owen shows Larry his coin collection — this coin was given to him by a favorite uncle, this one he got as change at a memorable baseball game, and so on. Each coin had a specific cherished memory for Owen’s character, which served so well in humanizing this guy whose goal is to whack his own mother.