Creating Unforgettable Characters

by Linda Seger

  "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 tr
eated 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!'

  Li

  "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."

  This lack of trust in childhood prevented Charlie Babbitt from being able to love as an adult.

  Erikson says that adulthood is a time to resolve the issues of intimacy versus isolation—to learn to relate closely to each other in order to form marriages and friendships and alliances. If these issues have not been resolved—problems of mistrust, doubt, guilt, can all come into a relationship, impeding the potential to be intimate.

  "Charlie is in an uncommitted relationship with Susan," Ron Bass continues, "with someone he doesn't have to worry about hurting because she can take care of herself. She's not asking him to marry her; she's cool. She's as able to leave him as he's able to leave her and that's a real Charlie Babbitt relationship that doesn't demand commitment or anything real. He's smiling. He's charming. He's got her convinced that he really cares about her and that's all she's asked for. But if it hadn't been for Raymond, he could have lost that woman two months earlier and he wouldn't have missed her. It's the change that starts to occur in him as he goes on the road. As he begins to change, he realizes what a terrific lady he lost, and how much he didn't want to lose her. He calls, and that melts her because she had never seen him that way."

  It is Charlie's transformation that helps him reconnect with the positive influence from his past—his brother. In one of the beautiful surprises in the film, Charlie discovers that Raymond had been his childhood playmate, and that there had been a healthy emotional tie between them.

  In fact, this transformation is what the story is about. Ron says, "The hope is that you walk out of the theatre feeling that Charlie will be able to love Susan and others and to have children and to join the world of caring people because of what he's learned about himself through his experience with his brother."

  If these issues had not been resolved with Charlie, he would have reached another crisis—the crisis Erik Erikson calls "gen-erativity versus stagnation." This occurs when a person has not lived up to his or her talents. Sometimes this becomes the midlife crisis, where people have to confront where they've come in their lives, and what they've accomplished.

  When someone reaches forty and fifty and beyond, there is another crisis, one of "integrity versus despair." This crisis is not just one of accomplishments and professional contributions, but of meaning and value. At this point, people confront whether their lives mean anything, whether they've had depth. The consequences of not resolving these issues can lead to despair, alcoholism, depression, even suicide. The Verdict and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?—despite the broad differences in their genres—were both about resolving issues from the past, confronting a crisis in the present, and learning to become involved and caring as a result.

  EXERCISE: Imagine creating a story about a future Charlie Babbitt. What might he be like if you set the story at his midlife crisis, when Charlie is about forty and still failing because he unconsciously felt his father was correct about his inability to succeed? What might Charlie do to compensate?

  What would Charlie be like if he were sixty, trying to find meaning in life while still being controlled by his father? How might he express his despair?

  What might he be like at these stages if he had resolved his mid-life crisis? What would you expect his relationship with his brother to be like, if the film continued into the future?

  HOW THE UNCONSCIOUS DETERMINES CHARACTER

  Many psychologists believe that our conscious awareness makes up only about ten percent of the human psyche. What drives and motivates us comes more from the unconscious, which consists of feelings, memories, experiences, and impressions that have been imprinting our minds from birth. These elements, which are often repressed because of negative associations, drive our behavior, causing us to act in ways that might contradict our conscious belief systems or our own understanding of ourselves.

>   Many elements in our lives, although not known to our conscious minds, drive our behavior. These forces can cause us to act in ways that contradict our belief systems or our own identities.

  We have all had conversations with people who come across as though they understand themselves. But as we listen to them, we sense that their impression of themselves is quite different from the one we have of them. A woman may tell us what an open person she is, when in truth she's defensive, resistant, closed. A man may appear gentle, but later betray a violent nature that even he may not have known was there. Some of these people may be driven by an unconscious drive for power, or a desire to control, or by maliciousness or cruelty.

  People usually have little knowledge of how these unconscious forces influence their behavior. Often these are negative elements that are denied or rationalized. Psychologists call this "the shadow" or the "dark side of the personality."

  We've seen a number of examples in the news of the unconscious shadow operating in people's lives. Jimmy Swaggart is a

  "moralist" who was brought down by his "denied sexuality." Nixon, a president for "law and order," was brought down by the illegalities committed by his administration.

  Within the shadow side of the unconscious can be found rage, sexuality, depression—or, to define it in another way, the seven deadly sins of anger, gluttony, sloth, pride, envy, avarice, and lust.

  These unconscious forces achieve more power when they are repressed or denied. Unacknowledged, they can drive people to do and say things against their will. Suppressed, they have more potential to get people into trouble.

  Sometimes writers decide that this shadow side is the side that they want to explore. Barry Morrow says: "My stories Bill and Bill on His Own explored the positive human aspects. I wanted Rain Man to be about the opposite—the darker side of human motivation, about greed and avarice, and shortsightedness and impatience. Charlie is the dark side of me—the dark side of everybody. I had a feeling that Mother Theresa gets angry every once in a while. I'll bet the Pope gets awfully impatient with some of the bowing and scraping. I know everybody has both the good and the bad, the light and the dark, the yin and the yang inside of them, and Bill was all about the light and the hopefulness, and Rain Man was about the opposite."