![]() ![]() The afternoon is consumed by a card game with friends, and then on to an evening dulled by white wine and TV. The ritual of feeding and walking him fill up her morning, and then we see Carol eating a solitary lunch. We first see her as she wakes up to her alarm, the dog asleep at her feet. It's the keenly observed details of Carol’s behavior that allow us to understand her character long before she speaks a single line of dialogue. This presents us with the film’s deepest mystery: why is this beautiful, youthful woman so resistant to finding a new relationship so many years after her husband’s death? Why does she choose instead to live a closed, introverted existence with only her dog as a companion? When Carol meets Bill, who by his own reckoning has lived a full, rich life, she is finally freed to mourn her past and explore a new, more fulfilling future. Her lack of tears is a way for us to experientially understand that she has not grieved for other traumatic events in her life, such as the death of her husband and her professional failure as a musician. Early in the story, she must put her beloved dog to sleep, but she doesn't weep. The film contains similarly telling moments about Carol. The use of the cigar here as a symbol of youthful virility is not subtle, but it reveals Bill’s way of dealing with age and dying. Carol, the love interest, played by Blythe Danner, at one point asks him, “Are you ever going to light that thing?” Bill shakes his head, saying words to the effect that cigars are bad for his health and he’s not allowed to smoke them anymore. He is never seen without a six-inch cigar sticking from the corner of his mouth. In a recent film, I’ll See You in My Dreams, the character of Bill, played by Sam Elliot, is an elderly millionaire looking for love. Why does anyone commit a murder? Why does someone betray a friend? Why do some people prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate? (I still don’t have the answer to that one.) These types of behavioral questions can lead us into the experiential heart of a character easily and with great accuracy. These are critical details, but ultimately writing is about action, and that is where I look for the big clues.Įach character in a story possesses the same components as a “real” person: traumatic experiences, unresolved personal conflicts, and, most importantly, a mystery that keeps the reader or viewer glued to the story. This is not to say that I don’t support the exploration of the circumstances of a character’s birth, culture, nationality, religion and class. The study of the performance of any action by your character can reveal more about his or her nature than any detailed background study because it’s active, not conceptual. ![]() ![]() I am not so interested in the circumstances of their birth as I am in how they do the ordinary tasks that everyday life requires. My personal preoccupation when developing a new story is to find an experiential understanding of my characters. ![]()
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