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Week 1 Day 1: Character Traits – GOOD WILL HUNTING
Daily Focus – Searching for Breakthroughs:
- Please watch the GOOD WILL HUNTING SCENE in your lessons and provide your insights/breakthroughs into what makes this character great from a writing perspective.
- Read the other writers comments and make notes of any insights/breakthroughs you like.
- Rethink or create a scene for your script using your new insights and rewrite that scene/character.
- Post the answer to the question, “What I learned rewriting my scene/character…?” and post it in the 5 PM daily post here.
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11 Replies
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Insights -This scene is set up to show the similarities and major differences of the characters by placing them in a Harvard Bar. Will watches his buddy Chuckie kind of make an ass of himself, even though Skylar seems amused and maybe interested. Will steps in finally to show off himself in front of the ladies when ‘student’ is about to show Chuckie up. Will finally steps in, at he right moment to ‘save the day’. We now know that Will has probably read a large percentage of text books and can recite by page. Breakthrough – Will invites student to fight and can see in his eyes that he will never back down
This scene shows these guys love to shake and stir things up. They are adventurous in that they just want to see what happens. School educated vs. Street educated, who will win? Challenge to get girls to talk to them and hope for more. If they get into a fight they will gladly take any one on. It feels like a real situation (this a possibility) we don’t have to suspend our disbelief to enjoy this scene (film). The characters feel true.
Traits
Will – Looks like he was in a fight (recently), He most likely has a photographic memory, He is a good friend by standing up for them, doesn’t care if he gets i to a fight (breakthrough) in fact looking to fight. When he speaks to student, he has an eloquence despite his disheveled look and blue heavy accent.
Skylar – enjoys the situation with Chuckie, she is probably bored(breakthrough), she knows who she is and doesn’t mind telling ‘student’ to lay off
Chuckie – like Will, he looks like he was in a fight, he is the big man around town (if only in his own mind), he likes to show off, but really wants to impress the girls and get laid.
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At first glance, it’s clear that Will is extremely well read and pretty self-confident. Skylar is cocky, privileged, self-impressed, almost a caricature. Chuckie is full of the Boston puffery – “faking it till you make it” so common in that city, which I know well – but he is not, himself, nearly as well-informed as Will. On a purely meritocratic basis, Will is THE MAN.
What I noticed on the second pass was Will naming specific historians, thoroughly knowledgeable about the premier controversies and discussions in contemporary history (which, when you think about it, is tough to do given that Will’s key fascination is math). We see Will step up and make an accusation of plagiarism. Skylar reacts with class conflict, feeling superior to this upstart, even though clearly the upstart is at least his equal on an objective basis. And then Will closes with an invitation to “step outside”, where Skylar folds.
It got me wondering – this script was written by Afflack and Damon, where did they come up with all the background knowledge to make Will sound so smaht?
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😂 Your last line. Thanks for making me smile today.
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What traits do you see
or hear in these main characters – Will, Skylar, and Chuckie?Will: brash, confident, loyal, genius
Skylar: egotistical, snobbish, arrogant
Chuckie: playful, transparent, friendly
Watch 2nd time for:
What drama did the
writers create to trigger and deliver these traits?A young macho stud battle with an audience of peers that began as an intellectual confrontation that escalated to emotional and could have ended in a physical altercation
Why do you think the
group picked a Harvard bar?Emotional safety; they really have no chance of a real relationship with any of the women, or a friendship with any men because the group is from a lower class.
…What makes this character
great from a writing perspective.He has admirable traits; a knight in shining armor for his friend embarrassed in front of young women, possesses the extreme trait of being a genius with a photographic memory, and is articulate enough to hold his own in any high-brow conversation, yet we know he has a fascinating wound that makes him content to literally clean up after adolescent students he could run intellectual rings around. Emotionally, he must be quite stunted to find comfort in being around and cleaning up after young people. We want to go on the journey to see what would cause a genius to cover their own high potential with a menial, even demeaning, position in life, to “graduate” into full fruition and become all that he can be.
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I went to Harvard and there’s no such bar, nor ever this style of confrontation. (There are casual intellectual duels, but much more abstruse and untranslatable.) However, given this fantasy situation, the three characters stack up strangely– the first guy with a sleazy introduction, the second challenging him and the third backing up the sleaze, with hints of a fight. It’s really a working-class situation transposed to an imaginary Harvard.
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I’m pretty sure the writers did not go to Harvard either. See Ron’s remark above. 😉
We’re not so concerned with the accuracy of the content as much as we are the structure of what is happening in the movie. But I absolutely understand your concerns. I am a horsewoman and most horse movies are 100% cringeworthy to me.
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Watch 1st time for:
What traits
do you see or hear in these main characters –
Will- GENIOUS,
, PRIDE, protective, troublemaker
Skylar- AUTHENTIC,
NICE, INTELIGENT, SPEAKS HER MIND.
Chuckie- LIAR-
STORYTELLER, LOVERBOY,What drama did the writers
create to trigger and deliver these traits?-to deliver wills trait,of protective, and pride, they manage to put his friend in a position of abuse, so Will could show up and defend him.
-to show his genius- they put a situation when Chuky lied about going to a class with the girls, and then got the bully talk about that class and start to showing off about it. Will simply enter and finished him in a matter of 5 minutes, showing him that he knows more about books than he.
To show his troublemaker side, Will ask this guy to step outside.
Why do you think the group
picked a Harvard bar?Will work on the campus. To pick up girls way above their leage. To see what it felt like.
insights/breakthroughs what
makes this character great from a writing perspective.:-He is a genius locked in a rebellious young man.
-think about create scenes specifically to make the character’s traits come out, I had not thought about it and I had not used it.
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Will: Extremely well-read but thoughtful about those reads, anti-establishment/academia, not the first to put himself out there — willing to watch and strategize his entry, values originality, feels Harvard is overrated, tough guy that is willing to use his fists to solve problems.
Skylar: gentle student, quick, hit on often by guys, not impressed by academic arrogance.
Chuckie: less educated, doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, friendly and a bro-dude, shameless.
The writers trigger these characteristics by putting a group of local Boston boys at a Harvard bar where they will immediately stand out as local Boston boys. It should be noted that Will is not the one to engage the girls, he waits to show his intellect until he has to come to his friend’s rescue, which also shows what a good friend he is to his buddies. Being at a Harvard bar gives Will the chance to come face-to-face with a Harvard grad student with an inflated academic ego, where he immediately takes him down. We are shown that Will has extensive reading and most likely a photographic memory — because he can even remember full passages of books and what page they were on. It shows you that although Will hangs out with his local Boston friends, he can very easily fit into the Harvard crowd — at least with intellect — but that he likely values something other than a regurgitated education — his originality. It also allows him to show that he and his friends are not intimidated to fight — and that likely a Harvard student would not accept a physical battle. Will wins both intellectually and physically.
The group might have picked the Harvard bar because they want to pick up smart, rich girls. Or maybe because they know that Will can hold his own there. Maybe they just want to see how they can do with Harvard girls.
What I learned in rewriting my scene is that I can move characters around a little to help use each other and a situation to highlight their wounds.
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Will – passive aggressive, unsure genius, caring, not afraid of physical violence
Skyler – sweet, kind to less fortunate
Chuckie – gamer, insecure about his lack of education, womanizer
Drama-
Chuckie set up drama by going way over his head pretending to be college educated
Skyler – defended Chuckie
Will – stepped in with a point-counterpoint game of economic knowledge, then escalated to physical violence
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(Q1) The drama the writer’s created to deliver their character traits was by crafting a scene where two things had to happen. First, they had to put the boys in their element. A Boston bar picking up chicks and looking for a good time. This is roughly their hood. What could go wrong? But these are the kind of guys that don’t run from trouble. They run toward it. Second, one of the boys is threatened. The conflict is what is used to bring out the character’s true nature. It brought out Chuckie’s ignorance, Will’s loyalty and supreme intelligence, Will met his love interest.
(Q2) Why do you think the group picked a Harvard bar? These are the kind of guys that would pick a bar because there might be more chicks. I don’t think they would pick a Harvard bar to meet smart people and challenge or want to learn from them. I think the writer’s chose a Harvard bar so we could introduce Will’s love interest and flash his formidable skills while protecting his friend from an intellectual attack. A Harvard bar works on several levels for the overall goals of the story. Why wasn’t it just a local neighborhood bar? Will would not have met a Harvard girl and probably wouldn’t have run into a brilliant grad student to demolish. A local bar would have checked one box while a Harvard bar checked boxes on several different levels. The Harvard bar was a writer’s choice that set-up things better for the future of the story.
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Watch 1st time for:
· What traits do you see or hear in these main characters – Will, Skylar, and Chuckie?
Will: genius, protective, great memory, fighter
Skylar: social, congenial, intolerant of jerks
Chuckie: social, slick, funny, lacks higher education
Watch 2nd time for:
· What drama did the writers create to trigger and deliver these traits?
· Why do you think the group picked a Harvard bar?
The writers created a social situation between Harvard students and “regular” folks causing a class collision of sorts. This situation “forced” the characters to portray their core traits: smarts, social, funny, protective, fighter, intolerant.
The group may have picked the Harvard bar to have some fun in a different environment that they normally don’t find themselves in. They may have wanted to venture and experience a new scene to create memories outside their comfort zone.
Insights/Breakthroughs:
The characters in my stories, especially my main protagonist, needs to be the best or the expert in the subject matter I’m exploring.
The environment the characters find themselves in will dictate or trigger their core traits within the given scene.
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