Week 4 Day 3: Pushed to a Breaking Point – GOOD WILL HUNTING

[Susan]

Good Will Hunting – I will end you.

Watch 1st time for:

What is the build up to this breaking point?

Will is purposefully looking for anything that could piss off his newest therapist. Nothing bothers him until Will disrespects his wife (because Sean – Robin Williams character has a deep wound over her death from cancer).

How is Will able to get to Sean and what reaction does it cause?

Will brings out a wound in Sean about his wife’s death by making it appear as if she was anything but pure.

Watch 2nd time for:

What drama is this scene built around?

The scene is built around the drama/tension of Will trying to get out of his required therapy by a build up to a breaking point, and Sean as the therapist actually trying to help him. But Will gets it wrong and has to realize later that the skills he thinks he has to read people are not as reliable as he thinks they are, and he can easily misinterpret things.

What profile items (right character, traits, secret, wound, future) showed up in these two character’s words and actions?

Will:

Right character: Will is the right character for this scene because his wounds and secrets clash with a specific wound that Sean has.

Character traits: Full of himself/low self-esteem, Angry, Mean, Insightful/Able to Pick people apart, Misinterpreter, Wounded. None of his good traits are shown in this scene.

Secret: Will is afraid that if anyone finds out who he is they won’t like him/want to be with him/or respect him in any way. He thinks he is worth less because he isn’t an elitist.

Wound: He has been intensely emotionally, physically and mentally abused by different foster parents.

Future: He is living into his future of actually having to face his pain and fears and makes changes and heal in order to be content.

Sean:

Right character: Sean is the right character because his inner strength which enables him to live past his wound is also what makes him able to deal with Will. He understands human behavior better than Will.

Character traits: Caring, Wounded, Strong (physically, emotionally and mentally), Deep understanding of human behavior, Angry.

Secret: He wants to kill himself every day.

Wound: His wife died of cancer and he suffered through every second of seeing her suffer. And it is even worse now that she is gone. His heart is broken.

Future: His relationship with Will, will test Sean and he will have to become even stronger and heal his own inner wounds.

Daily Focus – Searching for Breakthroughs:

What makes this character great from a writing perspective.

Will: Will is so complex and has so many opposing factors in his personality and life, as well as wounds that need to be healed that he has enormous potential to grow and change, and also to create severe conflict and pain.

Sean: Sean is also a complex character. His wound is with him 24 hours a day and everything he does is expressed through this wound until he is able to change and live again.

Rethink or create a scene for your script using your new insights and rewrite that scene/character.

It would be funny in MCSRM to have the Drake get pushed to extreme limits even though this is a comedy of errors. It is a slow boil for him, however I could definitely include an explosive comedic breaking point probably with his dogs because he wouldn’t be able to express himself like that with anyone else. Also there can be more funny build ups with him saying and doing weird things/behaving oddly with Violetta and the Cook.

This all goes back to bringing the emotional level of what I am writing to an extreme pitch at least in some scene/s.