The main character of any movie could be one of three
things. They could be a hero, a villain,
or someone in between. The heroes
attempt to save the day, the villains attempt to ruin it, and everyone else
just attempts to make it out alive and in one piece. As for the audience, they want to relate to
the main character. If the villain is
the protagonist, they want to understand why they chose to be a villain. If the protagonist is the hero, they want to
feel invested in the hero’s goal. And for
the people in between, they want to connect to their struggle to make it out.
There need to be some good stakes for the audience to
connect with a protagonist. Not only
that, but the protagonist must fight to come out on top. They must fight so they don’t lose what is
near and dear to their heart. The
villain could be fighting to keep their methamphetamine empire afloat. The hero could be fighting to save the
princess and destroy a dangerous weapon.
The in between character could be simply trying to outrun the monster
chasing them through the woods. Every
story has stakes of some sort and the characters should be giving it their all
to make sure that things go their way.
The fight is the most important part of a character’s
stakes. A character must be working
towards their goal. They make decisions,
choose a route to go down, and live with the consequences. How active they are within the story will
dictate how involved the audience is. If
a character actively tries to get to their goal, the audience will have an
interest in whether they get there or not.
The worst thing for a main character is that things just happen to them
and get them to their goal.
Passive main characters have come up in the Sunday “Bad”
Movies before. The post for Thumbelina
was all about how passive the title character was. She drifted through the story with people
pushing her in different directions, not making her own choices until the
climax. She was taken from one place to
another. She didn’t choose to go to the
places. She was kidnapped, led, and
coerced into her journey. It was a bland
story because she never actively did anything until the end.
On the Line was the same way. The main character hardly made any of his own
decisions. Things happened around him. He floated through his own story. There were only two points where things were
pushed forward by the main character.
We’ll get to that in a few minutes.
On the Line was a 2001 romantic comedy about Kevin
Gibbons (Lance Bass), a hopeful advertising creative in Chicago. He hopped on the train home from work and met
Abbey (Emmanuelle Chriqui). They hit it
off, but he forgot to get her name or phone number. He put up a few missed connection posters in
hopes that she would contact him, then headed to work where he was getting his
big chance at being a creative voice.
After a bunch of random women call their apartment looking for Kevin,
his friends Rod (Joey Fatone), Eric (GQ), and Randy (James Bulliard) decided
that they could set up a scheme to get themselves some dates. And the story went from there.
Kevin, much like Thumbelina, was a passive character. He did a couple things for himself. Namely, he did the posters, and a few
billboards later on. The driving force
of the story, however, was everyone else acting upon him. Most of the obstacles were overcome because
of what the other people did and not what Kevin, himself, was doing. He sat still and let the middle section of
the story happen around him.
On the Line started with Kevin being passive. Abbey initiated their conversation. She started the entire love connection. Kevin was on his way home from work,
listening to Al Green and singing along.
Abbey heard his singing and said something along the lines of “I Can’t
Get Next to You would be more fitting because I can’t get next to you.” She was telling him to move his briefcase
from the seat next to him so she could sit down. When they reached their stop, she said it was
her stop. Then he said it was his too. She initiated that. She was the first person to share something
about themselves. And it was Kevin’s
lack of action that led to his not getting her name or number before they
parted ways at the train station.
One of the two bits of activeness that came from the Kevin
character was when he put up some posters to try and find Abbey (whose name he
still didn’t know). The posters were a
missed connection sort of thing with his phone number. Random women started calling. He went out on a few dates with them, trying
to find out if it was the girl from the train.
None of them were, though. The
newspaper even wrote a story about his trying to find Abbey with the posters. Public interest in Kevin rose. Not from his own doing, but from the
newspaper article.
The tide would turn against Kevin. Again, it wasn’t because of anything he
did. Kevin was on the phone with Eric
while at work. Eric asked Kevin to let
him, Rod, and Randy could set up a dating system with the non-Abbeys. Kevin didn’t agree to it, but he was in an
argument with his boss and shouted something that Eric took as agreement. When people found out about the dating
scheme, it was written up in the newspaper and people started to hate Kevin. His life was experiencing a roller coaster
because of what other people were doing.
He would get active again after the world blew up around him, putting
out the billboards. But the whole middle
section between the posters and the billboards, he wasn’t doing anything for
himself. Stuff was simply happening
around him and he was going for the ride.
This was even more apparent in Kevin’s b-story, as he tried
to advance at work. In his first scene
at work, Kevin was hanging out with the mail room supervisor, Nathan (Jerry
Stiller). The boss quickly came in to
tell Kevin that he was part of a new Reebok pitch team. He threw out a few ideas that didn’t get
chosen until his partner presented one of them as her own idea. Kevin then wandered aimlessly around the
workplace watching his partner’s success rise while his faded. It faded more due to the bad press in the
newspaper. Basically, whatever the
newspaper thought of Kevin was what the workplace thought of him. If he was represented well, he was
liked. If the paper trashed him, nobody
wanted to work with him. In the end, his
partner got her promotion, then fessed up to the idea being his. They both got to keep the positions they were
in. The partner kept the promotion, and
Kevin kept working for Reebok. But the
whole work story felt like something that just happened to Kevin, rather than
something that he pushed for.
On the Line was a movie about Kevin being a mostly
passive character. Two of his actions
helped push the story forward. Putting
up the posters and buying the billboards reconnected him with Abbey. The rest of the story was outside forces
steering him along. His friends set up
the dating scheme. Rod wrote a song
about the missed connection. Kevin’s
partner got herself and Kevin their new positions within the advertising company. Abbey initiated the contact on the train,
over the phone, and at the train station during the final moments of the
film. Kevin didn’t work that hard to
find her. He basically left her signs on
how to find him. Then he turned on
cruise control and coasted through the rest of the movie.
A passive character can bring a movie down almost as much as
technical ineptitude or bad dialogue.
When the character isn’t struggling to achieve their goals, the audience
has less investment in their reaching them.
If the character is sitting on the sidelines and watching their life
pass before their eyes, the audience doesn’t feel like they are part of the
story. An active character is involved
in a story and the audience is along for the ride. That’s when the audience feels true emotion. That’s when the audience becomes attached to
the movie.
A heroic protagonist must fight to defeat the villain. A villainous protagonist must fight to
overcome the hero. The person in the
middle must fight to get to their goal in one piece. No matter the life views of the character,
they need to put up some sort of a fight to reach their goal. The audience wants to see the struggle. The struggle raises the stakes. It makes every decision and every choice more
important. That’s what gets people
interested in movies. That’s what gets
them interested in television. That’s
what gets them interested in books.
That’s the magic of storytelling.
There’s some magic to these notes, too:
- Thumbelina (week 286) was mentioned in this post.
- On the Line featured David Fraser, who could be seen in Iron Eagle IV (week 90) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (week 184).
- Louis Paquette made his return to the Sunday “Bad” Movies this week after already showing up in Glitter (week 22).
- On the Line wasn’t the first time Michael Sercerchi has shown up. That would be Exit Wounds (week 93).
- Dave Foley played Kevin’s boss in On the Line. He was also in Monster Brawl (week 99), where he played a commentator.
- Jerry Stiller made his second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week after doing voicework in Foodfight! (week 143).
- Finally, there was Chris Kirkpatrick. He’s best known as a member of *NSYNC. He was in On the Line for a little bit at the end. He was also in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190).
- Have you seen On the Line? What did you think? Was Kevin too passive? Was that *NSYNC song That Girl (Will Never Be Mine) kickass, or what? Let me know your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter.
- Twitter and the comments are also good places to let me know what I should be checking out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies installments. Hit me up. I like suggestions.
- There’s an Instagram for the Sunday “Bad” Movies which I tend to use. Check it out.
- Now we’ll talk about the next movie. I didn’t know when I chose it, but I’m revisiting the filmography of Donald G. Jackson. The zen filmmaker himself. It’s not one of the Frogtown movies. There’s still one of those in the series that I haven’t watched. Instead, I picked a movie about roller skating, knife wielding nuns in the future. It’s called Roller Blade, and that’s coming up next week. Come back to see what I write.
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