Screenwriting : Unlikable by Craig D Griffiths

Thanks Stuart I'll hunt it down. My story is about a Government run torture program as part of a death row program. The government uses this program to get info regarding proceeds of crime etc. But when the authorities get the info it has been removed by a group known as the farm. The next prisoner is an undercover agent trying to track how the farm works. This is how we learn the the torturer instead of handing it on, as he should he has a network to siphon it off.

Or you can just watch A Clockwork Orange, everything from the POV of the bad guy.

Just trying to get my head around this. So the main character is the antagonist? Sounds like you may need to take Stuart's advice and flip it to the undercover operative. Beware moustache twirling one dimensional antagonists though. Good antagonists tend to me quite multidimensional even if they are fundamentally bad people. The TV series Luther was very good at making the villains very human. If you're effectively writing torture porn you need to stick to your guns and choose your feedback sources carefully. Hostel was never going to win Nichol but it was highly commercial.

CJ the way the story works is that we see the torturer getting info. At the same time as we see raids on the farms infrastructure. We think the torturer is making ground until we begin to see that the farm is his. We then see it is the prisoner running the torture. We then have to stop the torture before the torturer kills the agent. I see two men, smart, intelligent and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals.

There has to at least one thing in the antagonist that the audience has to like or admire then you have a chance. This doesn't have to be obvious but it has to be there.

Terry, I think that I will make that antagonists a righteous character. Then when we find out he is a crook the audience will feel betrayed and desire his demise.

Works for me.

I'd say the most important thing to remember about he villain is that he thinks he is the hero. How can you show us this side of the story?

It's okay to have an 'unlikable' character in a film, As Good As It Gets, Hannibal and Nightcrawler for example. The thing is, these characters need to be 'relatable', 'realistic' and 'rounded'. If the character in your film just tortures people and that's all there is to him, well then people won't understand him or feel any connection. They (people reading and reacting to your script) may not be able to articulate the problem to you, other than they don't like him. We need to understand who they are, what drives them, internally and externally and if they have the ability to change. Hope that helps. Kind Regards, Eoin

Think about the Silence of the Lambs. Even Jame Gumb believes that what he is doing is "right" He wants to become a woman, and finding and skinning bigger girls is the only way he can make his new "skin". It is sick and demented, but at least we can understand what his motivation is (as sick and horrible as it is).

@Craig...That's unfortunate, when I read your post right now, the first thing that came to mind was (our government), and I say rubbish... Politicians still have jobs, why couldn't your horrible character?

Hi Craig, my gut is to agree with Stuart and CJ. Have you watched PRISONERS? Rhetorical. Hugh Jackman tortures a young man who may have kidnapped his son. The opening set-up allows the audience to get on Hugh's side. He's an ordinary dad. His son is kidnapped. The police won't go after Hugh's suspect. He takes matters into his own hands, torturing the young man in order to try to find his son. KILL BILL. I don't recall all the details, but I think Uma Thurman is raped and beaten into a coma. When she wakes up, she's on a mission of revenge. You may be (I can't tell) in a situation in which you have to first set up the character as sympathetic person, then create an Inciting Incident that turns him into a torturer/anti-hero. If your opening has done its job, the audience will go along for the ride, despite your having chosen a torturing anti-hero as the protagonist. Again, please take all this with a grain of salt. I can't give good advice out of context.

In other words, if the set-up is appropriate, you can create a situation in which torturing/killing other people feels "earned," and the audience cheers on the anti-hero, even if the anti-hero is torturing/killing people. Another example: ZERO DARK THIRTY. It's actually the same principle as war movies rely on. Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. They deserve to be retaliated upon.

I think Mel Gibson would be interested in starring, as long as he can play the torture victim!

@Regina I just needed to make sure I wasn't going mad. I posted the logline and the comments all focused on how people should like the character. @Liam I reckon there are a number of people that would like to torture Mel.

I don't understand why the protagonist always needs to be justified so the audience likes him, if you want your story about a guy who tortures, let him be what he is... Look at the Ted Bundy movies and all the stories of the real serial killers that have been made into movies, they're just killers and they have great stories. Look at Dhamer, Gacy, Ed Gein... These are great stories.

If you make it work, it will be an interesting film that doesn't fall in the Hollywood rules of how to write a screenplay

He's not the bad guy, but he's not the likeable character protagonist that Hollywood asks for when choosing a screenplay for production

We don't have to like the character, we just need to understand them and why they are doing what they do and see the reason why they must do it... and hope they reach their goal but fear that they may not.

Right, otherwise the story and the character don't go anywhere.

Hi Craig, there's a distinctive between "really liking" the protag and simply being able to root for him/her (or barrack for, if you're British/Aussie) to achieve his/her agenda. Anti-heroes are valid protags if we can root for them. I believe we do have to "like" them to some extent, because we have to like them enough to be able to root for them to achieve their agendas. Western is perhaps the genre that most often utilizes anti-heroes as protags.

That said, sometimes the anti-hero movie might or might not be tougher to pull off or to convince a financier to invest in.

I piece together components from real life people. That way you build a character, evil or good, that has human elements that are relatable.

Sometimes anti-hero can redeem themselves as they victims themselves once. Sometimes we feel for them. Ie: The Wolfman, Frankenstein , even Hannibal has become sort of a likeable character in a weird way. I remember when Heath Ledger joker was narrating how his father gave him the scar, I felt sorry for the child he once was. We need to humanize our antagonist. Al Pacino's Scarface is another example of a likeable anti-hero. He was a murderer, but he threw the line when it came to killing children. Craig, just make sure Poli Shore doesn't get casted in your movie or Sylvester here won't go see it. Lol. Good luck, buddy.

Robert Duvall plays a very unsympathetic protagonist in the movie with James Earl Jones. The one about Family. (Come on, help my brain lapse here Stage 32 mates). He's a racist ass-#(#. But by the end of the movie, although you may not like him, you understand why is he who is he. And his character arc is huge. Subtle but huge. When I look at your description above, my first thought was "Could the torturer be the villain?" Like in Marathon Man with Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman. Those dental torture scenes are vivid for me decades after I last saw the movie. They are vivid because, well, it was Olivier and Hoffman, but also because the torture wasn't the entire plot.

We need to identify with the protagonist -- the main character driving the story, who has the strongest goal. If the audience doesn't identify with the protagonist, I.e. Find some common humanity in the character, you will lose your audience. Sounds like what's going on with you. So humanize your protagonist or change to the undercover person. You also need to ensure that your conflict is clear: as it sounds from your description, the protagonist doesn't appear to have compelling conflict from the antagonist (the undercover person.) good luck!

Craig, your story sounds intriguing. Perhaps the set-up needs further consideration? You know, Regina is teaching a class starting tomorrow, August 6, that could be helpful to you. If interested here's the link: https://www.stage32.com/happy-writers/classes/How-To-Hook-Your-Reader-In...

Hi Bob, there is a switch in the story, we want the torturer to achieve his goal. Until we realise that he is doing it out of self interest. I have watched characters that I loath, but I believed them. I was hoping the entire time that they would "get what's coming to them". I want to create a completely believable character, hated, but believable.

Peter Corey and I don't always have the same perspective :-)... Regardless, I would like to point out for new filmmakers that his post above is golden in explaining the anti-hero. Per Peter: "An 'anti-hero' is a character — generally the protagonist — whose personal values are at odds with the values of his story-world — but NOT at odds with the values of the audience. The audience recognizes the character as heroic (because, as per above, he's on the right side of the moral conflict), but other characters in the story-world do not recognize him as heroic, or even trustworthy." Stepping outside of quoting Peter, I would like to humbly add to his post. For those who may be wondering, a great example of an anti-hero who is NOT the protagonist is Han Solo to protagonist Luke Skywalker. Happy writing!!

Give the character a unique back story to the reason why he/she is the way they are. Provide some type of abuse they had or some reason behind there need to torture. For example, Michael Myers in the remake by Rob Zombie, his backstory in his upbringing and his abusing stepfather and unloving sister. This gives the audience some form of empathy for your characters actions.

Exactly my point a few weeks back. Thanks, Mark. Protagonists are now changing in recent years. Just look of many of the new TV shows from How to get away with Murder to Empire and not long ago The Sopranos. I about a year half ago, went to a re-release screening of Scarface and it was packed and everyone was clapping on many of Al Pacino's scenes. We all know he was a murderer, but he also set limits on himself, when it came to murdering everyday innocent people. i.e. women and children specifically.

There is something to be said for a lead character that we don't always enjoy. If you're having trouble with an audience connecting with a character, especially a main one, I would suggest reevaluating his motives and purpose. Why is he doing these things? What makes him human, what justifies "in his mind" him doing these things to people. If we can understand that as an audience, you create a humanistic being that we can connect with in some manner. Also keep in mind, we don't have to love a character in a movie, often times there are characters that we hate so intensely or that we even love to hate. Take Diehard for example, Alan Rickman's character, Hans Grueber is someone we hate so much that we love to hate him. He's got something about him that lures us as an audience in. So if your intention is to make us love to hate your guy, make sure he's got something about him, a snarky behavior, a tick that drives us crazy, something that says, we like you. Even Dexter Morgan was murdering people and Walter White was making meth while destroying his family, but we route for these anti-heroes and corrupt characters based on their humanistic actions. Hope that helps a bit! ~Jordan

Peter, my pleasure! I hope your above post resulted in a multiple light bulb moments for S32 readers!