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As Good as It Gets (1997)

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DZ-3: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling

How do you keep an audience watching a character everyone in the film hates?

AI✦Breaks down how to swing an audience between finding a character repulsive and finding him funny--then use that oscillation to make them care about someone genuinely difficult to like.✦

⏱ 1h 20m

30 MAR 2014

Character · Structure · Audience

Listen if you want to understand how you can make audiences care about deeply flawed protagonists

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Stu and Chas tackle the first 20 pages of HOT FUZZ, AS GOOD AS IT GETS and GROUNDHOG DAY and try to work out what stops these a-holes from pushing the audience out of the move… →

Films: Hot Fuzz (2007) , As Good as It Gets (1997) , Groundhog Day (1993) , Gran Torino (2008) , Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Character: Character Flaw , Character Wound

Structure: Dramatic Questions

Audience: Audience Sympathy

"What’s really interesting about Hot Fuzz is in the first couple of pages, they could be setting up a James Bond character. Like, effectively, that kind of, like, almost bulletproof action hero, right? And then, after they’ve done that kind of, like, escalation, then they start deconstructing it. And this is a pattern that will, that As Good as It Gets, does very well. There’s this kind of yin-yang or this peak and trough with our perceptions of the character that they play with to make it, in my mind, make the character both unlikable yet compelling."

— stu | DZ-3: Making Unlikeable Protagonists Compelling