If the protagonist of your latest screenplay feels a little one-dimensional, here’s a trick that might spark more interest in them: Give them a piece of art or pop culture to obsess over.
exist RipleyOscar-winning screenwriter Steven Zaillian co-stars in the new Netflix series based on Patricia Highsmith’s acclaimed literary thriller. The famous 1999 adaptation of “Ripley,” starring Matt Damon, had the character become obsessed with Italian artist Caravaggio.
In doing so, compelling insights into the psychology of con men are revealed. Please allow me to explain.
Use existing culture to shape your protagonist
Caravaggio was an artist who depicted the homosexuality of biblical characters. His paintings contain beauty, but also cruelty. In 1606, he murdered someone during a fight after a tennis match.
Caravaggio fled his native Naples to avoid murder charges and committed suicide in 1610.
It doesn’t take a genius to see what attracted Zarian to his exhibition, adding a scene of the mysterious conman Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) seductively staring at a Caravaggio work, as As the exhibition progresses, fantasies about the painter are shared. After all, this is the story of a man whose sexual desire is so repressed that he goes on the run in Italy and later (spoiler alert) commits an act of murder himself.
“I started seeing connections between Caravaggio and Ripley very early on,” Zaillian tells me on this week’s episode of Script Apart, my podcast about the secrets of great first drafts of movies and TV shows.
“The fact that he murdered someone in Italy. The brutality of the painting itself. I don’t know if [Caravaggio] He’s on the run, but he definitely wants to travel incognito. When I saw episode 8 [“VIII Narcissus”]I realized there was an opportunity to incorporate Tom’s knowledge of Caravaggio into the plot to potentially reveal something.
By adding the painter to the story, the audience is able to see things about an elusive character that we might not realize: he is alone, he longs for connection, the complex sexual impulses lingering in him, the savagery he considers himself Act as a work of art.
This isn’t the first time Ripley has used its protagonists’ pop-culture obsessions as a window into their identities.
remember how to american psychopathPatrick Bateman (Christian Bale) recited a clinical analysis of 1980s pop music before committing murder? This gives viewers insight into his cool, corporate personality and makes those murder scenes more jarring and unusual than if he were just swinging an axe.
Why not try it in your own work? It works for Zaillian, and it works for you.
For more insight, listen to my full interview with the Oscar-winning screenwriter above.
Al Horner is a journalist, screenwriter and presenter based in London. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Empire, GQ, BBC, White Lies, Time and more.
