Inscrutable nutjobs
For a project I’m working on, I’m trying to think of filmdom’s great inscrutable nutjobs.
The idea is a character who appears to be foreign, opaque and impenetrable at first, but as the movie goes on reveals unexpected insights and tenderness. Sort of a combination of the above folks, ie Roberto Benigni in Down By Law and Benicio del Toro in The Usual Suspects.
Your assistance in this matter is appreciated.
UPDATE: another good example: Brad Pitt in Snatch.
Charles Foster Kane in “Citizen Kane”, perhaps?
Perhaps One in City of Lost Children?
HAL 9000?
Everyone in City of Lost Children.
Just check out the movie “Ichi the Killer” if you want to see nutjobs.
— Frankenstein’s Monster from Frankenstein (1931)
— Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Inscrutable nutjobs
William ‘D-Fens’ Foster in Falling Down
Tyler Durden and the Narrator in Fight Club
Although both of those could be the more common “character who looks normal but gradually goes insane”.
Donnie Wahlberg’s touching portrayal of “Duddits” in 2003’s incredible Dreamcatchers (possibly the second worst movie of the last ten years, next to Domino.)
Is that the one where they shit aliens?
Any film with Timothy Carey
Check out any film that he appeared in (Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” for one). He was a true original. And I dare say, del Toro ripped him off for “The Usual Suspects.”
Re: Any film with Timothy Carey
Timothy Carey’s 8×10 at the IMDb is proof enough for me.
Re: Any film with Timothy Carey
Oh him! I just saw him in Minnie & Moskowitz. Not that inscrutable, but yeah a nutjob.
How about Danielle Rousseau from “Lost”?
Jean Reno in Leon?
More of an oddball than a nutjob, but sure.
Not unlike Audrey Tatou in Amelie.
Or Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys.
Pretty much everyone in any David Lynch thing, starting with Eraserhead.
Good call.
damnit, was gonna say that
Are we talking about your role in Henry Fool or in real life?
There’s a difference?
Dennis Hopper in River’s Edge?
almost anyone in king of hearts
Capt./Maj. Bennett Marco from Manchurian Candidate (he was a bit nutz)
Yoda from Star Wars Empire Strikes Back
Obvious
The blind man from oh brother where art thou
Maude from Harold and Maude
I want to thank you, this blog has gotten me thinking more about my writing and allowed me to write less linearly. Hopefully my screenplays will benifit.
You must follow your muse of course, but I’m curious, what on my blog gave you the notion that you should write less linearly? If anything, I would have thought that my rigid pursuit of character motivation and its effect on plot structure would lead in the opposite direction.
sorry, at work doing a mind syphoning job, i used the wrong word, just meant something better. I found myself (before reading your blog in depth) writing a script where one of the characters was weak and a little flat and I realized I didn’t know her well enough, what was driving her, what her wants and needs were. I am examining it more now.
I owe my knowledge of film structure to Jeffrey Katzenberg. When I was working on Antz, I would start to describe a scene in symbolic terms or sociological terms or filmic terms and within a matter of seconds he would put up his hands and say “Stop, stop, stop — WHAT DOES THE GUY WANT?”
He said it so often that I wrote it down on a postcard and stuck it up over my desk. Later I found out that the saying did not originate with Mr. Katzenberg, but is one of the driving principles of screenwriting.
Hence the title of my blog.
most of the time i am great with that
my screenwriting teacher knocked it into our skulls
but i realizedi forgot that in this one
i have been taught that most characters in cinema can be boiled down to panteonic archtypes, this type of character was described as the loki character.
The blind man from O Brother falls into a category I like to call “The Magical Negro.” If you need something inexplicable to happen, give it to a Magical Negro, everyone will buy it. See also Bagger Vance, Hudsucker Proxy.
would bruce almighty fall into that?
As the French say, absolutement.
ha
I like you
you’re funny