An Ode to Wilson Fisk

Along with the rest of the world I am currently slightly obsessed (note, only slightly) with the new Netflix series Daredevil. The show is violent and gory as all get out but in the middle it's also vulnerable and somehow fresh even though it continues the grimdark direction taken by most superhero movies lately.

And I think part of why it's so good at it is down to the villain, Wilson Fisk. (Please note, this post may be somewhat spoilery about Fisk and his past. If that bothers you, please feel free to return after watching the available episodes.)

I've never really loved the Daredevil comic. I don't really know why, it's all about things that I usually enjoy. There's a hero who's at an extreme disadvantage against his adversaries, working class background, taking place in a city, the MC is a complete nerd etc. It should be right up my alley but for whatever reason, I never really connected with it.

That changed with the first episode of the Netflix series. Now, while I'm willing to admit that some of it may be because I fell hard for Charlie Cox (who plays Matt Murdock aka Daredevil in the series) in Stardust, that's not the whole truth of it.

For me the turning point of whether I just liked the show or loved it came when they started to delve deeper into the life of Wilson Fisk. The first time we actually meet Fisk, he is utterly captivated by a modern painting, titled "Rabbit in a Snowstorm" which is basically white paint slathered over a white canvas. The moment could have gone in so many ways that would have made the character cartoonish but instead Vincent D'Onofrio's (previously probably best known for his performance as Private "Gomer" Pyle in Full Metal Jacket) performance made the character into someone who is not only vulnerable but also a force to be reckoned with.

The man in the mirror

Later on, in episode 8, we see Fisk in his morning routine, getting ready to continue the conquering of the city. The kicker comes from the first time he sees himself in the mirror. Here is a man meticulously dressed in the most expensive suits money can buy and he still sees himself as a scared child, trying desperately to please a violent, misogynistic father while staying true to a cowed mother.

I wrote about writing women back in February and the Daredevil series (let's pretend that unfortunate movie never happened, okay?) has certainly applied similar advice to Wilson Fisk in spades. Fisk is a violent, horrific man who uses any and all means necessary to do exactly as he wants. There's a scene in one episode where he literally beats a man to death until there is nothing left of his victim's head. And yet... And yet the writers as well as D'onofrio's performance of him turn Fisk into someone who can almost be pitied. Almost.

Fisk wants something with all his being: he wants to save Hell's Kitchen. He wants to eliminate crime from the streets of the city, make it safe for people like him, people like his mother, people like his girlfriend. The trouble is, in his zealousness he has made deals with all the criminal elements of the city, from the drug cartel to the human traffickers. He doesn't think twice about leveling tenement housing mainly because the inhabitants are poor and some of them commit crimes of the sort he cares about.

The writers of the show keep drawing parallels between Fisk and Murdock and their respective quests to clean up or "save the city". On the surface, the two men want the same things, they just have very different methods of going about it. They're similar in a lot of ways, but their lives have taken different courses which have led them down very different paths.

Wilson Fisk in the series is a terrible example of humanity but as such he is also utterly, irrevocably, undeniably human. Kingpin (as he will no doubt be known at some point of the series) is one of the comic book bad guys who has been very often portrayed as being evil for the sake of evil, a mustache-twirling baddie from the silent films if you will. In this series he is human first and the evil, his evilocity if you will, rises from his humanity and the particular flaws that make Wilson Fisk the man he is.

Actors and Characters

Picture from stock-xchng taken by Scott Liddell

So many times I have no idea what I’m going to blog about until I read Sheena’s post.  In fact all The Prosers have inspired me to write a blog topic at one point or another (thanks ladies, I hope you don’t mind), and today is no different.  Sheena’s post yesterday on being an actress made me think of what I learned about characterization from my drama classes I took in high school.

I’ve been thinking about blogging about this for a while now ever since I wrote this blog post on characterization.  I thought that maybe some people would find it interesting if I shared what I learned about characters from my very very limited acting experience.  But now that I’ve learned that Sheena was a drama major in college and Trisha spent a year working as an actress, I feel a little intimidated about writing this post, but…I’m going to do it anyway.  Cause I got nothing else. 

So Sheena and Trisha please chime in and share your expertise.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Okay, now after that lengthy and insecure introduction, I’ll get started.

Acting isn’t just memorizing lines.  Actors create the characters as much as writers do.  It really is amazing to see the same play done with different actors.  They say the same words and tell the same story, but each actor brings something different to the role.  They create something truly unique.

The role of Indiana Jones was originally offered to Tom Selleck, who had to turn it down because of Magnum PI.  It is hard for me to imagine Tom Selleck or anyone else really as Indiana Jones.  Harrison Ford truly took that role and made it his, and I’m not sure if the movie would have become so iconic if it hadn’t been for his performance.

My point is that actors know as much if not more about creating realistic, memorable characters than we writers do, and I really think that there is a lot we writers can learn from them.

1.  Motivation is the key to creating a believable character.  The phrase I heard over and over in every drama class and every play was, “what is your motive.”  Every actor needs to know what their character wants, and not just in the overall play, but in every scene, every word, every movement.  Stage direction is given to provide movement, but the actor must give that movement meaning.  

I’ve blogged many times before that knowing your characters’ motives is essential for good characterization, but I’m going to say it one more time at least (probably more).  You need to understand what your characters really want, what they think they want, and what they are in denial about wanting in every scene, every movement, every word.

2.  The small movements are important, but can be overdone.  In my drama classes, a lot of the students (including me) struggled with what to do with our hands.  The director gave us those big movements like sitting down or crossing to stage right, but we had to figure out those small movements.  It was tough.  Too few movements and the character seems too stiff, but too many wild gestures and the character looks comical, both of these extremes can make the character feel unnatural (unless of course the character is supposed to be stiff or comical, then it works J).   Ultimately, every actor needs to find the right balance.  But those small movements were more than just making the character look natural.  They can convey thoughts and meaning that aren’t in dialogue.  They are a way of subtly showing character.

Balancing small movements is important in writing too.  Too little movement and you get talking head syndrome, too much movement and the characters seem twitchy, but just the right movement at just the right moment can show aspects of a character’s personality that can’t be shown in dialogue or even internal monologues, especially when the character thinks they want one thing but really want something else.

3.  Be in the moment.  There are a lot of things to worry about when you are performing on the stage.  There is remembering the lines, the cues, the stage direction, and sometimes, gaging the audience’s responses.  A good actor needs to be in the moment.  He can’t worry about what is coming next or what the audience is thinking, he has to be that character at that moment and think of nothing else.  The audience can tell when the actor is not completely immersed in his character.

I’ve found that my best writing comes from being in the moment.  I find that I have to go over every scene at least twice.  The first time just trying to get down on the page what happens, but the second pass, I try to immerse myself in the character and imagine what exactly she/he is seeing and thinking.  I can’t always tap into that, but when I do, I can feel it and I think the readers can too. 

4.  Always give yourself somewhere to go.  I mean emotionally, not physically.  I’m not sure if this has a technical name, but it was acting advice that always stuck with me.  No matter how angry or sad the character is, you always leave room for the character to get angrier or sadder.    If you give all your anger to the scene, your character can’t get more angry, and you will have no place else to go.   I don’t know why, but the audience can feel this.  The scene loses tension because the audience knows that you’ve reached your limit.   So you need to hold back some of the anger or the sorrow or whatever the emotion your character is feeling, so the audience always feels that tension that things can get worse.

I think this is true in writing as well.  I’ve heard the advice of torturing your characters.  Trap them up in a tree and throw rocks at them.  I think we do need to let our characters suffer, but we also need to hold back a little to.  Take them to the brink of being broken, but don’t break them.  Let the readers feel that as bad as things are for the character, it can still get worse.  Keep that tension going because once they’ve hit rock bottom, there is no place for the story to go but up.

So those are the lessons I learned about writing from my brief experience with acting.  I didn't have a very long acting stint, but I'm thankful that I was able to take something away from it besides just having lots of fun.  :)

~MaryAnn

I'm a Writer/ I'm an Actress

I'm the one in the green.
And in the grin.

This is my favorite picture of me ever. It's a copy of a copy, so I apologize for the low photo quality.

 This is me in my very first play. I love this picture, because I can see my joy reaching deep down to my fingertips.

I love acting. It brings me a kind of joy I don't feel doing anything else. There's something about reading an author's words, and knowing exactly how they should be spoken, knowing exactly what kind of inflection will bring the audience to laughter, and what kind of pause will bring an audience to feeling emotion, that I can't really explain. It just feels natural to me, like it's ingrained into my spirit, like I was created to do it. It's something that I can do without trying, and it's where I shine.

I was in at least one play every year from the time I was that old, until nine years ago. I loved it.

While I was in High School though, I learned something that filtered my perception on acting. People don't like you when you are better than them at something. Boys don't like girls who are weird, and when I was seventeen, I learned that acting was weird.

But I didn't care. Acting was part of who I was. When I played a character, everything made sense. I could speak, communicate, feel, shine, without even trying. I was the best. I could be in a room with a hundred kids, and I was the best. When you're a teenager who hates herself, being good at something meant I had hope, a reason to exist, a way to keep going, even when life sucked.

When I got to college, I wasn't the best anymore. I didn't understand where all these talented kids came from, or why they kept stealing the parts I should have been given. Reality snuck in, and I had to work my butt off, just to be noticed. I saw so many people who were so talented, so driven, living in a culture they created of alcohol, parties, infidelity, homosexuality, and creative genius. As a sheltered  young Mormon creative girl, I was lost. I wasn't good enough to fit in with the brilliance of the culture, and I wasn't bad enough to feel comfortable with the questionable morality. By trying to figure out who I was, and what I'd be, somehow I lost the joy in acting that I knew as that little girl in the picture.

That's where I was when I fell in love with the handsomest man that ever existed. We created children and a life that has brought me a different kind of joy. A brilliant beautiful happiness, that I wouldn't trade for anything; not for Broadway, or SNL, or any other dream I once had.

For nine years now, I haven't been in a play. For nine years, I thought I was okay with that. I expressed myself through my writing.  That should have been enough.

But in those nine years, I've been sad.

 I've been tired, and false. Something was missing, and I pretended so hard not to know what it was.

 I found myself trying to play the character of the Perfect Normal Mormon Woman, and hating myself for failing. I was so busy trying to fit myself into a mold that no one told me to try on, that I didn't understand why I felt broken all the time.

This last week, I tried out for a play. I tried not to. I really tried not to. I came up with as many excuses as I could for why I shouldn't do it, and I have plenty. But I still did it.

Maybe it's the nine year break I took, but that one hour of being the person I was created to be made me feel joy all the way to my fingertips again. It's not Broadway.  It's not living the dream. But I'm being authentic. I'm being the person I was created to be, and it feels SO good to stretch out of the mold no one used to create me.

Dream. Do it for the love. Do it because you can. Do it because when you shine, when you are the person you were created to be, you give permission to other people to be themselves.

But mostly, do it because it makes you happy down to your fingertips.
~Sheena