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The Poochie Problem

Here’s something I can’t stand: watching a movie or television show where it occurs to you that the writers have become so enamored of a certain character, all supporting characters exist to do nothing more than talk about that character. They don’t appear to have lives of their own — from a dramatic perspective, they have no goals, no nuances, no arcs. In every scene, they offer either a plot point that will affect the central character or lines of dialogue that allow for the central character’s development. Or, even worse, they populate scenes that exist to do nothing more than talk about the main character.

I call this The Poochie Problem, for one of Homer Simpson’s suggestions for Poochie the Rockin’ Dog, the new character he voiced on The Itchy & Scratchy Show: “Whenever Poochie is not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, ‘Where’s Poochie?’” It tends to happen more frequently in television — the medium of wheel-spinning — but it also happens in plenty of movies, especially action movies and shitty comedies.

Remember how excited I got when I solved the story problems in this script? I didn’t say it at the time — partly because I couldn’t put my finger on it but mainly because I hadn’t yet come up with a cutesy name for it — but it suffers from the Poochie Problem big-time. Look at that story — it gives is three or four different characters who have nothing to do but service the guy the screenwriter obviously wanted to be the Fonzie-esque breakout character. Even worse, the protagonist exists only to talk about how hot he is for the love interest (and also to suffer through humiliating slapstick gags) and the love interest doesn’t even get that much development. It’s no surprise that my main suggestion was to give these people subplots. Make them matter to the story, or else why put them in the story?

It’s an easy trap to fall into, because oftentimes it seems like a good idea. In an action movie, for instance, there’s nearly always a scene where the villains find out just who they’re up against. This is information that’s vital to the story and the hero’s depth, but it’s also information that a hero — in the modest, taciturn tradition Americans love — would never say about himself. One of the very few ways to get this out is to have the villains learn about it. Yet, this is not just vital to us — it’s vital to those characters. You’re a villain, and you have a big chunky meathead on your submarine, blowing shit up at random and killing your men — villains in movies are often crazy, but thinking they wouldn’t want to find out who the person is and discover everything about them takes them to a level of insanity not seen since Eric Bogosian’s demented computer genius in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory — and even he wanted to know everything he could about Casey Ryback.

There are plenty of reasons to have characters talk about other characters, but there is absolutely no reason to have them do nothing else. If that statement featured too many negatives, let me put it another way: don’t not do what Donny Don’t does. Think about it this way (and bear in mind I’m not being original here, but I can’t remember which if the zillions of books on drama it comes from): every person is the hero of his or her own life. The same principle applies to movies. Every single character — from the hero to the villain to the tacked-on love interest to the bland car-rental agent who has one line on page 17 — believes they’re the hero. The villain fights just as hard to come out on top, but it’s all a matter of perspective. Taking over a Navy nuclear sub to blow up a nearby island is bad. Trying to stop the foolish American government from waging an unnecessary war is good. What if the only way to do that is to nuke an island?

Theoretically, an ethical dilemma like this is the stuff of great drama; in movies, shit blowin’ up real good is the stuff of great drama, but the dilemma still needs to be there. If you can’t come up with a better reason than, “Um… ‘Cause the hero’s gotta fight someone,” congratulations! You have failed.

I think every screenwriter stumbles on this problem at some point, or maybe it only happens to really hacky people like me. I wrote a script once where two supporting characters turned out to be romantically linked for no other reason than to throw the main character into an effeminate tizzy. It was planned from the outline stage, but it really had no reason for being: neither of these characters seemed like they’d ever get involved, and neither had any rationale (up to and including “love”) for getting together. It was just a giant monkey wrench thrown in front of the main character’s kneecaps.

When I revised it, knowing full well that this problem marred an otherwise decent story, I realized what I had to do: make these characters despicable. Okay, that might sound a little extreme; I merely rewrote the woman as a power-addicted she-beast* and rewrote the man as a serial womanizer with some deadly plans in store for her. Yes, I admit it: I have issues with manipulation, but it’s not just limited to women. It just makes more story sense, in this example, for the woman to be the thinks-she’s-manipulating-when-really-she’s-being-manipulated character rather than the man. I do not hate women! Stay in school!

So there you go: an easy problem to fall into, but one with an equally easy solution. Just realize that every time you put a person into the script, they’re as real as anyone you might pass on a busy street. Their lives might mean nothing to you, but they all have their own shit going on, and knowing all that shit helps you create unique situations instead of clichés.

*Please do not misconstrue this as misogyny. Remember the part where each character is the hero of his or her own story? Her goals just happen to be unfortunate, petty, and power-obsessed, which leads to some wacky irony when she goes from the controller to the controlled. Man, I am not digging myself out of the misogyny hole, am I?

Posted by Stan on July 30, 2008 11:51 AM  | Permalink | Career-Based Rambling, How Not to Write a Screenplay | Digg It