I haven’t binge-watched a TV series in a long time, but this weekend I devoured the 9-episode second season of MINDHUNTER, a brilliant Netflix series on the development of the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI – a unit focused on the psychology of serial killers. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, the BSU started by interviewing incarcerated serial killers to understand what moved them. That led to a quantum leap in serial killer understanding and apprehension. The story is absolutely fascinating and the series is top-notch, with the notable participation of the amazing David Fincher. Some of the scenes on the interviews are incredible, including the riveting performances of Cameron Britton as Edmund Kemper, the ‘Co-Ed Killer’, and Damon Herriman as Charles Manson.

This last particular interview, on the 5^th episode of the season, made me think about the root of Evil, arguably the theme of the whole series. The argument apparently made by Manson’s character, that we are all prisoners of an oppressive system and that true freedom comes from releasing the chains we feed in our minds, seems a common thread in the speeches of violent criminals, be it Adolf Hitler’s pseudo-Nietzchian arguments or the Unabomber letters portrayed in another interesting TV series: MANHUNT: UNABOMBER, with Sam Worthington and Paul Bethany. I’ve talked about this illusion of freedom here. As I said, rebellion is just another immature bind – rebels are another manifestation of our reaction to the Names of the Fathers, the prison of ancestry, the idea of a ‘civilized society’. So much so that society itself already plans for it, expects it, molds it and controls it. We can see it in the way drugs are manipulated, in the opioid epidemic, in the institutionalization of rebellion in Easter Parties and teenage alcoholism, in the systems of punishment in schools and other organizations, etc.

Actually, if we think that we could simply do without the Superego parts of our mind, those parts that regulate social behavior, I would argue instead that that would lead us to a kind of jungle scenario, a non-state country, a Somalia, a type of zombie post-apocalyptic world we can find in the likes of THE WALKING DEAD. The Superego makes us able to live in community. More so in a super-tribe environment, as we live in groups of people that actually don’t know each other at all. If you go to a large city as New York or London, and you walk through 5^th Avenue or Oxford Street, you will probably walk by thousands of people that, by and large, are complete unknowns to you but don’t pose a particular danger. By and large, you are much safer in those environments than in the African savannah where Humanity started its journey and where a lot fewer individuals of different species actually cross your path. That is the beauty of Humanity’s social behavior. Our ability to live with each other which allowed us to climb the ladder of Evolution and overcome Neanderthals. You can argue, of course, that we have an excess of Superego in our lives, that it inspires a judgmental and oppressive atmosphere where the liberty needed for a meaningful and happy life becomes difficult. I would agree with that. Tolerance, compassion, and balance are underrated qualities. But still, our Superego is a vital part of our standards of living and of a free society.

With a functioning Superego come somewhat balanced feelings and emotions of Guilt and Shame. We feel Guilt and Shame as we perceive a given behavior to be Wrong. To be contrary to a Good Life. In particular, a Good social life. Those feelings (along with Disgust and Repulsion, for instance) are some of the alarm bells that tell us that we are Wrong, or that somebody else is Wrong. What we seem to systematically find in psychopaths and sociopaths and, in fact, in serial killers, is a dysfunction in these feelings. They seem to normalize abhorrent behavior or, at least, they seem to be attracted to abhorrent behavior – to be ignorant or oblivious to a sense of Wrong or to be attracted to this Wrong. They don’t feel Guilt and Shame and Disgust and Repulsion the same way we do.

What is curious though, I believe, and scary is that we are not safe from those kinds of imbalances. We can, and sometimes we do, tolerate, normalize and assimilate abhorrent behavior. That’s why we send soldiers to war, to kill the enemy, and we don’t call it murder – in spite of the similar degree of violence of their actions. No wonder many can’t take it lightly.

I also read last week, an article on the American Border Guards of the detention centers for kids. The article spoke of a guard who was a good father to his toddler and who was disturbed by his children’s cries, but who at work would ignore the desperate cries of the infants in his care. The conclusion seemed obvious: if he cared, and feeling incapable of improving the situation, he would become unable to do his job. Being able to stop caring, being able to ignore the cries of the immigrant children, became a working ability that made him competent in his job. An ability that enabled him, ironically enough, to keep a job to feed his children. He forced himself, as I guess many others would, to compartmentalize his Guilt and his Shame to make his own behavior normal and tolerable.

Actually, we all have done something of the kind with the likes of Trump himself. He is now able to insult the disabled, attack the press, offend foreign dignitaries, praise dictators and murderers, purge immigrants, ignore the legislators and the judiciary, lie and deceive with such impunity and a sense of normalcy that it seems that it is our feelings of Shame, Disgust and Repulsion that are out of place.  The bar of what’s normal is systematically, constantly and relentlessly lowered more and more.

We should be careful, though. This is not an original phenomenon. It has happened before. This is the phenomenon that Hannah Arendt called The Banality of Evil, and it is one of the main pillars of totalitarianism.  It happened in Nazi Germany and in Soviet Russia and in Maoist China. For the people to be able to accept and integrate extreme violence and Evil ideas as the ones leading to the Holocaust, the bar of normalcy was systematically and relentlessly lowered in those societies over a period of time. It became normal for the inferior to be outcasted, and for the communists to be persecuted, and then for the disabled to disappear, and then for the Jews to be blamed and downgraded, and then for the deportations to occur. And it all seemed more or less normal as it was happening.

For a long time I didn’t really believe in Good and Evil. For me there were Good deeds and Evil deeds, but there wasn’t something completely Evil, for instance, or completely Good. I changed my mind about this sometime ago. Even though I still believe that our Moral Compass is what makes an action Evil or Good, I now believe that this compass can actually be completely corrupt. What makes a difference is our ability to respect our Moral Compass, to Think and to Think Morally even through difficult times, or especially in these critical times. We cannot tolerate the intolerable. Or all is lost. Our compass will just stop working. And then the worst happens.

That’s all I have to say today. Until next time.

Today, I’m still dwelling on Character Development. One area that comes up from time to time is choosing and developing a POV – see here. Most people choose between the First Person and the Third Person POV, but there are others and with nuances between them. Some of Marguerite Duras’ texts, for instance, worked beautifully in Second Person POV – where the writing works as if the narrator is speaking to somebody else. And even in Third Person, the narrator can be omniscient, knowing everything that’s going on, or just follow closely the thinking, knowledge, and actions of the characters. For me, as I said here, the main reason to choose one POV or the other is most of the time what I want to show and what I want to conceal – and how it will work for the story. Blind Spots are a major tool for a writer and the better we can manage them the better we can create suspense, surprise, and excitement within the story. Having studied the field of organizational behavior and team dynamics, I came across a couple of interesting concepts that actually help me develop and manage Blind Spots in my writings. So let me speak a bit about them.

One model I learned a long time ago is a table made up by American psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham called the ‘Johari Window’ Model. The concept works like this (please see picture): there are four types of things in your life – 1) The Arena or Public Area – Things that you know about yourself and which others also know (like the color of your hair); 2) Hidden Area or Façade – Things that you know about yourself but which the others do not know (like the dream you had last night, or a secret of some kind); 3) The Unknown – Things you don’t know about yourself but which the others also don’t know (like the dreams you don’t remember); 4) Blind spots – Things the others know about you but which you don’t, you are unaware of (like the way you blink every time you talk about the girl next door).

Now, try to apply this to your character. The character is ‘you’ and the others are ‘the readers’. Imagine you are applying this to a First Person POV: 1) things that are in the Arena are easy to talk about and to think about and to act upon – the characters know about it, the audience knows about it, it’s easy; 2) things that are in the Hidden Area can be talked about, but maybe the character will also keep them from the audience for a while – but you have to have a good reason for that – an advice: foreshadow it, make it known there is a secret somewhere or give clues to the facts hidden, build the revelation up; 3) Things that are Unknown are unreachable when you’re in First Person POV, you just can’t talk about them or you will have to make up a device to do that – like a flashforward to a moment when the narrator finds out about those things and they become Public. If your story needs to show a lot of things that are in the unknown area, you might want to opt for a Third Person POV – that will allow you to control better the flow of information. For instance: in a theater of war you want to show to the reader, constantly, the strategy and the roll-out of the general’s plans – but you want to experience the war through a private’s eyes on the battlefield – you might want to use Third Person POV, or multiple First Person POV (the private on one chapter, the general on the other, for instance), or you might work with flashforwards and flashbacks and have the private years later in his retirement home explaining the general’s plans. But always keep in mind that what you want to show and what you don’t want to show is a major foundation of POV selection and development – and can greatly influence your style and the story itself.

But the real fun comes up when you think about 4) the Blind Spots. Blind Spots are things that others (readers) may know but you (the character) don’t. I love to work on these things because it’s a lot of fun to imply this or that without the characters actually realizing it. For instance, you know when you pick up that two characters are in love with each other but the characters themselves don’t know it yet? This may be easy to show in Third Person, but it’s a lot more fun to create in First Person. I did the same thing a couple of times with leadership, for example, in THE DARK SEA WAR CHRONICLES – the MC didn’t know he was becoming respected by his crew for all he was able to do and say, but we could slowly see it in the actions of his team. Also, the MC was constantly annoyed by another character, but we could see they were becoming good friends.

You can also use Blind Spots to frame the whole story. Remember Cameron’s TITANIC? The whole first 20 minutes were a presentation of the way the ship would crash and sink – so when we followed the story of Rose and Jack, we knew what would be happening even though they didn’t, which made us suffer for them as we saw them fall in love. Using Blind Spots in clever and sophisticated ways will make your characters and your stories deeper and more interesting to the reader.  It’s, of course, easier to do that in Third Person – by for example interweaving plotlines, as I explained here, so that you follow one character and then another which gives you more information of what is going on. In THE DARK SEA WAR CHRONICLES I actually do it by intertwining two different POV’s – I have Episodes narrated in First Person and Interludes narrated in Third Person – exactly to create Blind Spots and/or to show information the MC would never learn.

There several types of Blind Spots. Consultant Barry Oshry developed a view of organizations and systems where he described several kinds of Systems Blindness – and it’s fun to use them in the context of plotting and character development. A) Spacial Blindness – You are able to see what is happening in one space but blind to what happens in another space. B) Temporal Blindness – you can see what happens in the present, for instance, but you cannot grasp what happened in the past or the future. C) Relational Blindness – you are unable to understand the whole aspects of the relationship between two or more people. D) Process Blindness – you cannot see or understand the whole parts of one process, only a few – see for instance in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN the way the Rangers didn’t understand how/why they had been sent to find one man in the middle of the war; and the general staff seemed not to grasp what they were asking of the Rangers. If you can play with these types of blindness you can create a wide range of Blind Spots you can use at your pleasure.

Remember, Blind Spots are a very useful and entertaining tool. Learn how to create them and use them and your writing will improve exponentially. See you around the next campfire, fellow warriors.

 

I re-read recently my post on Antagonists and Protagonists (you can read here) as I replied to another comment about Conflict and Motivation. Even though I truly believe what I wrote then, that the main pillar of the Conflict in a story is the mere incompatibility of the goals of Antagonists and Protagonists, it’s true that psychoanalytic motivation gives a sense of profound meaning to a story. My life changed completely when a couple of decades ago I met the works of Freud and psychoanalytical thinking. It is still at the core of my thinking about life and death and it improved not just my life but the understanding of my characters. So even if the motivation of a Protagonist or an Antagonist can be as simple as the need to eat and/or survive, as in JAWS or ALIEN, it’s useful to understand some of the deeper core motivations of characters. So here are a few nuggets about Freud – a genius who is, in our day, in my view, critically undervalued.

Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian doctor, was a very clever man who studied hysteria in the barbaric 19^th century. At that time, people were convinced that only women suffered from hysteria and one of the main treatments for the condition was the removal of the uterus. Freud was not particularly keen on that kind of therapy so he studied another path: hypnosis. He was a pioneer in hypnotherapy and had phenomenal success. Through hypnosis he was able to uncover the origins of the traumas that led to neurosis and hysteria. As he brought these traumas to the conscious mind, he saw that the patients soothed their symptoms and felt more at ease. Unfortunately, though, this therapy had a side effect: the patients got dependant of the therapist. As soon as the hypnotic sessions were terminated, the symptoms seemed to come back. But Freud started to notice one other thing: he was hired to take patients to a sanatorium in the quiet mountains and between sessions of hypnosis he would engage in massages and conversations with the patients – as he did this he started to pick up that these conversations were as valuable as or even more valuable than the hypnosis itself. And thus was born the Talking Cure – Psychoanalysis.

Two of the main discoveries that made Freud famous were the so-called Two Topics. The First Topic said something like this: our mind has three basic parts – the Unconscious, the Conscious and the Pre-Conscious (Subconscious). Think of it as a computer. Conscious mind is the program you are using at the moment – I am using MS Word at the moment and writing a text – I am perfectly conscious that I am doing that. The Subconscious are the programs and applications that are minimized: I can quickly activate them by clicking on an icon and opening a browser, for instance. The Unconscious though, is much deeper within the software – it’s the Operating System – that mass amount of software that is running under the whole workings of the computer and which is much more difficult to access. Think of it like this: if I ask you to tell me what you had for dinner last night, you will probably remember by accessing your Subconscious mind. But if I ask you what you had for dinner a year ago, you will probably have more trouble remembering. It’s possible that I could use hypnosis to make you remember, it is there in your memory somewhere, but we would have to access your Unconscious mind – the part of your mind where more than 90% of your thinking occurs. Freud discovered that the Unconscious works with Symbolism and that our dreams are a gate to the Unconscious. And that’s also the source of our Fantasies. And our love for stories. Stories, in a way, are the perfect way for our Unconscious to learn – as they also work through symbolism. That’s why the deepest narratives are the ones that resonate with the chords of our Unconscious – not necessarily the most complex.

Now, Freud’s Second Topic is more controversial. Freud said that there are three parts of our mind that are constantly in conflict: the Id is our pure animal – focused on egotistic needs, feels and wants. It’s very basic: hunger – eat; thirst-drink; pee-release; anger-violence; etc. The Superego is the social, disciplined self: it obeys the rules, it inspires feelings of guilt and shame, and other social impositions. And finally the Ego: the diplomat, trying to balance the Id and the Superego and Reality – looking for comfort and to overcome the conflict. In Freud’s view, this main basic Conflict between the parts of our mind is the pillar of every conflict and every neurosis.

One important source of this inner conflict is the Oedipus Complex. This complex represents the conflict between our fundamental inner needs, Id needs, towards our parents – love, sex, hate, violence – and the Superego that idealizes and defines a «normal» relationship with our parents. Our Ego must be able to reconcile both these parts of our inner mind and Reality, which is never ideal, and that’s why most people’s relationships with their parents is never perfect.

If you want to render profound motivations to your characters, then, the relationship with the parents is always at the core and your knowledge of psychoanalysis becomes a major resource. Here are a few examples:

In STAR WARS, Luke’s father, Darth Vader, represents Evil and Obi Wan is the Grandfather who rivals that Evil. Luke’s oedipal relationship with his father is the main source of this story’s conflict – as well as Vader’s oedipal relationship with Obi Wan.

In GODFATHER, the main inner conflict of the story is Michael Corleone’s desire to leave a life of crime while still being unable to separate himself from his father’s figure.

 

In CASABLANCA, Rick’s inner conflict is between his love for Isla and his love for the principled and mature course of action represented by Victor Lazlo’s father-figure.

I will not analyze each of these cases one by one, as it would take a whole post and require much explanation. I just wanted to alert you, as fellow writers, that if you want or need to engage in the deeper meanings of a story, Freud’s theories and thinking seem to me a very good place to start. See you next time, fellow knights.

Once upon a time, television was the realm of poor acting and disenchanted directing and producing. It is said that long ago there was a Golden Age of television when wonderful shows as I LOVE LUCY, BONANZA or THE TWILIGHT ZONE actually changed the landscape, but that time had passed without much trace. All we had, then, was a bare scenery of superficiality and empty imagination. In those days we used to look at movies as the place for real dramatization and the home of talent. Very few actors with more than an ounce of self-respect and any ambition whatsoever would be caught playing for the small box and directors would get a better reputation creating video clips or commercials than working on television episodes. But then, something happened. Some would say that it was the advent of cable TV with its millionaire pay-offs or the prophecies of multiple channels and platforms in digital. However, another event comes to mind: suddenly, Writers became important. The figures of the Showrunners, Writers most of them, became warlords and noblemen. And then, as if by magic, the chains of mediocrity were destroyed and another Golden Age of television brought us a myriad of incredible and immensely talented shows. Legendary series as THE SOPRANOS or WEST WING surged from the shadows. And binge-watching was born with the likes of 24. Brilliant organizations as HBO and Netflix made history. Inevitably, as more and more shows target narrower and narrower niches, the Golden Age will slowly fade away. But let us enjoy its remnants while we can. As is my tradition, let me speak of a few shows I love, arranged in no particular order. I hope you like them as much as I do.

 

• GAME OF THRONES – I already talked about this incredible phenomenon here. I was already in love with this amazing story and characters well before it became a TV series. George R.R. Martin’s genius is apparent to anyone who passes their eyes through his texts. He dwarfs the likes of Tolkien or Rowling, in my view. And the series, worldbuilding in a massive unbelievable fashion, propelled him to stardom. It is a pity, of course, that Martin’s masterpiece wasn’t finished in the five years it took the series to catch up to the book’s storyline – I believe that as the screenwriters slowly replaced Martin himself, the quality of the plot diluted a bit. Maybe a lot. We still had brilliant writing, brilliant production design, and acting and directing until the end, but without the structure of Martin’s books, the producers were left to make poor plotting decisions that almost killed the series in the end. Still, it will be forever a phenomenon of the medium and the first of several HBO hits on this list.

 

• SHERLOCK – Steven Moffat, arguably one of the greatest TV writers of all time, signed what is perhaps the best adaptation of the novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever produced. The series design and Benedict Cumberbatch’s rendition of the sociopathic but genial detective overwhelm us with intelligence, balanced with the superb Watson of Martin Freeman and overshadowing forever the pathetic attempts of other movies and TV series to portrait these classical iconic heroes. Rarely have I seen genius so well represented and it is very difficult to keep your jaw from falling as you pursue the mysteries and conspiracies that come out of this series. And even if you feel obligated to focus on the brilliance of Cumberbatch and Freeman’s performances, and on the wonderful writing, we cannot miss the ever-talented directing that comes with it. We feel constantly one or two or ten steps behind Sherlock Holmes – as we should. And even the translation of the Victorian detectives to the modern age, with the clever adding of modern technology, does not break the link to Doyle’s novels. The different seasons, in the British tradition, are composed only by three or four movie-length episodes – but even if we spend only a few hours with this series, we will cherish every minute. Do not miss it.

 

• MR.ROBOT – The American response to the brilliance of SHERLOCK, Sam Esmail’s MR.ROBOT breaks some kind of mold. Extremely clever and profound, this series about a talented hacker involved in a powerful conspiracy to end the reign of oppressive massive corporations will blow your mind. The unbelievable Rami Malek gives life to this troubled and isolated hacker vigilante who always has a surprise up his sleeve. At each turn of the screw, we are left with more questions than answers but there is something extremely perturbing and relatable about the whole absurd story of Elliot Alderson, along with the surprising performance of Christian Slater. Still, what makes this show really powerful is the inspiring, creative and talented directing by Esmail. I really believe his name will become a household name in the near future, especially if he crosses the line into the realm of movies. He has a touch of Kubrick in him and his shots and solutions always feel a bit off and yet incredibly adequate.

 

• BAND OF BROTHERS – Here’s another show for the history books. Literally. It tells the true story of WWII’s 101^st Airborn Division’s Easy Company as this group of ordinary men become extraordinary by doing their job in the intense theatre of the European War, from the invasion of Normandy through to Germany itself. Sponsored by the capable and iconic hands of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, these 10 movie-length episodes use filming solutions we recognize in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. The series is amazingly powerful, featuring also testimonies from the survivors of Easy Company themselves. With very few women through the whole thing, it is, however, one of the best war stories ever produced. It’s incredibly solid in every way. The directing, the music, the acting, the design, the producing, the cinematography: everything is top-notch in this 2001 HBO series.

 

• TRUE DETECTIVE – It is widely noted that this is a series that has been decreasing in quality since the outset. Each season is an isolated detective story and I do think that the third season, with Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff, is the lesser of the three so far. I liked the second season with Colin Farrel, Rachel McAdams and Vince Vaughn – the ending much better than the beginning, I must say. However, the season that made this series a legend was the first one: 2014’s season with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson enacting a story by Nic Pizzolatto with the solemn and inspired directing of Cory Jojy Fukunaga. This first season was tense, heavy, challenging and finally extremely cathartic. An example of the exciting and fulfilling range of incredible TV shows of the current Golden Age.

There are a lot more shows that deserve mention, of course. It has been a privilege to witness this era of creativity in television, as we suffer the relatively bland products of the Hollywood movie business. As I said, let’s enjoy it while it lasts. There are already signs that the time of greats is passing. And this is all I have to say for tonight. See you around the next campfire, fellow travelers.

Someone asks: any tips on building up antagonists? I’ve heard of many things. Some people go with that mainstream thing: «no-one gets up in the morning thinking they will do something evil or thinking they are bad guys.» «They have always good reasons to be bad.» You know the type? «Maybe you should even go deep into their background and find out how they have been traumatized by their mother or something.» Don’t get me wrong: these are not particularly bad tips. They’re just a little bit, well… misguided.

Let’s just check a few bad guys, shall we? For instance, think of Spielberg’s JAWS. The antagonist is… a shark. A killing machine. It doesn’t really have a profound reason to be like it is. It just wants food. That’s it. And how about Mr.Smith in THE MATRIX? He’s a machine. He just wants to finish his mission and be free of ‘the smell’ of humans. No immediate Freudian conflict there, is there? No ‘I’m-a-good-guy’ syndrome. Very different from, for instance, Cersei in GAME OF THRONES. Her main motivation is to protect her family and especially her children – and she learned to be tough in order to do that. Or think of Magneto in X-MEN: he is a racist but he seems to have been cornered into that way of thinking – he just wants to survive, to be respected, to be free. Think of Hyman Roth, played by the smooth and wonderful Lee Strasberg in GODFATHER II – he is so subtle and normal, just doing business and looking like a gentle old man. All these antagonists are very different in-depth, subtlety, sophistication, cruelty, and strength – but they are all excellent antagonists. There is no one way to build up antagonists. In fact, the whole Craft of writing is mainly focused on building conflicts between antagonists and protagonists. There is also not one particular way to build up protagonists. If they serve the story, they can be perfect. And antagonists can simply be bad. There are evil people, and also sociopathic and psychopathic people who don’t know the difference between Right and Wrong, Good and Bad. And they don’t need particularly deep motivations to do very cruel things – as we can see throughout History. There are people who are motivated by basic Power, or the freedom to do Harm. There aren’t always ‘good reasons to be bad’. Yet, the story itself needs deeper motivations.

Some narratives don’t develop on the pillars of conflict. Virginia Woolf’s KEW GARDENS, for instance, which I find an excellent short-story, does not live on conflict. But the vast majority of stories are based on a conflict between antagonists and protagonists. It could be a story of Man against Nature, as in JAWS, or Man against God, or Man against Himself, but conflict based stories are the most straight forward, the easiest and the most common kind.  Even in love stories. At the center of love stories, there is always an obstacle to love. The better the obstacle the better the love story. And so, in Reiner’s WHEN HARRY MET SALLY we have a conflict between Love and Friendship. In Ephron’s SLEEPLESS IN SEATLE you have Distance as an obstacle to Love. In Austen’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, the main obstacles are… well… Pride and Prejudice.  You have a good obstacle to Love, you have a story.

So, in summary, a good antagonist must have one principal, important characteristic: His/her main goal is incompatible with the protagonist’s goal. That’s it. Now if you want a blunt instrument or a precise delicate scalpel is up to you and what you want to do with your story. If you want an evil chess master or a basic volcano, it’s up to you and the story. So it all comes down to the main goal of the protagonist. What does he/she want? And this goal depends on one thing… well… actually two: your Theme and your Message. What is your story about and what do you want your readers to retain in the end? What do you want your protagonist to learn or not to learn in the end? That you must not be too proud or too prejudiced to see Love just in front of you? Or that you can be so blind that you will lose your family as you try to protect it? Or do you want a protagonist so driven and stubborn, like Marv in Miller’s SIN CITY, that he will never learn until he’s dead?

Whatever you do, you must always ‘Save the Cat’ for a protagonist. I spoke about it here. The protagonist must be likable in some way, otherwise, we will not identify with him/her, and if we fail to identify with him/her, we will be in trouble to achieve the Catharsis in the end. Or you can invert the roles. You could argue that in MACBETH, for instance, we do not care for the protagonists, we care for the antagonists. But we must care for someone. For someone we identify with. We suffer with. Because that is the next step in the phenomenon of storytelling, the phenomenon that Aristotle once described: we suffer with our characters. And at that moment is the thing that we must really take care: the Human Drama. Even though the story lives on diversity, on the uniqueness we impose on it, what really draws people in is the identification with the deeper problem of the character. The deep common problem of the protagonist and/or antagonist.

Think of a movie like JAWS: a sheriff who is scared of water and who came to a small coastal community to escape from the confusion of urban civilization is confronted with the threat of a killer shark. The Theme is Man against Nature – or Civilization against Nature. The Message is: only when you respect Nature can you deal with it (or something of the sort) – Civilization disrespects Nature at its own peril. Now, this is a deep common problem that affects all of us and which most of us can relate with. How you then develop it around the conflict between a sheriff and a shark and make it a unique story is at the core of your talent as a writer.

And that’s all I have to say for now. See you around the next campfire, fellow knights.

Today came out an article of mine on Writing in English in the Portuguese Portal of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I talk about my difficult and somewhat controversial decision to write in a language which is not my native Portuguese and how it worked. You can read it here:

Why Write in English: The Journey From My First Language to the Second 

Hope you like it!

Many years ago I started learning about Learning. I was fresh out of college and I started getting involved in Executive Training. I ended up becoming a trainer and educating all kinds of publics in behavioral matters – from top executives in imposing multinationals to the unemployed poor or the young outcasts. It was an incredible journey and it made me think about a lot of things – including ‘what is our role as educators’? Now – teaching short courses on some matters may seem an unimportant role in the Education business, but it has a few characteristics that give us trainers some perspective. First of all, we mostly do not give grades to our students: we are graded ourselves – students grade us. Secondly, we are hired for our effectiveness and reputation: if we aren’t good at what we do, we don’t make a living – so grades matter. Thirdly, and in my particular case, I worked with a whole range of students with many different traits – showing me what works in general and how to adapt this or that. Fourthly, we actually have training in education and pedagogy – something you would be surprised how many teachers and educators actually lack – including most professors in this or that. And finally, we have a lot of freedom about what we teach – making us both more accountable and more creative in the way we work. I have a degree in Business Administration and I ended up studying a lot of Psychology and Law besides that subject – but pedagogy was something I really had to learn. It also informed me and built me up a lot for when I ended up teaching Creative Writing and Screenwriting. And there are a few things I want to share with you about all this.

First, Education is not about Information. In my parents’ time, the stuff they taught in school would make you giggle in embarrassment nowadays. My parents had to memorize all the railroads in Portugal, and all the rivers and waterways. You had to know the capitals of all Portuguese provinces and districts as well as the ones for major countries in the world. So in the past, much of the matters taught in school were about two things: discipline to memorize, and Information. Today, that would be absurd. We have computers and networks to memorize Information and there isn’t a single thing of the data I mentioned above that would take more than a few seconds’ search on a Smartphone by a 10-year-old.

Education is also not about Knowledge in the stricter sense of the word. Knowledge in a broad sense means a lot of things and it can comprehend many of the concepts I’ll be talking about, but Knowledge in the stricter sense is just a more sophisticated and comparative way to process Information. A lot of the Knowledge we have in the world is also accessible by Smartphone if you search for opinions of many academics on any particular search or for articles on this or that subject. So, in this sense, Education is not about Knowledge as well – Knowledge falls short.

And Education is not about Skill. It’s not about how to do this or that. For a while, behavioral training was involved in this shroud of theory about Skills. The goal of training, some said, is to develop Skills in trainees. However, anyone who’s been there and knows a couple of things about this will know that it is impossible to develop the Skill of a Leader in 16 hours, or get someone to write better in 8 hours. And also, you just spend a few minutes in any classroom around the world and you’ll gather that developing Skills is not in the mind of most teachers – they are looking for something else. Skills are not enough.

Education is also not about what to think about something. Many people would like you to think in a certain way about a whole lot of things. I can see it in Creative Writing, for example: people are taught to write in a certain way, discouraged to use certain words or certain techniques, stick to a certain POV or dismember this or that character, etc. This is called Indoctrination and it is similar to Religious training – it limits your Skill and Creativity.

What I read once, somewhere, and impressed me ever since is the following: Education is about Options. Education is about improving our students’ resources and give them more options to deal with a range of problems. Education is about Critical Thinking and about Freedom. In other words: it’s about developing someone’s ability to analyze a problem and devise the best course of action from the wider possible range of solutions for that problem – including brand new solutions. This is absolutely essential for Creative Writers: as every single publisher and every single reader out there is always looking for a unique text. Success in writing depends on both your effectiveness and your uniqueness. And this can only be achieved through Critical Thinking and Creativity (thus, Freedom).

Now, this text was prompted by two things I read that illustrated the two sides of this spectrum. On one side was an article from an academic calling himself elitist and debunking writings from non-academics, saying non-academics are lazy and don’t study all kinds of hypotheses and thinking that was done for thousands of years. Academics, he seemed to say, have more Knowledge than others and so they know better. I don’t completely disagree with this assessment, to be honest: academics study a lot and know a lot and most of the time they are the spearheads of our Knowledge. Universities all over the world significantly and systematically and constantly improve our lives. But I have a few issues about that ‘elitist’ claim about academics. I know a few academics and believe me: many times they are simply wrong. This happens because they are not perfect and because our Knowledge is not perfect, but also because Academia is many times more concerned with politics and money than with Knowledge and Education. Academics themselves don’t agree with each other and sometimes they don’t commit to opinions themselves. On the other hand, as Kurt Lewin once said: «There’s nothing more Practical than a good Theory.» Yet, many theories out there are simply not practical: they can be right in a lab, but they don’t work in real life. When we are stuck with Academia we are often limiting our options and that is a pity.

On the other side of the spectrum was a comment made to me by a Trump-supporter. He accused me of basing my opinion on fake news coverage and movie-star rants. That is not true: I read books on History, books on Politics, and books on Economics, and a lot in between. That gave me a little bit of Knowledge and helped me analyze the problems and think about the options on the table. I base my opinions on my Education and my Knowledge and the opinions of many – not on Indoctrination, Emotional Attachment or Religious Thinking. I say Trump is nepotistic not because someone said so but because he appointed his daughter and son-in-law to the White House. I say he is a racist not because someone told me but because of what I heard him say after Charlottesville. I say he is a sexual abuser because of what I heard him say about women, because his lawyer is in jail for helping him with his abuse and because I believe the accounts of dozens of women about his abuse. I say he is autocratic as I see him try to circumvent the Judicial and the Legislative branches. I equate him with Nazis because of what I see him do and say about immigrants. I say he is corrupt because of scandal after scandal, of resignation after resignation of corrupt officials from his Executive. I say he conspired with the Russians as I hear Intelligence officials testify in Congress and as I see him bow down to Putin in Copenhagen and in every international policy of the United States for the last two years. And on and on…

The best antidote to tyranny and stupidity is Education. We need to develop our Critical Thinking and our Free Thinking to improve our lives, our society, our world, and our culture. And that’s the role of Education and educators: to improve our options. To improve other people’s options. To get us all to make better decisions. We don’t need to be dried up academics, but it is incredibly dangerous for all if we allow ourselves to be dragged down by prejudice and ignorance. Knowledge, in the broader sense – in the sense that includes Skill and Information and Critical Thinking and Wisdom – improves our options and our decisions. So let us commit to it, I challenge you. Our Freedom depends on it.

I used to be a very annoying kid. I had a fascination for movies since a young age and I would spend hours chasing people down to be able to describe to them thoroughly the latest movie I’d watched. Every single scene. And until my 20’s I was capable of remembering every single movie I had seen. After that, the movies became too many or my memory too evasive and I started making mistakes about this or that picture, this or that actor, this or that name. I still remember very well the first PG-13 movie I saw in a theatre. It was 1977’s Mike Newell’s mediocre THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. My parents took me one evening, while my younger brother and sister remained at home. I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. This was at Cine Santa Maria, in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. I don’t know if it still exists. And I remember the first PG-13 movie I went with my brother: it was 1980’s THE SEA WOLVES, with Gregory Peck, Roger Moore, and David Niven, and we saw it at Cine Casino, in the same city, where we lived. And I remember the first James Bond movie I ever saw: it was THUNDERBALL and I saw it with my father and brother in Lisbon in ’82 or ’83.  And the first time I saw THE SOUND OF MUSIC with my mother and siblings at a theater in Lisbon. And 2001 – A SPACE ODYSSEY in Lisbon which I saw with my mother when I was 13. I hated it then. Love it now. See how annoying I can become? Movies blow me away. I love them. I can’t stop talking about them.

For a long long time, I never dared to think I could be involved in making them. I’m a Portuguese writer living in a country with a poor tradition in movies – and as I grew up and through most of my adulthood, the movies made in Portugal were absolutely not movies I’d want to see. Nobody made commercial movies in this country for 50 years. Now there are a few attempts at it, but poor and far between. No-one makes movies in Portugal without a subsidy from the Government. And when it comes, the producers get immediately most of the money they will ever get from it. So they don’t have any incentive to please the public – they just have to please the 5-person jury that decides who is getting the money. It’s a horrible corrupt system and it supports horrid uninspiring amateurish movies they make every year. It also works by promoting and feeding a very small group of so-called professionals. We, the Portuguese, ended up being successful in breeding good film technicians who work every year and are well trained, but we are very poor at developing talent who could direct, write, produce and create good movies.  We have literary writers on par with the best in the world. We have a few who have earned or deserved the Nobel Prize.  Think of people as Saramago or Fernando Pessoa. For such a small country, it’s really amazing. But when it comes to scriptwriting, we are awful. Scriptwriting, I usually say, is the most technical of all Fiction writing. You really need to know what you’re doing. And in this country, for the most part, people don’t.

When I started writing movies I didn’t know that much about it. I wrote a few scripts over the years, in my 20’s. I wrote some short-movies and some long features. It can be very frustrating to write for cinema because you can write and write and write but unless you convince someone to produce the movie, it will never leave your desk drawer. Writers are the only professionals in filmmaking who do all the work before there is even a glimpse of some money coming in. You can write many scripts, for years, without earning a cent! Just look at Guillermo del Toro, the Award-winning writer-director: the other day he unveiled 17 scripts he completed without ever having the chance to make them. 17 scripts! This is the commitment a screenwriter must have to the Craft.

I never wrote 17 scripts. At least not long features, anyway. I wrote nine or ten. Some of them when I had no idea what I was doing. But I did know a few things people around me didn’t. I remember I was invited by a movie director to watch the first cut of his million-dollar movie. I watched it and when he asked me what I thought, I said: «Well, you have an 80-minute movie with a 20-minute ‘set-up’…» To which he replied: «What’s a ‘set-up’?» That’s how bad it was… Still, I did know what a ‘set-up’ was. And yet, my scripts weren’t being produced and I still was an outsider to the Portuguese would-be-film-industry (and I guess I still am).

Then one day, a friend of mine, a young movie director called Nuno Madeira Rodrigues invited me to co-write a thriller in English with him. We worked on the script for a year. I always thought it was a good exercise, but I had learned over the years it most likely never be made. He, however, always believed we could produce it and got the money for it. And so we produced the movie. We ran castings in L.A., and in Lisbon, and in New York – American, British and Portuguese actors. We filmed in a small town in Portugal called Oliveira de Azeméis and in Lisbon, and in Oporto, and in Brooklyn, N.Y. And it was a nightmare. We were way over our heads. Every single day there was an impossible challenge we had to overcome. It was a mess, not the least because people in Portugal were not used to do the things we were doing. But we got it done. I don’t know how, but we did. We called it REGRET. And we had it distributed in the US. And in Canada. And Puerto Rico and other territories. You can still watch it at Amazon, here. Of course, we never made a cent from it, but it was an incredible experience: both frustrating and rewarding – I can still find things I really like and things I really hate in the movie, not unlike the experience of producing it.

Since then I’ve written four more short-scripts and two TV-pilots that were produced. None was particularly successful, but it doesn’t matter. I loved doing them. And so here are a few random lessons I learned from these experiences:

1. Stop Following Your Dreams – Dreams are both too little and too much. Too little because Reality is so much richer and full of surprises than Dreams. And making things come true is much more than to ever dream them. Too much because you will also realize when you get there that the experience will often disappoint you. Nothing is as good as we idealize it. But if you feel it’s worth the effort, go for it. Don’t let it die in your dreams. Being involved in filmmaking was my long undervalued dream. And I don’t regret for a minute making it come true – even if it was harder than I ever thought possible.
2. Don’t Underestimate Knowledge – We are always climbing on the shoulders of giants. Learning the hard way is not studying and climbing the ladder step by step. Learning the hard way is falling down the stairs and crashing your head against the wall.
3. Keep It Structured, Stupid – When they say ‘structure, structure, structure’… believe them. A movie is a monstrous relentless machine. If you don’t structure it scrupulously in the script, you’ll pay for it later. Producers don’t buy badly structured scripts for good reason – structures increase control, save money and prevent risks.
4. Your First Act is Your First Fact – Always make sure your First Act is top-notch. Most people in the industry will never bother to read or watch more than the first pages/minutes if they’re not impressed.
5. The Only Easy Day is Yesterday – Remember the SEAL’s motto? It applies to Writing as well. Nothing will ever be easy and you might as well get used to it. Every time you write the best script you’ve ever written it’s still not good enough. Until it is… So don’t give up. Roll with the punches. Keep going.
6. Listen to Producers – This seems counter-intuitive, right? Producers have a knack for ruining scripts. I believe that’s true. (I bet it was the producers who made the wrong decisions in GAME OF THRONES, for instance.) But they also will tell you what they want and many times they are… right. Here are some things I’ve learned from them: a) always have a hot girl in the movie; b) A Xmas story with dogs can be as interesting and as marketable as an action thriller with monsters; c) always have one great ‘watercooler moment’ (a moment people will be commenting over the watercooler on Monday.) d) always go with a High-Concept (see here). Etc, etc.
7. A Good Actor Saying Your Text Is The Greatest Thing You’ll Ever Know – An actor will reveal your text. If it’s a bad text, if it has errors or mistakes, if it doesn’t work – you’ll find out immediately. Seeing a bad actor destroying your scene is not pleasant. Your text is good, but the actor sucks – and most people will say it’s the text, for sure. But when it works… when you have a good actor picking it up and running with it – it’s… a-w-e-s-o-m-e. It will bring tears to your eyes. Even if he/she changes the text to make it livelier and fuller and richer – it’s awesome! You know that feeling you feel when you finish writing your novel, or your script? That feeling of fulfillment? You feel it every single scene, every day, every rehearsal. It’s just awesome!

And these are simply a few of the lessons I got from my experiences in filmmaking. I know there are more and I hope there will be a lot more in the future. See you around the next campfire, fellow warriors.

This is another post prompted by somebody’s question on Facebook. People still get extremely insecure about the darnest things. I keep saying: experiment, experiment, experiment. Try it. See if it works. It takes a lot of time? Of course it does! But if you want to succeed you need to invest your time and creativity. Look at the Italians. In the 1960’s they had a hunger for westerns – people just loved them, maybe because they had good memories of the Americans who’d come for the war of 1940, who knows? But would they wait for the American Film Industry to produce westerns in quantity and quality? No, they didn’t. They did the unthinkable: they made them themselves. Using sometimes American actors brought to the studios of CineCitá, the villages in the Italian countryside and desert of Almeria, they produced dozens of movies of what we now call the Spaghetti Western. Some very good westerns came from that absurd and insane phase of Italian filmmaking, including one of the very best western movies of all time: Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.  This is one of my favorite movies – in particular, the first 25 minutes of the film are some of my favorite moments in the whole History of Filmmaking. So what was the question somebody asked on Facebook? Of course, it was: How to introduce your characters? ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST does it masterfully. The first four scenes are the introductions of the four main characters and here is how Leone made them memorable – I’m describing them from memory and actually summarizing, so please forgive me if I forget any detail or I’m not completely faithful to the movie.

The movie starts at a Train Station, in the middle of the desert. The wind blows outside and we hear the screech of the water pump’s windmill and the telegraph clicking like a drug-crazed woodpecker. A thin man in a train company’s uniform is working at the desk. The dirty wooden door opens and a hard looking pistolero comes in. The thin man doesn’t like his looks – the thin man is scared. He offers the stranger a ticket for the train. The pistolero carelessly pushes the thin man into a closet and closes the door. He’s not interested in a ticket. Outside, two other men are getting comfortable on opposite sides of the platform. The first man sits on the porch and pushes his hat over his eyes, trying to rest. The second man, by the water trough, is playing with the water. The third man found the shade below the water tower and is surprised by a drop of water falling on his head – he decides to let it drop, and drop, and drop on his hat. The first man hears a fly humming around – he gets troubled by it and finally decides to take action, as he sees the fly landing on the wall he manages to trap in inside the barrel of his gun. He now finds solace in the humming of the trapped fly. The second man is cracking his knuckles, in a creepy way. The third man is still feeling the drops falling on the hat in on his head. Suddenly, the train whistles. It’s arriving. The men get ready. The first pistolero lets the fly go and gets up. The second gets up as well. The third takes his hat to his mouth and drinks the water on top of it. The train arrives. The men wait. But nobody gets out. Somebody throws the mail onto the platform. The train whistles again and starts moving. The pistoleros look at each other and decide whoever they were waiting for has not come in the end, so they start moving towards their horses and… that’s when we hear the harmonica. It’s a loud out-of-tune disturbing sound. The men stop and turn around. The train keeps going and finally gets out of the way. On the other side of the track there’s the figure of Harmonica (played by Charles Bronson). He has his luggage hanging from his right hand and he’s playing the harmonica with his left hand. When he lowers the harmonica he looks intently at the pistoleros. «And Frank?» he asks. The men smile at each other. The first man replies: «Frank sent us.» Harmonica looks behind them. «Did you bring a horse for me?» The men look at the horse and back at him. «It looks like we’re shy one horse,» says the first man. Harmonica shakes his head – «You brought two too many.» We all know what’s going to happen next. It happens in a flash – the pistoleros draw their guns and Harmonica drops his luggage, he has a gun in his right hand, he shoots the three men but the last one manages to shoot back – Harmonica falls. The desert wind goes through the Train Station. Harmonica opens his eyes. He is still alive. And that’s the protagonist’s introduction. You can see it here.

See the technique Leone uses in this scene? He builds the tension through the scenery, the details, by building up supporting characters and small peculiar situations. Those three pistoleros only show up in this scene, but they are still some of the best characters in the whole movie. Leone makes them human and special for us. He takes his time and lets us breathe in the whole situation. As Robert McKee would say, each scene has three acts. The first act of this scene is the introduction of the pistoleros. Then, the second act is the men waiting for the train and deciding to leave. The third act starts with the sound of the harmonica. The introduction of the protagonist happens only at the opening of the third act – and so his introduction is powerful because of the great impact his appearance has on the scene. Leone carefully paints a whole situation and then, late in the scene, he introduces the MC. And that’s brilliant.

Cut to… Next scene. An 8-year-old boy is hunting with his father a few birds for lunch. It is a bare farm in the middle of the desert. They are preparing a party. All three of the man’s children are helping – the young woman is cutting bread slices, the young boy brings the hunted birds and goes to clean himself inside the house. Suddenly, the ever-present cicadas stop their noise. The man and the young woman find it strange – but then the sound comes back. The man and the young woman exchange a few meaningful words. Where is the other young man? «Has Patrick left for the Station?» the man finally asks. The young woman smiles «He’s getting ready, dad.» «Dammit, Patrick!!» shouts the man. The older son comes out running, cleans his boots with a rag and climbs onto the two-horse rig. The man, meanwhile, goes to the well to get fresh water. The cicadas stop singing again. The man and the young woman find it strange again. They see a few birds flying to the sky. The young woman smiles. There’s a shot. The man looks around trying to figure out what is happening. And then he sees the young woman is hit. He calls «Maureen!!» He starts running towards his daughter, but then another shot – he’s hit – he keeps running – a shot, he falls. Then the older son, coming out on the rig, gets shot. The dying man still makes a desperate attempt to get to his revolver, but one last shot kills him.  Cut to: the POV of the 8-year-old running inside the house toward the open door. As he gets out and he is struck by the horrifying image of his whole family dead, the electric guitar music starts. We see the shocked little boy embracing a liquor bottle as he looks at the scene. We are moved by the sheer surprise and anguish in his face. And then, slowly, the killers start appearing from behind the bushes. One man, then two, then three and four. They wait for Frank to come out. Frank (played by the wonderful Henry Fonda) approaches the house. He gives the smoking rifle to one of his men. He looks at the little boy and smiles. The boy and Frank look at each other. Then, off-screen, one of the men asks: «And this one, Frank?» Frank loses his smile – he is annoyed. «Now that you’ve called me by name…» he says. He slowly takes out his revolver, he points at the kid… and he shoots. And that’s the antagonist’s introduction. You can see it here.

Here Leone uses the same technique as before: he paints a whole interesting scene with supporting characters and then, on the third act, he powerfully introduces the Main Character by the cheer impact he has on the situation. In the next scene, he will do a variation of that. He wants to introduce the love-interest, the girl, Jill McBain. He needs a powerful intro, but the scene does not have the same strength of content. Yet, Jill McBain has a symbolic part: she represents Progress coming to the West. So Leone uses that by slowly introducing Progress. Here’s how it plays out:

Act 1: Beautiful Jill McBain (played by Claudia Cardinale) comes out of the train in town. There’s a lot of things happening as all kinds of people with all kinds of American accents come out of the train. However, there is no-one waiting for Jill. She looks around but no-one is there.

Act 2: The Train Station platform is now deserted. The train is quiet on the tracks. Two black boys wait with her, guarding her luggage. She looks at the clock. She finds it strange that no-one appeared for her. She looks at her watch. The lovely voice of a woman with strings starts playing.

Act 3: Finally, Jill decides. She is going to find transportation herself. As the beautiful music goes on, we see her get inside the station followed by the two black boys with her luggage. Through the open window, we see her talk to the station master, probably asking where she can find transportation. She finally leaves the station through the front door and, in a brilliant shot, the camera pans up and the music expands to a climax until, over the roof of the Station, we finally see the whole town bustling with activity. And so, again, Progress is introduced to us in the third act. Jill will get a ride off town and cross with the train works going West. You can see it here.

Still another variation comes on the fourth scene. On her way to the farm, Jill stops at a Bar in the middle of nowhere. The first act is her arrival and her curious conversation with the curious bartender. The whole scenery is picturesque and peculiar, with horses and people drinking and eating in the same space. She asks for a bath and the bartender responds: «We have a tub filled out back and you’re in luck: only three people used it this morning.» Suddenly, at the outset of the second act, here comes the new character: everything stops as we hear a gun battle outside. When it is finished, another main character comes into the bar at the sound of a banjo: the criminal Cheyenne (played by Jason Robards). In the second act, we feel the impact the character has on the whole situation – everyone is paralyzed as he comes in, armed, and asks for someone to help him relieve himself of his chains. In the process, we meet Harmonica again, who’s sitting at the back in the dark. The third act, however, as his gang comes in, the movie really establishes the importance of Cheyenne: he interacts with Harmonica and we understand that it’s their relationship that matters. Harmonica looks at the characteristic dusters of the gang and says to him: «A while back I saw three of these dusters. Inside the dusters, there were three men. Inside the men, there were three bullets.» And Cheyenne replies: «That’s a crazy story, Harmonica. Around these parts, only Cheyenne’s men have the guts to use these dusters. And Cheyenne’s men don’t get killed.» You can take a look at the scene here.

So Leone introduces these four characters by maximizing the impact they have of a certain situation, or by maximizing the symbolism, laying out the scene and building it up before the pay-off of the character’s appearance. You can see they usually don’t show up on the first act of the scene but only on the second or even the third act. Leone is a master of these types of introductions. I would highly recommend you look at how he does it if you’re struggling with introducing characters. And that’s the end of this long post. Hope you liked it. See you around the next campfire, amigos.

When I was younger I used to teach teen boys in underprivileged neighborhoods. I remember riding in a car with a couple of these youths who told me that their dream was to ‘one day kidnap Jennifer Lopez, rape her senseless and ransom her for a million dollars’ so they could buy fast cars. In hindsight, I guess I could find it funny that they would ask so little ransom for Jennifer Lopez, but at the time all I felt was disappointment: how could they aim so low and yet so high? How could they dream they could reach Jennifer Lopez and still feel that there was no other way to be happy in life but to commit a horrible crime and have a lot of money for a short amount of time? But I’ve learned that many people in this world do feel that the best things in life are out of their reach. And some that believe that if not by breaking the law, they will never get what they want. That is maybe why many of us enjoy crime stories, heist stories, and those old gangster movies with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart – it doesn’t matter if they died in the end, they had the money, the respect, the freedom, and the girl for a while.

The same for Coppola’s THE GODFATHER. The series first two movies are some of the best movies ever made. I’ve seen them again recently and they always blow my mind. Now, I’ve talked about Blake Snyder’s SAVE THE CAT book several times already – it’s one of the best books on writing I ever read. One of the first things Snyder writes about is of the ‘Save the Cat’ effect. I’ve already described it before, it goes somewhat like this: imagine a dirty junkie murderous cop on a stakeout at the beginning of the movie. That’s your protagonist. He’s staking out a Mob jewelry store he’ll rob further along. At this point, we have everything to think that this is a bad guy. He’s unlikable. But then, while he’s staking out the place, he sees an old lady trying to get her kitten down from a tree. She’s already close to tears. So, jeopardizing his plans, the cop gets out from the car and goes help the old lady getting the cat off the tree. Suddenly, we will like this guy. We will identify with him. We ‘saved the cat’, we saved the protagonist. Inside this vile man, there’s something of Good. He doesn’t only think of himself. If there’s nothing good in a character, Snyder tells us, we will be unable to identify with him/her.

That’s the first scene of THE GODFATHER in a nutshell: a man, an undertaker, is asking for Vito Corleone to help him get justice for his daughter. He looks at The Godfather with reverence and tells a sad tale of disrespect for his daughter who was abused in some manner. Don Corleone (Marlon Brando), in a fatherly way, concedes his help. There: the ‘cat’ is saved. Vito is a good guy (in fact, if I recall, the Italian Mafia itself did approve the script beforehand – saying it was respectful).  Later, the film will do the same to Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino): he’s a college graduate, a war veteran, who loves his family and is tender to his women. They are the good guys. They are the good gangsters. They go against the bad guys: the greedy rivals who want to start moving drugs into the neighborhood. They will have to fight against these attackers and survive. Some will not survive.

And so we rejoice when Michael chooses to save his father and murder in cold blood a police captain and a rival gangster at a restaurant. And we feel vindicated when he is able to outsmart and murder the leaders of the Five Families at the end of the first movie. We do not judge him. We’re glad he won. Even if Francis Ford Coppola is able to subtly reveal to us the corruption growing in the man, ‘asphyxiating the cat’ as he shows us Michael claiming to renounce Satan at the christening of his nephew while the murders he ordered are occurring, and Michael bluntly lying to his wife and sister as the movie closes.

Also, there are no innocent people being hurt in the movie (with one exception: Michael’s first wife). It almost seems that those cold-blooded gangsters would hurt no-one else but themselves. More: there’s no police. Almost as if the Law couldn’t touch them. The closest they got was when Michael Corleone is brought in front of the Congress in the second movie. And, as Kay (Diane Keaton) would say: ‘I suppose I always knew you were too smart to let any of them beat you’. We take home some sense of vindication from this feeling: Michael Corleone always wins. But at what price? The second movie goes even further: as he defends his Cosa Nostra, his family, he loses his family. His actions lead him to lose his wife, his unborn son, his friends, the brother he ultimately kills. He actively destroys what he tries to protect – ending up protecting only one thing: his father’s work/ghost, even though all his father ever wanted was to protect the family.

Now, I believe that what still fascinates many people in the figure of Donald Trump is the same phenomenon. His story is relatable. Not the millionaire playboy draft-dodger pornstar-banger story, but the ‘rebel dumbass who became President’ story. It’s the childish dream my teen students were having: breaking all the rules, getting the girls and the money, and still win. It’s the same allure as in the Corleone’s story: he is a criminal who can ignore moral codes and rules in general and still win. The big difference is: we fantasize with those icons as we watch movies and TV and read books. That’s what fiction is there for: so you can live your fantasies without bringing them to reality – because fantasies can be outrageous and have disastrous consequences when acted upon. Like cheating on your wife or banging your knock-out daughter.

Most crimes actually hurt other people. They can destroy lives. Many lives. That is why they are crimes. And they should not be tolerated, ignored, frowned upon, excused. If there is a Michael Corleone in real life, murdering, stealing and plotting without consequence, authorities must do everything in their power to bring him to justice – don’t we all agree with that?

Now, in recent History, there were two US Presidents who were under an Impeachment Process. One used the Executive powers to spy on other Americans and then tried to cover it up. The CIA and the Intelligence Community were actively used to spy on the opposition, and then there was obstruction of justice. I guess it is obvious that this is an impeachable offense to most people.  It was for President Nixon himself, as he resigned before being thrown out. The other President under impeachment had cheated on his wife and lied to cover it up. Should one lose his job over that? Not really sure.

The current US President, however, did the same: he cheated on his wife and lied and broke the law to cover it up – there are people in jail right now because they helped him do that. And there’s proof the Russians illegally interfered in the US Elections, and evidence his campaign officials were connected with these Russians (over 120 meetings without a clear reason with Russian spies, officials and civilians). There are people in jail right now for being connected with this effort and several Russian individuals and organizations indicted for illegal activity on this front. And he has once and again benefited Russian with his diplomatic actions – including, among other things, revealing Israeli secret information to Russian Intelligence officers in the Oval Office, dumping sanctions on Russian oligarchs and lobbying for Russian presence in international organizations. And we know he obstructed justice to cover this up. He fired the FBI Director to stop the Bureau’s investigation on these illegal activities – he confessed as much on national television. He ordered Special Counsel Robert Mueller to be fired as well for the same reason. There are 10 other instances of obstruction of justice documented and reported on the same subject. He ordered several officials to not-testify before Congress as he was afraid they would help prove wrongdoing – more obstruction. And we know he has been profiting from his Office as he hasn’t divested from his businesses – and foreign officials pay to stay in his hotels when they come to meet him. And we suspect there are many more illegal activities hidden in his Tax Returns he is doing everything not to release – besides all the dark stuff being investigated about his Inauguration activities. And this is a very brief summary on an incredible array of instances of criminal activity that are suspected or already clear.

At what point will Americans realize that this President has done already much worse than the other two impeached Presidents combined? At what point will Americans realize that this is Reality, not Fiction? And that looking at a criminal kingpin with sympathy has consequences? Not marriage consequences or mere internal politics consequences but National Security and Geopolitical consequences. At what points will Americans realize that many people are and will be hurt by his gangster actions? At what point will this story stop being like a gangster movie where the police are not present and are ineffective to countermand Crime? At what point will Americans stop acting as if they were repressed despaired teenagers investing in loser dreams and fantasies?

Obviously, there is no point in ‘impeaching’ Al Pacino, or his character Michael Corleone: their actions are fictional actions – we can identify with them without losing our souls. But it is obvious that Donald Trump must be impeached. His toxic presidency must end. His actions are very real and criminal and dangerous. This should be obvious to everyone.