The theme of Good Will Hunting is that “living up to your potential” isn’t seeking advancement within the structures others have created to channel the energies of talented people, it’s embracing the infinite challenges and complications of loving others. I don’t think Damon and Affleck knew it when they wrote the movie, but that’s what it ended up being
Always confused how character leads to plot. She explains it well. Take a lesson the character needs to learn and reverse engineer the plot so they’re confronted with the lesson. Thank you! It’s already helped.
Naomi is always so impressive. In the crowded field of writers thinking about writing her insights stand out as clear, thoughtful and genuinely useful.
I totally agree with Naomi that theme is kind of treated (intentionally or not) as an afterthought compared to plot and character development, whereas it's actually the foundation that everything else is built on top on. I myself learned this the hard way. Great interview as always!
For us writers, this is fantastic! A good reminder to one skills set as a writer to keep working on all of them to remain sharp with the pen, if you know what I mean. Thanx.
Thank you again, FC. Listening to Naomi Beaty describe the writing process hits the nail on the head. It is a lot harder than a lot of people may think. I've written before about my creating a graphic novel series. So, with this process, it's not just the story,, dialog, character arcs, etc. , there is also the visuals and design of everything. It's like making a template for a movie (or tv series, god willing). Thank you again, FC. I'm very grateful to be able to listen to your interviews as guide posts. Lots of love from Canada. Bob.
The theme of Good Will Hunting is that we are all more than simply the sum of our experiences - Will was more than his terrible abuse as a child; Sean was more than his "failure" as an academic - only when Will learned that "It's not your fault" was he able to put his past behind him, stop hating himself, and love others (like Skylar, who he sets out to chase across the country).
I believe the theme of Good Will Hunting is love!. Our protagonist in this film is on a quest to find the ability to love himself, to believe that he is worthy of being loved and find the courage to choose love, to choose to stop hiding behind a janitor's costume, to choose to find the will escape Southie and the fate of his friends; to choose... Will. You see, Will Hunting is like a junkyard dog that been systematically beaten into submission to the point that all that's left is anger and rage. A pitiful creature taught to believe that is isn't worthy of kindness, compassion or love. He may not know it, but Will is literally hunting for the will to love himself, hunting for the Will that had been lost to all that pain and violence, hunting for the will he once possessed, hunting for the Will he once was... and can be again!
It's an interesting question. And at my advanced age, the arc of my life has demonstrated to me that people, anyone really, will always choose money over anything else, and if you are a good resource for someone, your potential is their potential. So everywhere you look, there are "resource managers." Will in GWH, knows this.
I think the lesson in GWH is he wasn’t at fault for what happened to him but he is in control of his destiny, he finds love thru self love first, until he accepts he wasn’t at fault for his own abuse, that he wasn’t bad, or unlovable he can’t love himself and promote himself to live his full potential
Hi Derrick, Our apologies that we did not thank you for this earlier! This is so generous of you. Thank you for supporting our channel. Some how we did not respond in timely manner. Again, sorry for this. Best to you and your work! FC
Derrick! Wow! Thank you so much! We love to see others gaining value from these interviews. We appreciate you giving back and supporting this channel. It means a lot. Our best to you and your creative work!
OH MY WORD YES. A lot of older western audiences won’t always give an animated drama like the due serious attention it demands, but regardless, the writing is amazing. His whole life, and specifically even just his relationship to his uncle is a transcendent story. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the scene where he returns to his uncle, starts apologizing, and mid sentence his uncle, almost violently, grabs him and embraces him with tears in his eyes telling him he was just happy he didn’t lose him and that he forgave him long ago, and even as a 20s-something guy, I struggle to keep dry eyes during that scene. That scene has the transcendent DNA of the prodigal son in the Bible. Writers would do well to take a look at these transcendent stories that have more than survived the test of thousands of years.
i cannot think of a better fictional relationship than his and his uncle iroh. watching his uncles pain trying to help his nephew pursue a pointless goal and being unable to explain it to him and watching him fail over and over and then succeed by betrying him and even that turns into failure. trying so hard to make up for his son being killed before the series starts. those character arcs really hit hard
Different is not Evil. Something is always more than nothing, enough can be a success in itself. Beware getting your heart's desire, lest the price be your heart itself.
judging by how the pilot for she-hulk was originally written and shot as the finale and then turned into a rushed pilot at the last second, I’m not sure the same can be said in terms of character development for she-hulk as for good will hunting….
The questions in Good Will Hunting, are we trapped by circumstances. All that came before. Particularly the violence Will suffered at the hands of his father and the violence he commits. His intelligence is almost an after thought. There plenty of characters that are all to comfortable in their circumstances. Almost smug, you could see it in the college kid or the mathematician friend to the therapist. Circumstances might be better labeled personality but since these people aren't real. I will leave at where the writer places each on Will's hero's journey.
Plenty of examples of successful flat story arcs however. Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Mary Poppins, Paddington Bear. I think we put FAR too much emphasis on character development of the main character. Paddington Bear 2 is one of the highest acclaimed movies of all time and he has no character development of his own. The development happens to everyone else he comes in contact with. One of the primary reasons I think the Boba Fett series was mostly a failure is because they felt it necessary to put Boba Fett through a traditional story arc. It isn't. He could have remained flat throughout, a sort of evil Mary Poppins, who improves the lives of everyone he comes in contact with, without betraying his own character.
In one sense you're correct, but in another you're not, because those characters that don't develop are actually kind of not characters, they're part of the narrative structure. They're actually the inciting event. It's rare to have this outside serialised things, but very common in them. You have a setting, and part of that setting is the "main character" who forces the episode's characters into their hero's journey. It's not that they have flat story arcs, it's that they don't really have arcs at all, they're not really characters, they're environment.
@@pietzsche And you can still give a story meaning with a flat arc. Too much emphasis is being put on the character development of the main character that i see writers instead ruin a franchise because they are blindly following "rules".
I don't really like movies with a theme or a lot of character-change or lessons to be learned, and for a couple of reasons: 1 - All too often, the lesson is something I already know, which makes the film boring 2 - It's probably the same lesson from every other movie, anyway 3 - How often is the lesson _not_ condescending, anyway? 4 - If well-written and fleshed-out characters are fun to watch, that's enough for me to love a film; No Lesson Required™ 5 - Movies, for me, are escapism; I want to be taken _away_ from the real world, and so a life-lesson is _too_ real
@@BionicDance I get it, just for some reason I'm most engaged by realism, in both movies and novels. One of my favorite writers is Harry Crews, whose hard-scrabble characters would probably just bum you out. I originally commented though because I agree with all you said about the lack of lessons and transformation.
Stories do not need to have meaning or a lesson to teach, and I think for most people, they don't really need the characters to grow or change to enjoy them or get depth from them. Those elements can be interesting things to have in a story, or reasons to make a story in the first place; not bad things at all, but lessons, change, etc are not remotely universally necessary for good story telling. Stories do typically need some kind of basic reason to be told and some change to happen for there to be any plot, but even then I can think of exceptions to even those rules to at least a partial degree.
Not the same guy, but I think I got their point. It's true that stories need some change to happen, although it doesn't always involve the protagonist. Sherlock Holmes and Forrest Gump, for example, don't really change through their story, they catalyse the change in the world around them, so their stories are still enjoyable.
Thank you, I was looking for a comment like this. I simply don't care if there's not a major transformation and certainly don't believe the protag has to "learn a lesson."
So she's saying that a film is like an essay trying to state an argument about life. But instead of paragraphs a screenplay uses the life events of a character to make that argument.
glad RoP went through this...oh wait...they didn't. these days we just write Marry Sues...right from start to finish, no char arch needed. so...if this is so common knowledge...how do we explain these million dollar failures?
I don't think "force" is the right term. That makes it sound like the character has no agency in their own lives. When you do that, it removes the value of the growth you want to see. In other words, the ethics you want the character to exibit have no value if they had no other option. *If you had to do it, you didn't decide to. No moral action exists like that.* Good will hunting, to use your example. Sure, he was placed in a situation he had to face, but his friends weren't going to leave him if he went back to work and left it there. They might feel he is shortchanging himself, but it is what it is. Will could have just kept on as he was. The movie would be lame, but he could have done. Also, he didn't come to it alone. The teacher saw his potential and helped him. He was given free treatment for his emotional problems. He was given a way to gain an education. In short, there was a village of people directly in his life, *making that change possible.* They gave it to him. The morals in the movie are great because those that had the power to help, did. Still, at the end he chased the girl over success...so morals? I would hope people don't look to media to give moral direction, but you have a point. Either way, you put people in jail to keep them from damaging others, not to correct their moral fiber. If you force it, then it is a prison. That film isn't one I would watch to learn about morals. At the same time, if those who could help watched Will fail, it would be a moral piece also. Everyone in a film that is in the main story is a moral actor. They were good to help the kid out. Hmmmm.
preached chapter and verse from a thousand screenplay books. but the principle of transformation doesn't hold true in all cases. Sitcom characters for example never change. James Bond never changes.
Hollywood stop slipping in woke political mesages in scripts. Stop having a protagonist mary sue with no struggles or conflict or ark. Stop having the antagoinst be a white old guy. BORING have some origional thoughts New stories Lead women we want to cheer for Female bad villains. Tent pole films Voltron Go Bots The Herculoids Brave Star Dungeons & Dragons with the Saturday morning cartoon from the 80s is the source material Thundarr The Barbarian The Wonder Twins Space Ghost The Karate kid with female lead and female villain. Etc...
Eh whatever. I'm sorry if you're gonna bring up Good Will Hunting and can't riff on that movie for a minute or two... I can't take your word on much as far as movie storytelling goes.
As an aspiring writer, this channel is a gold mine.
Thanks Rat Nasty!
My exact thoughts. I'm in the same boat, and I love coming to Film Courage for gaining improvement!😄❤
For real, whenever I feel stumped I always come back to this channel
Absolutely ✨👍🏾✨
Truf
The theme of Good Will Hunting is that “living up to your potential” isn’t seeking advancement within the structures others have created to channel the energies of talented people, it’s embracing the infinite challenges and complications of loving others. I don’t think Damon and Affleck knew it when they wrote the movie, but that’s what it ended up being
Very well put.
Didn't they both wrote this when they still in college?
Always confused how character leads to plot. She explains it well. Take a lesson the character needs to learn and reverse engineer the plot so they’re confronted with the lesson. Thank you! It’s already helped.
Naomi is always so impressive. In the crowded field of writers thinking about writing her insights stand out as clear, thoughtful and genuinely useful.
"In the world of art, there isn't a set standard. As long as a work of art brings MEANING to you, it is priceless."
I really appreciate the ways in which Naomi explains elements of screenwriting
I totally agree with Naomi that theme is kind of treated (intentionally or not) as an afterthought compared to plot and character development, whereas it's actually the foundation that everything else is built on top on. I myself learned this the hard way. Great interview as always!
For us writers, this is fantastic! A good reminder to one skills set as a writer to keep working on all of them to remain sharp with the pen, if you know what I mean. Thanx.
Thank you again, FC.
Listening to Naomi Beaty describe the writing process hits the nail on the head. It is a lot harder than a lot of people may think.
I've written before about my creating a graphic novel series. So, with this process, it's not just the story,, dialog, character arcs, etc. , there is also the visuals and design of everything. It's like making a template for a movie (or tv series, god willing).
Thank you again, FC.
I'm very grateful to be able to listen to your interviews as guide posts.
Lots of love from Canada.
Bob.
Cheers Bob!
The theme of Good Will Hunting is that we are all more than simply the sum of our experiences - Will was more than his terrible abuse as a child; Sean was more than his "failure" as an academic - only when Will learned that "It's not your fault" was he able to put his past behind him, stop hating himself, and love others (like Skylar, who he sets out to chase across the country).
Thank you, that was eloquently said, it weaves together succinctly all the component parts one juggles in forging a potent story/screenplay/film.
I believe the theme of Good Will Hunting is love!. Our protagonist in this film is on a quest to find the ability to love himself, to believe that he is worthy of being loved and find the courage to choose love, to choose to stop hiding behind a janitor's costume, to choose to find the will escape Southie and the fate of his friends; to choose... Will. You see, Will Hunting is like a junkyard dog that been systematically beaten into submission to the point that all that's left is anger and rage. A pitiful creature taught to believe that is isn't worthy of kindness, compassion or love. He may not know it, but Will is literally hunting for the will to love himself, hunting for the Will that had been lost to all that pain and violence, hunting for the will he once possessed, hunting for the Will he once was... and can be again!
Brilliant advise :) Thanks Naomi
It's an interesting question. And at my advanced age, the arc of my life has demonstrated to me that people, anyone really, will always choose money over anything else, and if you are a good resource for someone, your potential is their potential. So everywhere you look, there are "resource managers." Will in GWH, knows this.
I think the lesson in GWH is he wasn’t at fault for what happened to him but he is in control of his destiny, he finds love thru self love first, until he accepts he wasn’t at fault for his own abuse, that he wasn’t bad, or unlovable he can’t love himself and promote himself to live his full potential
Thanks!
Hi Derrick, Our apologies that we did not thank you for this earlier! This is so generous of you. Thank you for supporting our channel. Some how we did not respond in timely manner. Again, sorry for this. Best to you and your work! FC
Thankya! Thankya! Love this channel 🎉
Thank you so much Film Courage ❤
Derrick! Wow! Thank you so much! We love to see others gaining value from these interviews. We appreciate you giving back and supporting this channel. It means a lot. Our best to you and your creative work!
@@filmcourage I've been watching for several years and the value gained is golden !! ..I will continue to support
Thanks again!!!
Thank you! 🙏
One of the best arc transformation character: Zuko from Avatar The last airbender 🙏
OH MY WORD YES. A lot of older western audiences won’t always give an animated drama like the due serious attention it demands, but regardless, the writing is amazing. His whole life, and specifically even just his relationship to his uncle is a transcendent story. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the scene where he returns to his uncle, starts apologizing, and mid sentence his uncle, almost violently, grabs him and embraces him with tears in his eyes telling him he was just happy he didn’t lose him and that he forgave him long ago, and even as a 20s-something guy, I struggle to keep dry eyes during that scene. That scene has the transcendent DNA of the prodigal son in the Bible. Writers would do well to take a look at these transcendent stories that have more than survived the test of thousands of years.
i cannot think of a better fictional relationship than his and his uncle iroh. watching his uncles pain trying to help his nephew pursue a pointless goal and being unable to explain it to him and watching him fail over and over and then succeed by betrying him and even that turns into failure. trying so hard to make up for his son being killed before the series starts. those character arcs really hit hard
@@Aaron-zh4kj and then both Zuko and Iroh help Korra be a better Korra ^_^
Brilliant
I think that you want create plot by creating characterization that is so strong that it spontaneously combusts into interesting things happening.
Amen amen amen **********
What themes do you like to see in movies?
Good vs evil, and character overcoming character defects or adversity
Different is not Evil. Something is always more than nothing, enough can be a success in itself.
Beware getting your heart's desire, lest the price be your heart itself.
The weight of responsibility
Her name should be 'Beauty'; what an impressive woman. Emotionally intelligent, modest, and in total command of her brief.
What gives a story meaning?
What it says about reality
The memories that the viewer or reader takes away from their experiences in the story's world.
The connection with its viewers/readers.
I really like the 'lesson' that both Galdriel learnt and also She-Hulk. They both really grew over the show yeah ?
judging by how the pilot for she-hulk was originally written and shot as the finale and then turned into a rushed pilot at the last second, I’m not sure the same can be said in terms of character development for she-hulk as for good will hunting….
@TheJadedFilmMaker "In 3 words... Hell. No!!" - Joe Biden
@@skelleyd9097 I think some sarcasm was intended here. Lol.
@@seraphim9333 he gets it 😅
PLEASE listen to Louis CK on ‘Good Will Hunting’ (on TH-cam). Hilarious! 😂
The questions in Good Will Hunting, are we trapped by circumstances. All that came before. Particularly the violence Will suffered at the hands of his father and the violence he commits. His intelligence is almost an after thought. There plenty of characters that are all to comfortable in their circumstances. Almost smug, you could see it in the college kid or the mathematician friend to the therapist. Circumstances might be better labeled personality but since these people aren't real. I will leave at where the writer places each on Will's hero's journey.
Where's This Interview? You had it on your members-only videos, and now it's gone. Can you bring it back?
Sorry about that Luca. Thank you for your support. It's going to be public tonight at 5pm PST for all viewers.
@@filmcourage Np, Love you guys and look forward to continue supporting you all. All the best 🤗🤗🤗
Thank you Luca! We appreciate you.
Interview phil joanu?
First!
u won the internet today - yay!
@@roathripper shut up, i was waiting for this video
What if the main character dies in the end?
"Kantara" next big film
Good example, Shazam
Plenty of examples of successful flat story arcs however. Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Mary Poppins, Paddington Bear. I think we put FAR too much emphasis on character development of the main character. Paddington Bear 2 is one of the highest acclaimed movies of all time and he has no character development of his own. The development happens to everyone else he comes in contact with. One of the primary reasons I think the Boba Fett series was mostly a failure is because they felt it necessary to put Boba Fett through a traditional story arc. It isn't. He could have remained flat throughout, a sort of evil Mary Poppins, who improves the lives of everyone he comes in contact with, without betraying his own character.
In one sense you're correct, but in another you're not, because those characters that don't develop are actually kind of not characters, they're part of the narrative structure.
They're actually the inciting event. It's rare to have this outside serialised things, but very common in them.
You have a setting, and part of that setting is the "main character" who forces the episode's characters into their hero's journey. It's not that they have flat story arcs, it's that they don't really have arcs at all, they're not really characters, they're environment.
@@pietzsche And you can still give a story meaning with a flat arc. Too much emphasis is being put on the character development of the main character that i see writers instead ruin a franchise because they are blindly following "rules".
The character not living up to their potential hurts themselves anf others around them
What gives a meaning to story?
It is about how many agree the views of story and how long they agree those views.
I don't really like movies with a theme or a lot of character-change or lessons to be learned, and for a couple of reasons:
1 - All too often, the lesson is something I already know, which makes the film boring
2 - It's probably the same lesson from every other movie, anyway
3 - How often is the lesson _not_ condescending, anyway?
4 - If well-written and fleshed-out characters are fun to watch, that's enough for me to love a film; No Lesson Required™
5 - Movies, for me, are escapism; I want to be taken _away_ from the real world, and so a life-lesson is _too_ real
I'm with you except for the last point. Not that I want a lesson, just that I tend to prefer gritty realism to pure escapism.
@@williambartholmey5946 I watch movies for escapism because the real world is gritty enough already, and I need an antidote.
@@BionicDance I get it, just for some reason I'm most engaged by realism, in both movies and novels. One of my favorite writers is Harry Crews, whose hard-scrabble characters would probably just bum you out. I originally commented though because I agree with all you said about the lack of lessons and transformation.
Stories do not need to have meaning or a lesson to teach, and I think for most people, they don't really need the characters to grow or change to enjoy them or get depth from them. Those elements can be interesting things to have in a story, or reasons to make a story in the first place; not bad things at all, but lessons, change, etc are not remotely universally necessary for good story telling.
Stories do typically need some kind of basic reason to be told and some change to happen for there to be any plot, but even then I can think of exceptions to even those rules to at least a partial degree.
Would you be so kind to name a few? Thanks.
Could you name a few examples?
Not the same guy, but I think I got their point. It's true that stories need some change to happen, although it doesn't always involve the protagonist. Sherlock Holmes and Forrest Gump, for example, don't really change through their story, they catalyse the change in the world around them, so their stories are still enjoyable.
Thank you, I was looking for a comment like this. I simply don't care if there's not a major transformation and certainly don't believe the protag has to "learn a lesson."
Doesn't a story have a meaning already, that we maybe have to make shine?
So she's saying that a film is like an essay trying to state an argument about life. But instead of paragraphs a screenplay uses the life events of a character to make that argument.
glad RoP went through this...oh wait...they didn't. these days we just write Marry Sues...right from start to finish, no char arch needed.
so...if this is so common knowledge...how do we explain these million dollar failures?
I don't think "force" is the right term. That makes it sound like the character has no agency in their own lives. When you do that, it removes the value of the growth you want to see. In other words, the ethics you want the character to exibit have no value if they had no other option. *If you had to do it, you didn't decide to. No moral action exists like that.*
Good will hunting, to use your example. Sure, he was placed in a situation he had to face, but his friends weren't going to leave him if he went back to work and left it there. They might feel he is shortchanging himself, but it is what it is. Will could have just kept on as he was. The movie would be lame, but he could have done.
Also, he didn't come to it alone. The teacher saw his potential and helped him. He was given free treatment for his emotional problems. He was given a way to gain an education. In short, there was a village of people directly in his life, *making that change possible.* They gave it to him.
The morals in the movie are great because those that had the power to help, did. Still, at the end he chased the girl over success...so morals? I would hope people don't look to media to give moral direction, but you have a point.
Either way, you put people in jail to keep them from damaging others, not to correct their moral fiber. If you force it, then it is a prison. That film isn't one I would watch to learn about morals.
At the same time, if those who could help watched Will fail, it would be a moral piece also. Everyone in a film that is in the main story is a moral actor. They were good to help the kid out. Hmmmm.
preached chapter and verse from a thousand screenplay books. but the principle of transformation doesn't hold true in all cases. Sitcom characters for example never change. James Bond never changes.
The only time James Bond has ever changed, was when they casted different actors for the character
Hollywood stop slipping in woke political mesages in scripts. Stop having a protagonist mary sue with no struggles or conflict or ark.
Stop having the antagoinst be a white old guy.
BORING
have some origional thoughts
New stories
Lead women we want to cheer for
Female bad villains.
Tent pole films
Voltron
Go Bots
The Herculoids
Brave Star
Dungeons & Dragons with the Saturday morning cartoon from the 80s is the source material
Thundarr The Barbarian
The Wonder Twins
Space Ghost
The Karate kid with female lead and female villain.
Etc...
Isnt the karate kid with the female lead the most hated one? Also most 80s cartoons were souless cashgrabs to sell toys
Snowflake.
Eh whatever. I'm sorry if you're gonna bring up Good Will Hunting and can't riff on that movie for a minute or two... I can't take your word on much as far as movie storytelling goes.