Go Team Venture!

     Today's blog is a special, collaborative effort featuring my dear friend Erik. We met seven years ago when he trained me for my first day at work (I came in drunk), we went to Vegas together, he was the best man at my wedding, and in between we've talked about everything. I thought it would be a good idea to write some collaborative blogs, so here, to kick us off, is our top ten Film Protagonists. We each did five, in no order. I'll alternate between our two lists.

Erik:  Before I start in on this list of my own personal favorite main dudes of cinema, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Erik and I'm a friend of Dave's. I write a blog called Apocalypse Continuum, mostly detailing America's sometimes toxic relationship with technology, though I do occasionally step outside that framework to do things like this that I think are interesting or fun or otherwise helpful to get me excited about writing again. I'm not a huge list person, mostly because the ones I have tend to change frequently, but that doesn't mean these picks or their respective rankings are any less valid. This is, hopefully, the first of many collaborations on here. Sorry, guys.

 Dave:    We ended up taking a similar approach, although we didn't discuss it beforehand. I'll let Erik introduce his characters, but for me, I tried to pick protagonists who reflected something of my personality and character. I identify strongly with each, for better or worse, and that's what sets these five apart. They're not just great characters; they're facets of myself. First up...

Dave/1) Andy Dufresne - The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

     He crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. He's a lot like me in that he tends to be quiet and introspective, has nerdy hobbies, and, through no real fault of his own, finds himself handed a platter of shit for dinner. He's a reserved, soft spoken guy, but in his own way, Andy's kind of a radical. He follows no code or law except his own. He won't be broken. He looks at impossible odds, overwhelming circumstances, and he just starts chipping away. He takes it one day at a time, puts one foot in front of the other, and he keeps going until he's out of that prison or he's dead. Andy's a likable guy, but he doesn't have many close friends. He’s an intellectual who still likes his girly posters. These are all traits I identify strongly with.

      If Andy represents one thing, I think it's doing the best you can with what you're given. And, all things considered, if I had to come up with ground rules for living my life, I could probably do a lot worse.

He has a lot of good moments, but my favorite is probably the scene with the record player. It shows his appreciate for the arts and aesthetic beauty, and that he realizes some things are more important than covering your ass and maintaining the status quo. He saw an opportunity and he took it. And he showed the so called authorities that he wasn't their pet, and that he let them use him only as much as he saw fit. There's a lot being said in that scene.

      Where Andy finally ends up, on a solitary beach in Mexico, fixing up and old boat, is close to an ideal existence for me too. Symbolically, Andy Dufresne represents an arc that I see my life following, and that's why he's one of my favorite protagonists. He is the myth I aspire to.

Erik: These are in no particular order. The only reason it's these characters and not, say, Indiana Jones is that either I relate to each one as a man or aspire to be like them in some way. As far as role models go, you could do worse than...

Erik/1) Virgil Hilts - The Great Escape (1963)

 This is your dad's favorite war movie for one reason: Steve McQueen. McQueen plays US Air Force Captain Virgil Hilts, one of many Allied POWs determined to escape a German POW camp during WWII. Known as "The Cooler King" for the incredible number of days spent in solitary confinement, referred to as "The Cooler", he spends what little time he gets outside of a concrete cell attempting to escape or otherwise pissing off his jailors and cracking jokes. There's an air of calm to him I'd love to say I'd have in that situation; a sort of ultimate cool. Almost in the way that if you put out into the universe that you're not a POW in a cell surrounded by Nazis, then you're not a POW in a cell surrounded by Nazis. Some Zen shit. The image that comes to mind when I talk about this character(who was based on a real guy, BTW) is Hilts starting his twenty-day sentence in the cooler by sitting in his cell bouncing a baseball against a wall. You can't keep this man down. He dares you to even try.

Dave/2) "Sanjuro" - Yojimbo (1961)

 

     The ronin of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, who, when asked his name, replies "Kuwabatake Sanjuro". Thirty year old mulberry field. He is thirty, and he has no name. Sanjuro is an island unto himself. In the time the film (a deliberate mashup of samurai and Western films) is set, the lifestyle of the samurai is on its way out. Sanjuro is a wanderer, and he uses whatever skills he has acquired to his own advantage. He is amoral in a sense, but, such as when he saves the farmer and his wife, shows that he will perform acts of charity and goodwill if he finds them personally worthwhile.

     We meet Sanjuro wandering, and he determines his path by casting a stick into the air. The directions it points upon landing is where he will go. This sets the tone for the character. He encounters a town with two warring factions, and true to his nature, he uses them each to his advantage. He effortlessly plays one side against the other, and watches, amused, from a bell tower.

     Sanjuro is a man apart, and that's why I like him. He has no loyalty, but he isn't a scoundrel. He also does the best he can with what he has been given. As a representative of an era whose time has passed, he must stand alone against the world. There is a scene late in the film where Sanjuro has a pistol pointed at him. Up until now, his skill as a samurai rendered him untouchable, as he could easily kill anyone in the town without taking a scratch, but the gun equalizes the matter. Rather than killing or disarming his attacker, as he could surely do quite easily, he calmly faces whatever outcome awaits. This, metaphorically, is what Sanjuro has done with life. This is how I relate to him. The world is trivial and absurd. Do what you can, take what you can get, go where you feet lead you. What happens will happen.

Erik/2) William Munny - Unforgiven (1992)

 I thought at first to include Eastwood's "Man with no name" on this list, but instead decided on a much more interesting character, and what is probably my favorite role of his: William Munny, a widowed pig farmer who used to be a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. Hired to kill two cowboys that cut up a prostitute, Munny, along with his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and a young gunslinger, do as much, leading each to different fates. By the end, Munny accepts his violent past as still being a part of him, calling up his talents to dispatch several men in the saloon decorated with his now-dead partner, Ned. I guess the thing to come away with at the end of it is that violence, however naturally it comes to you, is ultimately useless. Nothing comes of it but pain and death. It should be noted this was Eastwood's last western.

Dave/3) Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood (2007)

 

     Another loner in the extreme, Daniel Plainview loathes seemingly everything and everyone, including himself. He represents the darker side of my nature. "I look at people and I see nothing worth liking." he says at one point, and "I cannot go on doing this by myself. With these... people." I have felt exactly that way many times. He wants to make money, but even his greed is misanthropic: "I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone."

     Plainview is an eminently watchable character. His diction and elocution are compelling. He's one of the less admirable characters on my list, but he is relatable just the same. His determination and his self-reliance are remarkable. One common theme I've noticed among my favorite protagonists is that they are each very solitary men. They are all self-sufficient, self-reliant. Daniel takes it to the extreme, but even he has his adopted son, H.W. Their relationship is tragic, but I think he does feel affection for the boy. He's just unable to be a decent, kind man. He doesn't have it in him. Like Sanjuro, Plainview takes what he can get from who he can get it from, but unlike Sanjuro, he is not at peace with himself. At all. This, too, is relatable, as I would aspire to be like Kurosawa's ronin, but it would be prideful and dishonest to say there's not a lot of Daniel Plainview in me too. He's also something of a drunk, which I can relate to, especially his hangover scenes. Those could have come straight from my life.

     That's life. We must take it as it comes. There's a perverse pleasure in Plainview, too. His rivalry with Eli is quite funny, and it's very satisfying to see Daniel snub Eli at the dedication, or laughingly explain about the milkshakes. One of the most cathartic scenes in any film though, has to be Daniel slapping Eli across the face and dragging him through the mud when Eli asks where the money is. I'm Plainview, the system is Eli.

Erik/3) R.J. MacReady - The Thing (1982)

If I had to pick a character I feel closest to, personality-wise, it'd be R.J. MacReady. A pilot for U.S. Outpost #31 in Antarctica, MacReady is a loner that would've gladly spent his nights in his shack drinking scotch and playing chess with his cheatin' bitch computer. Things didn't turn out that way, and he stepped up to handle the situation as best he could because no one else was willing to do it. Sounds like a role model to me. If you haven't seen it, it's based on John W. Campbell, Jr.'s short story, Who Goes There?, a kind of "Ten Little Indians" story where a group gets picked off one by one. I won't lie to you and say this one turns out well. The film's ending is one of the most nihilistic I've ever seen, and I've seen some dark shit. I could only hope to handle it as well as MacReady.

Dave/4)  Johnny - Naked (1993)

     Johnny is the darkest character on my list, even more than Daniel Plainview. He's smart, well read, clever and funny, but his good qualities end there. He definitely has a charisma to him, but he abuses it by being a selfish, basically awful person. It's not nice, but I've been very much like Johnny. Disillusioned with reality. I had no resources except my intellect, so I honed it, then used it as a tool to elevate myself over others and take advantage of them. Johnny is basically a nihilist, which I was for many years. It's not all bad. He is very, very funny. I think he could carry his quick wit even if he were to decide to stop being such a twat, as I hope I've done.

     David Thewlis plays him perfectly, and besides being the darkest character on my list, he's also probably the most quotable, which is saying a lot. His personal philosophy is quite similar to my own, I just hope I'm applying it in a different, better way these days.

     Johnny's best scene is with the security guard. He makes some very interesting insights into humanity and god, similar to stuff I've said (it could almost be word for word, just with a different accent and slang), but he's doing it to more or less fuck with a simple man who's only trying to be nice to him. This scene is the character in a nutshell.

     Johnny's a total loner, also, even more than Plainview, as he doesn't even have an H.W. Any positive interaction is a manipulation, as seen in the final scene. What a great scene, and what a bastard. I don't want to spoil it, because this film isn't as widely seen as the others on my list, but just the last shot of Johnny is incredible. It's the triumph of the human spirt and human cruelty and fuck all else rolled into one. It's an ugly world, and sometimes we're ugly people. Even me.

Erik/4) Chuck Noland - Cast Away (2000)

 How would you deal with being stuck on a desert island? Do you know how to build a fire? Make shelter? Catch fish? Deal with being completely and utterly alone? Maybe take a cue from Chuck here and learn to talk to a fucking volleyball to keep from going insane, if that makes any sense. Noland is a FedEx employee who gets stranded on an island in the South Pacific when his plane crashes. He uses what's left of the cargo to try and survive. That's a good summation of most of these characters. They make the best of a bad situation and attempt to pull themselves out with logic. Sometimes that process is a solo mission that takes years and is totally transformative, but you can end up a more capable, satisfied human being.

Dave/5) The Dude - The Big Lebowski (1998)

     Everybody loves the Dude. With good reason. The Dude is kind of the inversion of Johnny. Neither has much going for them, in a traditional sense, but the Dude is content, and basically kind and good. The Dude is closer to who I am now, and that's not a bad thing. He represents, again, doing the best with what you're given, but more importantly than that, being content with what you have. The Dude is almost like a real life Bugs Bunny. Think about it. Bugs just wants to be left alone with his carrots and his burrow, the occasional company of a lady rabbit, and time to read his book or whatever, and some lunatic is always hassling him, causing trouble. He rolls with it, and he comes out on top. Why? Cause he's just that kind of guy. Bugs Abides. 

     Bugs and the Dude are interesting because they're basically shiftless... I hesitate to say losers, because they totally aren't, but by the standards of the world, you could spin it that way. But I wasn't just talking fun, everybody loves the Dude. He's got to be one of the most popular film characters of the modern era. But why? There's really not much about him that sounds all that appealing on paper. And that's the key. It's his attitude. His joi de vivre. His contentment with the simple things. That's what I want to share with him. I'm a capital A Alcoholic, so no white Russians for me, but I enjoy pot, I've bowled, and I have at least one good friend to pass the time with (though Erik couldn't be more different than Walter if he was... black and lived underwater). What more do you need? Like the film itself and Sam Elliott's narration, this just kind of trails off, but so what? It's not about that. It's an attitude. A philosophy. The Dude abides, man. The Dude abides. 

Erik/5) Snake Plissken - Escape From New York (1981)

What can I say? Kurt Russell was a big part of my childhood movie watching experience. Seeing THE THING and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK as a kid did a lot to inform my outlook on life: No one is to be trusted implicitly, so be prepared to walk away at a moment's notice. I've since amended that to include, "Be thankful for the time you had with them and what you learned from it." Snake probably wouldn't use the last part and instead just shoot the motherfucker that wronged him, but hey, I'm a real person, not a movie character with a big fuck-off gun and a license to kill. The point is, with Snake and all the rest of these guys, survival is paramount. Adapt or die. That's my philosophy.

 

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." -Charles Darwin