Voir (2021) s01e03 Episode Script
But I Don't Like Him
1
[film projector whirs]
[whistling music plays]
[dramatic music plays]
[Drew] Think of your favorite film.
Whatever it is, it doesn't matter.
Just think of the title.
For me, it's Lawrence of Arabia.
I love getting lost in it.
It's the biggest movie, and I love
seeing it on the biggest screen.
Forget virtual reality.
That's the hit that I'm chasing
every single time I'm in the theater.
[sweeping music plays]
My favorite film has changed
over the years.
I get excited about new things,
and sometimes old discoveries
grow over time.
It always comes back to Lawrence, though.
And part of the reason why is
the lead character, T.E. Lawrence.
He was a real person, of course,
but in the hands of director David Lean
and screenwriter Robert Bolt, he's also
a much-larger-than-life film character,
played by Peter O'Toole
to such remarkable effect
that the first-time film star
got nominated for Best Actor.
I know I'm not ordinary.
- That's not what I'm saying.
- All right.
I'm extraordinary.
What of it?
[Drew] The T.E. Lawrence in the film
is a man of vision.
He finds himself
at a crucial time and place in history,
both smart enough
and stupid enough to believe
that he can change that time and place.
That combination
is what it takes sometimes.
And sure enough, he does change history.
And in turn, history changes him
and not necessarily for the better.
There is darkness in the character
and monstrous weakness at times.
He's painfully human, and that is part
of what I find so compelling about him.
I killed two people.
One was a boy.
I led him into a quicksand.
The other was a man.
I had to execute him with my pistol.
There was something about it
I didn't like.
[man] Well, naturally.
No. Something else.
I enjoyed it.
[Drew] I think T.E. Lawrence
is one of the most interesting,
complicated, frustrating,
and recognizably flawed characters
I've ever seen in a film.
But I don't like him.
No prisoners! No prisoners!
[men shouting]
[Drew] I admire him. I think
he was great by many metrics,
but I wrestle with the idea
that I like him in any conventional sense,
and that's part of what
keeps me coming back.
It's one of the most slippery ingredients
in filmmaking.
How do you define likability?
How do you quantify it in a way
that you can reliably reproduce?
And so what? If I don't like T.E. Lawrence
as a character, does that even matter?
We're going to argue
that drama has very little to do
with what we like
or what makes us comfortable,
and that's part of the purpose of drama.
Storytelling cannot start
at "happily ever after."
And art is not just hanging out
with your friends on the couch.
Art's where we confront the things
that terrify or upset or traumatize us.
It's not just okay to tell stories
about characters we don't like.
It's crucial.
- [sergeant] What's your name, fat-body?
- [private] Leonard Lawrence, sir.
Lawrence? Lawrence what? Of Arabia?
Sir, no, sir!
I don't like the name Lawrence.
Only faggots and sailors
are called Lawrence.
I don't like your kind of people.
Like you?
Who the hell said I got to like you?
[man 1] Right now,
your likability is at 26%.
Clothes, hair, speaking style, likability
Likability.
[man 2] God, you are a piece of work.
Fuck you!
[laughs]
You're a funny guy.
I'm funny how? I mean, funny
like I'm clown? I amuse you?
[man 3] I don't like your jerk-off name.
I don't like your jerk-off face.
I don't like your jerk-off behavior.
And I don't like you, jerk-off.
I'm sorry, I wasn't listening.
Ow!
[Drew] As a critic,
I am constantly challenging myself
about why I love the things I do,
why I'm drawn to the films
I find most compelling.
There are times I am unsettled
by the feelings I have
about characters in movies.
And I love trying to unpack why that is.
I wanna be challenged by characters.
I want to feel strongly about them.
But I don't have
an overall need to like all of them.
Art is not an endorsement.
It's an exploration.
Some of the best art,
even in mainstream pop culture,
takes us to some very dark places.
I'm finished.
[Drew] One of the very first monsters
I ever found myself drawn to
while I sat there in the dark
was Michael Corleone.
Don't be afraid, Carlo. Come on,
you think I'd make my sister a widow?
[Drew] As an adult,
I don't like Michael Corleone.
But I understand
why I felt myself drawn to him.
He might be one of the richest characters
in American film.
The first two Godfather films,
which have to be considered
foundational, classic cinema,
tell the story
of how a good man slowly compromises
everything that matters
to him for his family
in order to become
a powerful murderer and thief.
[gun fires]
[chokes]
It's the death of decency.
By the end of the second film,
he's as dark and ruined a figure
as I can imagine.
He ends up unlikable to an extreme,
but I understand every step he takes
on that long slide into oblivion.
Do you expect me to let you
take my children from me?
Don't you know me?
Don't you know
that that's an impossibility,
that that could never happen?
That I'd use all my power to keep
something like that from happening?
[Drew] Michael begins the film
as the Corleone who got out.
He's the immigrant's
American dream incarnate.
The child who's more successful,
more integrated, more American.
That's my family, Kay. It's not me.
You don't come to Las Vegas and talk
to a man like Moe Green like that!
[Michael] Fredo, you're my older brother,
and I love you.
[gun fires]
But don't ever take sides
with anyone against the family again.
[Drew] By the end of the film,
Michael's fall seems complete,
culminating in one
of the most emotionally brutal
but simple images possible,
to close the door on everything
that made him decent.
It's the second film
where Coppola and his collaborators
tested the boundaries
of what we'll accept from a lead.
I'll talk to Fredo.
[Drew] John Cazale's Fredo is a rat,
a piece of garbage who betrays his family,
but he's also driven
by a twisted desire to be accepted
and loved in the same ways
as his brothers.
I'm your older brother, Mike,
and I was stepped over!
- [Michael] That's the way Pop wanted it.
- It ain't the way Iwanted it!
I can handle things! I'm smart!
Not like everybody says, like dumb!
I'm smart, and I want respect!
[Drew] Michael's fury at being betrayed
by Fredo is understandable,
especially in a film
that is as focused on the idea
of family as the center of the world
and honor as the thing
that drives every choice.
By the time Michael gives Fredo
the literal kiss of death
in the film's most powerful moment,
neither one of the characters is defined
in any way by whether we like them.
I know it was you, Fredo.
You broke my heart.
You broke my heart.
Take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat,
or I'll give it to you through the door.
Listen, handsome. Open up.
Well, he's getting too big.
Yeah, well, he won't get any bigger.
Yeah, this is what I get
for liking a guy too much.
You found someone you like better.
You might as well come down, Jarrett.
There's no one left but you.
Here's my answer, you dirty
[guns firing]
Get out of my way, Johnny. I'm gonna spit.
[Drew] America has always been
positively dizzy for criminals on film.
From our earliest films to the silent era
and straight in to the first blast
of studio talkies,
gangsters were big business.
I ain't so tough.
[Drew] When the Depression hit,
there was a Robin Hood romanticism
to them on screen,
and America seemed obsessed
with real criminals in the streets,
with the press often treating them
like rock stars.
Makes sense that a generation later,
they would make
genuinely rebellious movies
about those same criminals.
Hey, boy, what you doing
with my mama's car?
[Drew] By the time we got
into the newly explicit visual language
of Bonnie and Clyde,
it may have felt brand-new,
but it was part of a cycle
where we grapple
with our love of transgression
by destroying the characters we love
precisely because they transgress
in ways we can't.
[man]Hold it, hold it!
Hey.
- [guns firing]
- [screams]
[guns continue firing]
[gunfire stops]
[Drew] Bonnie and Clyde was
a point on a larger continuum,
a sort of perpetually doomed collision
between lovers on a one-way ride to hell.
These characters may seem like they love
each other or they're driven by desire,
but the truth is
that death is what really drives them.
So you go on home,
and you sit in your room,
and you think, "Now, when and how
am I ever gonna get away from this?"
And now you know.
[Drew] And some of our greatest cinema
challenges the things we like or love,
daring us to really confront
our own hearts
in the safety of that darkened theater.
With The Godfather, Coppola was interested
in looking at the real moral cost
of that powerful fantasy,
and he attached a price tag
to a life of crime
that seemed too high to pay.
The last thing he cared about
was making you like Michael,
and it's the last thing
Michael cares about as well.
[breathing heavily]
[no audible dialogue]
Maybe the greatest thing
about the wave of filmmaking
that hit the American mainstream
like a tidal wave in the late 1960s
and early 1970s was the way
filmmakers seemed determined to bring us
a brand-new kind of protagonist,
as they explored
the ugliest corners of human nature.
I gave you the prize years ago, Martha.
There isn't an abomination award going
that you haven't won.
I swear, if you existed, I'd divorce you.
[Drew] Is there anyone alive who watched
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
and thought, "Wow, I would really like
to have them over for dinner."
You still look like you have
a pretty good body now too. Is that right?
Martha, decency forbid
Shut up.
Yes, he has a very firm body.
Have you?
[Drew] The movie's wildly entertaining,
and with films like that,
it often leads audiences
to wonder if there's something wrong
with the filmmaker or, even worse,
wrong with them.
How can you watch a film
about someone so awful,
so morally bankrupt
and have such a good time?
Be careful, Martha.
I'll rip you to pieces.
You are not man enough.
You haven't the guts!
[Drew] It's because filmmakers can put us
in the skin of people
who do terrible things,
and they can make us feel like
we might cross those same lines.
They can even give us permission to do so
with that safe remove
of "it's just a movie."
Are you behind on your credit card bills?
Good! Pick up the phone and start dialing.
I want you to deal with
your problems by becoming rich!
[all] Yeah!
[Drew] If there's
any major American filmmaker
whose body of work
challenges the entire idea
that we have to like our lead characters,
it's Martin Scorsese.
He has built his long and storied career
on films about people who are driven
by passions that consume them.
And he's never seemed terribly concerned
with whether or not we like
his lead characters.
- You botherin' me about a steak, huh?
- [woman] That's great!
You botherin' me about a steak?
[Drew] In 1980's Raging Bull,
Jake LaMotta, played by Robert De Niro,
is barely functional as a person.
And part of what compels us to watch
is the magic trick
of his physical transformation
between the first half of the film
and the second.
[Jake] I coulda had class.
I coulda been a contender.
I coulda been somebody
instead of a bum, which is what I am.
[announcer] LaMotta drives
both hands to the head.
[Drew] LaMotta is only alive
when he is hurting other people.
He has a raw, brute gift for it.
And he's rewarded for it.
[Jake] You fuck my wife?
How could you ask me a question like that?
Why don't you tell me, huh?
Did you fuck my brother? Huh?
- Get off me, you fat pig!
- Did you?
[Drew] There's no kindness in him,
and I'm not sure the film
makes the case for him
as anything but a beast,
flailing in the dark.
[screaming]
Oh, you motherfuck
[screaming]
[cries]
[Drew] There is beauty in Scorsese's film,
and there's
even dark, horrible humor to it,
but there's nothing
that even remotely indicates
we're supposed to like Jake LaMotta.
I've done a lot of bad things, Joey.
Maybe it's coming back to me.
[knock on door]
[man] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Let me introduce myself.
My name is Rupert Pupkin.
Now, I know the name
doesn't mean very much to you,
but it means an awful lot to me.
That's "Rupert Pupkin."
Pupkin. P-U-P-K-I-N.
People often misspell it
and mispronounce it.
- [man] What is your real name?
- That's my real name. Rupert Pupkin.
[Drew] Their next collaboration,
King of Comedy, was a movie
that predicted the way celebrity culture
in America would metastasize.
Let's do something crazy tonight.
I wanna be crazy! I wanna be nuts!
[Rupert] A lot of you
are probably wondering
why Jerry isn't with us tonight.
Well, I'll tell you.
The fact is, he's tied up.
And I'm the one who tied him.
[Drew] It was clear that Scorsese cared
as little about whether we liked Rupert
as he cared about whether we liked
the victim of his attentions.
I had this conversation in my head.
This is beautiful.
- Did it always turn out this way?
- Yeah, it did. And
[Drew] Jerry Lewis played a character
that took the most acidic rumors
about Johnny Carson,
ran them through the ugly truth
about Jerry Lewis,
and came up with something
so intensely unlikable
that it almost feels like a dare.
You gonna open the goddamn door?
Mr. Langford.
- Standing out there eight minutes.
- Sorry, sir.
- I told you to call to get rid of you!
- Yeah, all right, I made a mistake.
So did Hitler!
So what's got into you?
I'm breakin' your balls a little bit.
Now go home
and get your fucking shine box.
- [glass shatters]
- Motherfuckin' mutt!
You you fuckin' piece of shit!
[man] Get the door.
[Drew] One of the biggest movies
in Scorsese's career
came in the early '90s with Goodfellas.
Based on the true story of Henry Hill,
a lifelong mobster
who rolled over on his fellow criminals
when he was finally caught,
it is a powerfully made movie, seductive,
and there is a charisma to the way
he presents this world
of scumbags and murderers.
[Henry] For us,
to live any other way was nuts.
If we wanted something, we just took it.
If anyone complained twice,
they got hit so bad, believe me,
they never complained again.
[Drew] Even as we watch these
career pieces of shit eat one another
Oh no
[Drew]Scorsese makes us feel
the same pull that Henry Hill felt,
the same pull
that so many other filmmakers
have indulged.
Scorsese knows that he doesn't have
anything to worry about
in terms of whether we like
his characters in Goodfellas,
because he knows we'll be riveted
by the vicarious details of this life
that we'll never experience for ourselves.
- It's gonna be a good summer.
- [all laugh]
[Drew] If there's any film of Scorsese's
that best exemplifies
how little it matters
that we like the lead in a film,
it is his early masterpiece Taxi Driver,
a piercing study of what leads
a lonely man on the margins of society
to commit an act of overheated violence.
[man] All the animals come out at night.
Whores, skunk pussies, buggers,
queens, fairies, dopers, junkies.
Sick, venal.
Someday a real rain'll come
and wash all the scum off the streets.
[Drew] Travis Bickle is so socially bent
that his idea of a first date
with campaign worker Betsy,
played by Cybill Shepherd,
is to take her to a porn theater
in Times Square.
You gotta be kidding.
What?
This is a dirty movie.
[Drew] He starts the film damaged,
and little by little,
we watch as his tenuous relationship
with reality slips away.
He becomes focused
on a teenage prostitute next,
but she's uninterested in being saved,
and nothing she says or does
makes any sense to him.
[Travis] I'm square?
You're the one that's square, man.
I don't go screw and fuck with a bunch
of killers and junkies the way you do.
You call that being hip?
What world you from?
[Drew] Bickle retreats into a fantasy
in which he sees a way to become
powerful through violence.
Whether focused on the political candidate
of the woman he wants
or on the pimp of the girl
he wants to save,
the violence is simply a way
of giving Travis a voice in the world,
a chance for him to write his name
large enough for everyone to finally see.
[Travis] Listen, you fuckers,
you screwheads,
here is a man who would not take it
anymore, who would not let
Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads,
here is a man
who would not take it anymore,
a man who stood up against the scum,
the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit.
Here is someone who stood up.
[Drew] There's nothing
about Travis that I like
and nothing I feel like I'm supposed
to like, but I do feel for him,
because Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader
dare to slip so fully into his skin.
The film builds to what any other movie
would offer up as a heroic ending,
when all we're really watching
is a crazy loner murdering a pimp
because of some strange,
possessive fantasy he had
about an underage sex worker.
Get the fuck outta here, man.
Get outta here.
Suck on this.
- Ooh, ooh!
- Hey!
[screaming]
[woman screams]
[man groaning]
[screams] Don't shoot him!
[gun fires]
[Drew] He's a violent man
in a seedy world,
and the only reason he ends
the film driving his cab again
is because he killed the right person.
It's a hell of a message at what felt
like a culturally volatile moment.
Clearly there is hunger
from some audiences
for stories about characters
who are inspirational or aspirational,
and fiction can easily become a way
to try on a life you wish you could live
or one you wish you were strong enough
or good enough to live.
But we're often drawn to stories
of darkness or dysfunction
precisely because we want
to understand these people
who seem so broken or wrong to us.
The real question we're asking is this,
should you try to make
every character likable?
Would it fix every film to do so?
You may think we're exaggerating,
but look at what happens
when you flatten out
an interesting character
because you're afraid
he's not likable enough.
Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities
was a scathing satire.
And in the novel, Sherman McCoy is
a self-anointed master of the universe,
a Wall Street banker who's supposed to be
emblematic of an entire class of Americans
who Wolfe observed.
The moneyed, upper-class assholes
who pass money and influence down
from generation to generation.
Let's not lose our composure
over a few hundred million dollars.
- Back up.
- [woman] I am!
[Drew] Sherman McCoy is in a car
with his mistress when they panic
and run over a young Black man,
killing him with their car.
It's a pretty insurmountable obstacle
when it comes to liking someone or not.
How? They don't have the full number.
They don't have a witness.
[Drew] The movie committed
many of the worst sins of adaptation.
Dropping subplots, botching tone,
playing satire straight by mistake.
But by far, the biggest misstep came
at the casting stage.
It seems insane to cast Tom Hanks
as a blond, Waspy, old-money monster,
but there was a reason
the studio insisted.
In a film that is about such awful people,
casting Hanks lets you play
both sides against the middle.
I have protected you, Maria.
I have been a gentleman about this.
I have done my best to keep your name
out of the papers. You have to help me.
[Drew] Bruce Willis plays the narrator
of the book and the movie,
and his identity as a British expat
living off the teat of America,
even as he sent home reports
on how horrible it was,
seemed annihilated
by that casting decision.
Director Brian De Palma seemed determined
to find ways to make these characters
unlikable by design, palatable by casting.
And in the end,
even Hanks couldn't pull it off.
- [reporter] Answer the question!
- I'm going to jail, aren't I?
[Drew] When we're sitting in the dark,
wide-open to these characters,
we don't ultimately care about "likable."
We just wanna be interested,
and we want something that feels honest,
something we recognize as real.
I've gotten into the habit of taking
a new person to see Lawrence
every time it plays
in 70 millimeter in Los Angeles,
which is once or twice a year
without fail.
Due west.
[Drew] Even so, it took a long time for me
to realize that the film is ultimately
about the importance of letting go
of the idea of being liked.
Lawrence needs approval.
He needs to be right.
He needs to be liked.
But he sees that he's in a position to do
something no one else has ever done,
and he sees it as a call to greatness.
In recognizing the importance
of his own actions, he also recognizes
that he can't worry
about what anyone thinks.
He has to harden himself to scorn
and hatred if he's going to be great.
Lawrence knows that he could be loved.
But he knows that there's more
he can do if he's willing to be hated.
T.E. Lawrence only truly becomes
Lawrence of Arabia
when he abandons all concern
with being liked.
Well, what's the trick, then?
The trick, William Potter,
is not minding that it hurts.
[Drew] In the end,
empathy trumps sympathy.
One is earned,
and the other can be manipulated.
If you give your time to a movie,
you have the right to expect
that you will feel something
for the lead character, certainly.
Just remember,
it's okay if you don't like him.
Really.
[mystical music plays]
[film projector whirs]
[whistling music plays]
[dramatic music plays]
[Drew] Think of your favorite film.
Whatever it is, it doesn't matter.
Just think of the title.
For me, it's Lawrence of Arabia.
I love getting lost in it.
It's the biggest movie, and I love
seeing it on the biggest screen.
Forget virtual reality.
That's the hit that I'm chasing
every single time I'm in the theater.
[sweeping music plays]
My favorite film has changed
over the years.
I get excited about new things,
and sometimes old discoveries
grow over time.
It always comes back to Lawrence, though.
And part of the reason why is
the lead character, T.E. Lawrence.
He was a real person, of course,
but in the hands of director David Lean
and screenwriter Robert Bolt, he's also
a much-larger-than-life film character,
played by Peter O'Toole
to such remarkable effect
that the first-time film star
got nominated for Best Actor.
I know I'm not ordinary.
- That's not what I'm saying.
- All right.
I'm extraordinary.
What of it?
[Drew] The T.E. Lawrence in the film
is a man of vision.
He finds himself
at a crucial time and place in history,
both smart enough
and stupid enough to believe
that he can change that time and place.
That combination
is what it takes sometimes.
And sure enough, he does change history.
And in turn, history changes him
and not necessarily for the better.
There is darkness in the character
and monstrous weakness at times.
He's painfully human, and that is part
of what I find so compelling about him.
I killed two people.
One was a boy.
I led him into a quicksand.
The other was a man.
I had to execute him with my pistol.
There was something about it
I didn't like.
[man] Well, naturally.
No. Something else.
I enjoyed it.
[Drew] I think T.E. Lawrence
is one of the most interesting,
complicated, frustrating,
and recognizably flawed characters
I've ever seen in a film.
But I don't like him.
No prisoners! No prisoners!
[men shouting]
[Drew] I admire him. I think
he was great by many metrics,
but I wrestle with the idea
that I like him in any conventional sense,
and that's part of what
keeps me coming back.
It's one of the most slippery ingredients
in filmmaking.
How do you define likability?
How do you quantify it in a way
that you can reliably reproduce?
And so what? If I don't like T.E. Lawrence
as a character, does that even matter?
We're going to argue
that drama has very little to do
with what we like
or what makes us comfortable,
and that's part of the purpose of drama.
Storytelling cannot start
at "happily ever after."
And art is not just hanging out
with your friends on the couch.
Art's where we confront the things
that terrify or upset or traumatize us.
It's not just okay to tell stories
about characters we don't like.
It's crucial.
- [sergeant] What's your name, fat-body?
- [private] Leonard Lawrence, sir.
Lawrence? Lawrence what? Of Arabia?
Sir, no, sir!
I don't like the name Lawrence.
Only faggots and sailors
are called Lawrence.
I don't like your kind of people.
Like you?
Who the hell said I got to like you?
[man 1] Right now,
your likability is at 26%.
Clothes, hair, speaking style, likability
Likability.
[man 2] God, you are a piece of work.
Fuck you!
[laughs]
You're a funny guy.
I'm funny how? I mean, funny
like I'm clown? I amuse you?
[man 3] I don't like your jerk-off name.
I don't like your jerk-off face.
I don't like your jerk-off behavior.
And I don't like you, jerk-off.
I'm sorry, I wasn't listening.
Ow!
[Drew] As a critic,
I am constantly challenging myself
about why I love the things I do,
why I'm drawn to the films
I find most compelling.
There are times I am unsettled
by the feelings I have
about characters in movies.
And I love trying to unpack why that is.
I wanna be challenged by characters.
I want to feel strongly about them.
But I don't have
an overall need to like all of them.
Art is not an endorsement.
It's an exploration.
Some of the best art,
even in mainstream pop culture,
takes us to some very dark places.
I'm finished.
[Drew] One of the very first monsters
I ever found myself drawn to
while I sat there in the dark
was Michael Corleone.
Don't be afraid, Carlo. Come on,
you think I'd make my sister a widow?
[Drew] As an adult,
I don't like Michael Corleone.
But I understand
why I felt myself drawn to him.
He might be one of the richest characters
in American film.
The first two Godfather films,
which have to be considered
foundational, classic cinema,
tell the story
of how a good man slowly compromises
everything that matters
to him for his family
in order to become
a powerful murderer and thief.
[gun fires]
[chokes]
It's the death of decency.
By the end of the second film,
he's as dark and ruined a figure
as I can imagine.
He ends up unlikable to an extreme,
but I understand every step he takes
on that long slide into oblivion.
Do you expect me to let you
take my children from me?
Don't you know me?
Don't you know
that that's an impossibility,
that that could never happen?
That I'd use all my power to keep
something like that from happening?
[Drew] Michael begins the film
as the Corleone who got out.
He's the immigrant's
American dream incarnate.
The child who's more successful,
more integrated, more American.
That's my family, Kay. It's not me.
You don't come to Las Vegas and talk
to a man like Moe Green like that!
[Michael] Fredo, you're my older brother,
and I love you.
[gun fires]
But don't ever take sides
with anyone against the family again.
[Drew] By the end of the film,
Michael's fall seems complete,
culminating in one
of the most emotionally brutal
but simple images possible,
to close the door on everything
that made him decent.
It's the second film
where Coppola and his collaborators
tested the boundaries
of what we'll accept from a lead.
I'll talk to Fredo.
[Drew] John Cazale's Fredo is a rat,
a piece of garbage who betrays his family,
but he's also driven
by a twisted desire to be accepted
and loved in the same ways
as his brothers.
I'm your older brother, Mike,
and I was stepped over!
- [Michael] That's the way Pop wanted it.
- It ain't the way Iwanted it!
I can handle things! I'm smart!
Not like everybody says, like dumb!
I'm smart, and I want respect!
[Drew] Michael's fury at being betrayed
by Fredo is understandable,
especially in a film
that is as focused on the idea
of family as the center of the world
and honor as the thing
that drives every choice.
By the time Michael gives Fredo
the literal kiss of death
in the film's most powerful moment,
neither one of the characters is defined
in any way by whether we like them.
I know it was you, Fredo.
You broke my heart.
You broke my heart.
Take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat,
or I'll give it to you through the door.
Listen, handsome. Open up.
Well, he's getting too big.
Yeah, well, he won't get any bigger.
Yeah, this is what I get
for liking a guy too much.
You found someone you like better.
You might as well come down, Jarrett.
There's no one left but you.
Here's my answer, you dirty
[guns firing]
Get out of my way, Johnny. I'm gonna spit.
[Drew] America has always been
positively dizzy for criminals on film.
From our earliest films to the silent era
and straight in to the first blast
of studio talkies,
gangsters were big business.
I ain't so tough.
[Drew] When the Depression hit,
there was a Robin Hood romanticism
to them on screen,
and America seemed obsessed
with real criminals in the streets,
with the press often treating them
like rock stars.
Makes sense that a generation later,
they would make
genuinely rebellious movies
about those same criminals.
Hey, boy, what you doing
with my mama's car?
[Drew] By the time we got
into the newly explicit visual language
of Bonnie and Clyde,
it may have felt brand-new,
but it was part of a cycle
where we grapple
with our love of transgression
by destroying the characters we love
precisely because they transgress
in ways we can't.
[man]Hold it, hold it!
Hey.
- [guns firing]
- [screams]
[guns continue firing]
[gunfire stops]
[Drew] Bonnie and Clyde was
a point on a larger continuum,
a sort of perpetually doomed collision
between lovers on a one-way ride to hell.
These characters may seem like they love
each other or they're driven by desire,
but the truth is
that death is what really drives them.
So you go on home,
and you sit in your room,
and you think, "Now, when and how
am I ever gonna get away from this?"
And now you know.
[Drew] And some of our greatest cinema
challenges the things we like or love,
daring us to really confront
our own hearts
in the safety of that darkened theater.
With The Godfather, Coppola was interested
in looking at the real moral cost
of that powerful fantasy,
and he attached a price tag
to a life of crime
that seemed too high to pay.
The last thing he cared about
was making you like Michael,
and it's the last thing
Michael cares about as well.
[breathing heavily]
[no audible dialogue]
Maybe the greatest thing
about the wave of filmmaking
that hit the American mainstream
like a tidal wave in the late 1960s
and early 1970s was the way
filmmakers seemed determined to bring us
a brand-new kind of protagonist,
as they explored
the ugliest corners of human nature.
I gave you the prize years ago, Martha.
There isn't an abomination award going
that you haven't won.
I swear, if you existed, I'd divorce you.
[Drew] Is there anyone alive who watched
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
and thought, "Wow, I would really like
to have them over for dinner."
You still look like you have
a pretty good body now too. Is that right?
Martha, decency forbid
Shut up.
Yes, he has a very firm body.
Have you?
[Drew] The movie's wildly entertaining,
and with films like that,
it often leads audiences
to wonder if there's something wrong
with the filmmaker or, even worse,
wrong with them.
How can you watch a film
about someone so awful,
so morally bankrupt
and have such a good time?
Be careful, Martha.
I'll rip you to pieces.
You are not man enough.
You haven't the guts!
[Drew] It's because filmmakers can put us
in the skin of people
who do terrible things,
and they can make us feel like
we might cross those same lines.
They can even give us permission to do so
with that safe remove
of "it's just a movie."
Are you behind on your credit card bills?
Good! Pick up the phone and start dialing.
I want you to deal with
your problems by becoming rich!
[all] Yeah!
[Drew] If there's
any major American filmmaker
whose body of work
challenges the entire idea
that we have to like our lead characters,
it's Martin Scorsese.
He has built his long and storied career
on films about people who are driven
by passions that consume them.
And he's never seemed terribly concerned
with whether or not we like
his lead characters.
- You botherin' me about a steak, huh?
- [woman] That's great!
You botherin' me about a steak?
[Drew] In 1980's Raging Bull,
Jake LaMotta, played by Robert De Niro,
is barely functional as a person.
And part of what compels us to watch
is the magic trick
of his physical transformation
between the first half of the film
and the second.
[Jake] I coulda had class.
I coulda been a contender.
I coulda been somebody
instead of a bum, which is what I am.
[announcer] LaMotta drives
both hands to the head.
[Drew] LaMotta is only alive
when he is hurting other people.
He has a raw, brute gift for it.
And he's rewarded for it.
[Jake] You fuck my wife?
How could you ask me a question like that?
Why don't you tell me, huh?
Did you fuck my brother? Huh?
- Get off me, you fat pig!
- Did you?
[Drew] There's no kindness in him,
and I'm not sure the film
makes the case for him
as anything but a beast,
flailing in the dark.
[screaming]
Oh, you motherfuck
[screaming]
[cries]
[Drew] There is beauty in Scorsese's film,
and there's
even dark, horrible humor to it,
but there's nothing
that even remotely indicates
we're supposed to like Jake LaMotta.
I've done a lot of bad things, Joey.
Maybe it's coming back to me.
[knock on door]
[man] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Let me introduce myself.
My name is Rupert Pupkin.
Now, I know the name
doesn't mean very much to you,
but it means an awful lot to me.
That's "Rupert Pupkin."
Pupkin. P-U-P-K-I-N.
People often misspell it
and mispronounce it.
- [man] What is your real name?
- That's my real name. Rupert Pupkin.
[Drew] Their next collaboration,
King of Comedy, was a movie
that predicted the way celebrity culture
in America would metastasize.
Let's do something crazy tonight.
I wanna be crazy! I wanna be nuts!
[Rupert] A lot of you
are probably wondering
why Jerry isn't with us tonight.
Well, I'll tell you.
The fact is, he's tied up.
And I'm the one who tied him.
[Drew] It was clear that Scorsese cared
as little about whether we liked Rupert
as he cared about whether we liked
the victim of his attentions.
I had this conversation in my head.
This is beautiful.
- Did it always turn out this way?
- Yeah, it did. And
[Drew] Jerry Lewis played a character
that took the most acidic rumors
about Johnny Carson,
ran them through the ugly truth
about Jerry Lewis,
and came up with something
so intensely unlikable
that it almost feels like a dare.
You gonna open the goddamn door?
Mr. Langford.
- Standing out there eight minutes.
- Sorry, sir.
- I told you to call to get rid of you!
- Yeah, all right, I made a mistake.
So did Hitler!
So what's got into you?
I'm breakin' your balls a little bit.
Now go home
and get your fucking shine box.
- [glass shatters]
- Motherfuckin' mutt!
You you fuckin' piece of shit!
[man] Get the door.
[Drew] One of the biggest movies
in Scorsese's career
came in the early '90s with Goodfellas.
Based on the true story of Henry Hill,
a lifelong mobster
who rolled over on his fellow criminals
when he was finally caught,
it is a powerfully made movie, seductive,
and there is a charisma to the way
he presents this world
of scumbags and murderers.
[Henry] For us,
to live any other way was nuts.
If we wanted something, we just took it.
If anyone complained twice,
they got hit so bad, believe me,
they never complained again.
[Drew] Even as we watch these
career pieces of shit eat one another
Oh no
[Drew]Scorsese makes us feel
the same pull that Henry Hill felt,
the same pull
that so many other filmmakers
have indulged.
Scorsese knows that he doesn't have
anything to worry about
in terms of whether we like
his characters in Goodfellas,
because he knows we'll be riveted
by the vicarious details of this life
that we'll never experience for ourselves.
- It's gonna be a good summer.
- [all laugh]
[Drew] If there's any film of Scorsese's
that best exemplifies
how little it matters
that we like the lead in a film,
it is his early masterpiece Taxi Driver,
a piercing study of what leads
a lonely man on the margins of society
to commit an act of overheated violence.
[man] All the animals come out at night.
Whores, skunk pussies, buggers,
queens, fairies, dopers, junkies.
Sick, venal.
Someday a real rain'll come
and wash all the scum off the streets.
[Drew] Travis Bickle is so socially bent
that his idea of a first date
with campaign worker Betsy,
played by Cybill Shepherd,
is to take her to a porn theater
in Times Square.
You gotta be kidding.
What?
This is a dirty movie.
[Drew] He starts the film damaged,
and little by little,
we watch as his tenuous relationship
with reality slips away.
He becomes focused
on a teenage prostitute next,
but she's uninterested in being saved,
and nothing she says or does
makes any sense to him.
[Travis] I'm square?
You're the one that's square, man.
I don't go screw and fuck with a bunch
of killers and junkies the way you do.
You call that being hip?
What world you from?
[Drew] Bickle retreats into a fantasy
in which he sees a way to become
powerful through violence.
Whether focused on the political candidate
of the woman he wants
or on the pimp of the girl
he wants to save,
the violence is simply a way
of giving Travis a voice in the world,
a chance for him to write his name
large enough for everyone to finally see.
[Travis] Listen, you fuckers,
you screwheads,
here is a man who would not take it
anymore, who would not let
Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads,
here is a man
who would not take it anymore,
a man who stood up against the scum,
the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit.
Here is someone who stood up.
[Drew] There's nothing
about Travis that I like
and nothing I feel like I'm supposed
to like, but I do feel for him,
because Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader
dare to slip so fully into his skin.
The film builds to what any other movie
would offer up as a heroic ending,
when all we're really watching
is a crazy loner murdering a pimp
because of some strange,
possessive fantasy he had
about an underage sex worker.
Get the fuck outta here, man.
Get outta here.
Suck on this.
- Ooh, ooh!
- Hey!
[screaming]
[woman screams]
[man groaning]
[screams] Don't shoot him!
[gun fires]
[Drew] He's a violent man
in a seedy world,
and the only reason he ends
the film driving his cab again
is because he killed the right person.
It's a hell of a message at what felt
like a culturally volatile moment.
Clearly there is hunger
from some audiences
for stories about characters
who are inspirational or aspirational,
and fiction can easily become a way
to try on a life you wish you could live
or one you wish you were strong enough
or good enough to live.
But we're often drawn to stories
of darkness or dysfunction
precisely because we want
to understand these people
who seem so broken or wrong to us.
The real question we're asking is this,
should you try to make
every character likable?
Would it fix every film to do so?
You may think we're exaggerating,
but look at what happens
when you flatten out
an interesting character
because you're afraid
he's not likable enough.
Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities
was a scathing satire.
And in the novel, Sherman McCoy is
a self-anointed master of the universe,
a Wall Street banker who's supposed to be
emblematic of an entire class of Americans
who Wolfe observed.
The moneyed, upper-class assholes
who pass money and influence down
from generation to generation.
Let's not lose our composure
over a few hundred million dollars.
- Back up.
- [woman] I am!
[Drew] Sherman McCoy is in a car
with his mistress when they panic
and run over a young Black man,
killing him with their car.
It's a pretty insurmountable obstacle
when it comes to liking someone or not.
How? They don't have the full number.
They don't have a witness.
[Drew] The movie committed
many of the worst sins of adaptation.
Dropping subplots, botching tone,
playing satire straight by mistake.
But by far, the biggest misstep came
at the casting stage.
It seems insane to cast Tom Hanks
as a blond, Waspy, old-money monster,
but there was a reason
the studio insisted.
In a film that is about such awful people,
casting Hanks lets you play
both sides against the middle.
I have protected you, Maria.
I have been a gentleman about this.
I have done my best to keep your name
out of the papers. You have to help me.
[Drew] Bruce Willis plays the narrator
of the book and the movie,
and his identity as a British expat
living off the teat of America,
even as he sent home reports
on how horrible it was,
seemed annihilated
by that casting decision.
Director Brian De Palma seemed determined
to find ways to make these characters
unlikable by design, palatable by casting.
And in the end,
even Hanks couldn't pull it off.
- [reporter] Answer the question!
- I'm going to jail, aren't I?
[Drew] When we're sitting in the dark,
wide-open to these characters,
we don't ultimately care about "likable."
We just wanna be interested,
and we want something that feels honest,
something we recognize as real.
I've gotten into the habit of taking
a new person to see Lawrence
every time it plays
in 70 millimeter in Los Angeles,
which is once or twice a year
without fail.
Due west.
[Drew] Even so, it took a long time for me
to realize that the film is ultimately
about the importance of letting go
of the idea of being liked.
Lawrence needs approval.
He needs to be right.
He needs to be liked.
But he sees that he's in a position to do
something no one else has ever done,
and he sees it as a call to greatness.
In recognizing the importance
of his own actions, he also recognizes
that he can't worry
about what anyone thinks.
He has to harden himself to scorn
and hatred if he's going to be great.
Lawrence knows that he could be loved.
But he knows that there's more
he can do if he's willing to be hated.
T.E. Lawrence only truly becomes
Lawrence of Arabia
when he abandons all concern
with being liked.
Well, what's the trick, then?
The trick, William Potter,
is not minding that it hurts.
[Drew] In the end,
empathy trumps sympathy.
One is earned,
and the other can be manipulated.
If you give your time to a movie,
you have the right to expect
that you will feel something
for the lead character, certainly.
Just remember,
it's okay if you don't like him.
Really.
[mystical music plays]