The Annotation Project: The Fault in Our Stars

Download this here.  BCI tomorrow.  Maybe the final BCI!

Believe Care Invest: Angela's Ashes

Malachy McCourt Sr. flees Northern Ireland with a price on his head, supposedly for work with the IRA, shows up in America, impregnates Angela Sheehan and has to marry her. Cut to three years later, Frank gets off a see saw quickly, which makes his brother fall off and cut his lip. Frank is sent home where he sees a dog has been run over in the street and died. His brother and dog’s blood looks the same, causing him to fear he’s killed his brother.

Why we might find Frank hard to identify with: He says in the third paragraph: “People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.” So here he’s confronting the book’s big problem: His is a rather familiar story. The father is a typical Irish drunk father and the mother is a typical Irish long-suffering mother. He’s saying, look, if you want a surprising story, don’t read this. This will be a typical story, albeit especially wretched. The only reason to read this will because it is well-written. It helps a lot that it eventually won the Pulitzer Prize, but those who read it before then just had to do it on word of mouth.

Believe:

• A fictional story would have the immigrants come to America, burn their ships, and have to survive a trial by fire. We don’t tend to like stories in which heroes retrace their steps. But that means you can do it a memoir and it’ll instantly feel real, because it’s the sort of the thing fiction wouldn’t do.
• McCourt’s an Irish writer, so of course we’re awash in bodily fluids of all types. The “odor of piss” is never far away. We also get lots of odd tastes and sensations. Speaking of the coughs caused by River Shannon, he says “to ease the catarrh you boiled onions in milk blackened with pepper; for the congested passages you made a paste of boiled flour and nettles, wrapped it in a rag, and slapped it, sizzling, on the chest.”
• Whenever their father stumbles home drunk, he wakes the boys and makes them swear to die for Ireland, then sings songs about Irish martyrs. We get song lyrics, which we always like.
• Lots of interesting language and euphemisms: Franks mother and father have a “knee-trembler” which puts her in “an interesting condition.”

Care:

• The poverty is crushing. At age five he doesn’t know what a bowl is because his family has never owned one.
• McCourt the fact that his baby sister Margaret will die at some point, but not that her twin brothers will die also die as toddlers. He’s parceling out the misery as much as we can take at a time.

Invest:

• Shortly after this, he’ll start getting in fights, fighting to defend his own kid logic, like when someone else sings a song that he thinks belongs to his dad.

Strength / Flaw: Scrappy / Fights over things he shouldn’t fight about

The Annotation Project: Angela's Ashes

You can download this here. BCI tomorrow!

 

Believe Care Invest: Rear Window

L. B. “Jeff” Jefferies has gotten himself hurt taking a photo in the middle of a race track. Now his leg is in a full cast and he’s cooped up at home, passing the time spying on several neighbors in across the courtyard. His insurance company nurse Stella visits and scolds him as a peeping tom

Why Jeff might be hard to identify with: He complains he’s turning into “a lonesome and bitter old man.” He doesn’t want to marry Grace Kelly! Who can identify with that?? “If she was only ordinary… I need a woman who’s willing to go anywhere, and do anything, and love it.”

Believe

• Distinctive object: cast.
• Stubborn. Doesn’t want to get married.
• Photos turn his past into objects.

Care

• Stuck in a sweltering apartment: “Six weeks sitting in a two room apartment with nothing to do but look out the window at the neighbors”
• He gets a tip about a great assignment he can’t have.
• His nurse has a withering summation of his personality.

Invest

• Distinctive tool: camera.
• We see amazing photos he’s taken, putting him at the center of danger
• Resourceful, figures out how to scratch his itch with a wooden spoon.

Strength / Flaw: Risk-taking and attentive / Commitment-phobic and disrespectful of other’s privacy

Believe Care Invest: The Little Mermaid

Sailors on the sea tell a young man about the mermaids below. Then we meet some merpeople having a concert, but the one who is supposed to be making her debut isn’t there. Instead, we meet Ariel as she searches a shipwreck for human artifacts with her friend Flounder the fish. She finds a fork and a pipe. When a shark chases her, she goes back to get the objects, putting herself in more danger. She tricks the shark into getting its head stuck in an anchor. Then she shows her friend Scuttle the bird the objects, and he makes up lies about what they do. She remembers the concert and goes back to get yelled at by her father. Meanwhile, we meet Urusula the sea-witch who is plotting against her.

Why Ariel might be hard to identify with: No reason. She’s adorable.

Believe

• We hear about the legend of her and her culture before we meet her.
• She has predictable behavior. No one is that surprised when she doesn’t show up for her recital.
• She naïve (and she has a limited perspective): She believes what Scuttle tells her about the objects she finds.
• She has friends, Flounder and Scuttle.
• She loves and collects objects: the fork and the pipe.
• She has an “I want” song.

Care

• Her father is angry with her, and banishes her from doing the one thing she longs to do. “I am never, never to hear of you going to the surface again, is that clear??”
• She feels terrible that she forgot about the concert.
• An evil witch-octopus is plotting against her. “She may be the key to Triton’s undoing.”

Invest

• She’s brave, facing off against a shark to get what she wants.
• She’s the most talented of her singers, though she doesn’t care and doesn’t bother to show up. “She has the most beautiful voice, if only she’d show up for rehearsals once in a while.”

Strength / Flaw: Brave / Reckless

Believe Care Invest: Moana

Young Moana is told the story of the demigod Maui stealing the heart of Te Fiti then losing it to the sea, then she discovers she can control the water. She grows up and she’s trained to take over as chief. The fish are going away so Moana wants to go beyond the reef, but her dad won’t allow it. She considers putting a rock on a stack of rocks that will symbolize that she’s accepted her chiefdom, but instead she gets in a boat and tries to go beyond the reef.

Why Moana might be hard to identify with: She has no friends other than animals that don’t talk.

Believe

• She has a complex culture and mythology, including songs and dances.
• There’s a prophesy that someone will save their village, but it’s not necessarily about her.
• We see the complex economy of the village, with 20 different jobs that have to get done.
• She’s stubborn. Her grandmother sings, “You are your father’s daughter / Stubbornness and pride / Mind what he says, but remember / You may hear a voice inside / And if the voice starts to whisper / To follow the farthest star / Moana that voice inside is who you are.”
• She’s got objects representing her choices: Putting stones on the stack represents becoming chief.

Care

• She’s not allowed to do what she was born to do. “We have one rule, a rule that keeps us safe.” She’s supposedly been made chief, but she can’t do what needs to be done. “There’s nothing beyond our reef but storms and rough seas.” “Motunui is paradise, who would want to go anywhere else?”
• She says of her dad: “He doesn’t get me.”

Invest

• She has superpowers. She can control the ocean water.
• She’s got (limited) decision-making ability: “You are the next great chief of our people.”
• She’s handy and resourceful: She can fix a leak in the ceiling of a hut.
• She makes wise decisions on tree planting and fishing grounds.
• She’s kind: She tries to protect a turtle trying to make it to the sea. 

 Strength / Flaw: Adventurous / Disobedient (Which isn’t really a flaw, so she’s not really flawed)

Believe Care Invest: Moonlight

Young Chiron is chased by kids trying to beat him with sticks and takes refuge in an empty apartment used by drug users. He’s found there by a drug dealer named Juan who tries to help him but Chiron won’t speak. Chiron stays with Juan overnight and then finally tells his him where he lives in the morning. Juan brings Chiron home to his mother, who works at a hospital. She’s glad to see he’s home. He then plays soccer with his friends. The next day, Juan teaches him to swim.

Why Chiron might be hard to identify with: His silence is like a super-power in some ways, but it does make him hard to get to know.

Believe

• He has an appetite. “You don’t talk much but you damn sure can eat.”
• He has big secrets. He won’t tell anybody anything.
• He has a friend, Kevin.

Care

• Lots of kids try to beat him up.
• His nickname is “Little”. He’s a little guy.
• The neighborhood kids are so poor they play a soccer-like game with a ball made of paper.
• We will eventually find out his mother is an addict.

Invest

• He’s got the power of silence.
• He’s wary.  He’s perceptive about Juan’s and his mother’s secrets.  
• He does occasionally fight back (though he picks the wrong occasions to do so) 

Strength / Flaw: Resilience / Doesn’t accept help

Believe Care Invest: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Riggan quit playing the superhero Birdman twenty years ago, now he’s on Broadway, writing, directing and starring in a play based on the stories of Raymond Carver. He seems to have telekinesis, but he may just be imagining it. He hates the performance of his co-star, then a light falls on the co-star’s head. Later, he’s being interviewed by jerk critics, then he finds out his dream co-star Mike is available.

Why Riggan might be hard to identify with: He’s sour. He’s weak. He’s a jerk.

Believe

• He’s just in his tighty-whities when we meet him. He keeps it real.
• He keeps a motto on his mirror: “A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.” But then we see he’s gotten a note from his assistant which ends up sitting next to it: “They didn’t have whatever you wanted.”
• He’s got a Birdman poster on the wall, turning his past into an object. Later, he throws it out.
• His doubts are personified as the voice of Birdman in his head.
• It’s real time (with hidden time-jumps) so it feels real.
• He’s got a toupee externalizing his insecurities.

Care

• He feels embarrassed that he gets a workman’s name wrong.
• He’s running late.
• All of the actors he wants for his co-star aren’t available because they’re off doing superhero movies.
• A reporter asks him, “Are you at all afraid that people will say you’re doing this play to battle the impression that you’re a washed up superhero?”
• At first he’s worried that a bad co-star will ruin his play, but when the co-star is replaced by a better actor, he worries the new actor will upstage him.

Invest

• He seemingly has superpowers (though he may be imagining it). We first meet him levitating in his apartment. Later, he seems to mentally make a light fall on his fellow actor. He can turn off a TV with his mind.
• He’s a perfectionist.
• He follows his dreams: “Why would someone go from the playing the lead in a comic book franchise to adapting Raymond Carver for the stage?”
• He’s ambitious: Mike says, “You wrote this adaptation? And you’re directing and starring in this adaptation? That’s ambitious.”

Strength / Flaw: Perfectionist / Riddled with doubts

Believe Care Invest: Twin Peaks

In the first 34 minutes of this episode, one girl is found dead by the edge of a lake. After we’ve seen the whole town process this, another girl, unable to speak, enters town across a railroad bridge that crosses state lines. That brings in the FBI.

Why Agent Cooper might be hard to identify with: We don’t meet him until 34 minutes into the pilot! After that, he seems a little tetched.

Believe

• He described his lunch into his ever-present tape recorder: “Tuna fish sandwich, slice of cherry pie and a cup of coffee: Damn good food! Diane, if you ever get up here, that cherry pie is worth a stop.” He also says, “I’ve to find out what kind of trees these are. They’re really something.”
• His recorder is his talisman and it allows him to externalize his thoughts.
• He’s tone deaf, which always indicates a strong personality (stronger than the tone in the room). He’s talking about the dead girl and the girl found alive, but he can’t hide his excitement about the trees while he’s talking about them. When Truman tries to bring him back to the gravity of the situation, Cooper still gets a big smile when he says, “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Care

• Not much. He’s enjoying himself immensely. I guess you feel a little bit for him in that he has to put up with the local hicks. The light in the autopsy room is flickering.

Invest

• He takes charge right away. “You’ll be working for me.”
• He knows what he’s looking for, knowing to examine the girls’ fingernails. He’s a total badass when he shoves the tweezers way up into the fingernail to pull out a typed letter “R”. This is a super-cop.

Strength / Flaw: Enthusiastic detective / Over-enthusiastic about everything, in an unsettling way.

Believe Care Invest: Modern Family

Okay, I’m addicted. I’m doing six a day now! I’ve gone insane.

We meet three branches of the Pritchett family, not realizing that it’s one big family. Phil and Claire are raising Haley, Alex and Luke. Haley has a boy named Dylan coming over, and Luke just shot Alex with a BB gun. Claire orders Phil to shoot Luke. He tries to back out, but ends up accidentally shooting Luke, Dylan and himself. Meanwhile, patriarch Jay has a passionate new wife named Gloria, and they’re raising a boy named Manny together, and have to deal his desire to submit a love poem to an older girl. Finally, Mitchell and his husband Cameron have adopted a baby girl from Vietnam, and Mitchell refuses to tell his family. Cameron invites the family over and they all advice Mitchell against adopting before they realize he already has, but then they’re all very loving to the baby.

Why Claire might be hard to identify with: When her son shoots her daughter with a BB gun, she says that her husband now has to shoot her son. She writes “Shoot Luke” on the calendar.

Believe

• She’s got a compelling ironic backstory: She’s a strict mom because she used to be a bad girl. “I have, uh, seen this little show before: Lying on the bed with a tall senior. One minute you’re just friends, watching ‘Falcon Crest’, and the next you’re lying underneath the air hockey table with your bra in your pocket.”

Care

• She’s the only one taking charge of the kids. She tells the interviewer “If Haley never wakes up on a beach in Florida, half-naked, I’ve done my job.” Phil says “Our job”. She says, “Right. I’ve done our job.”

Invest

• She’s perceptive about what her daughter’s up to.
• She has to shoulder twice the responsibility because of her irresponsible husband.

Strength / Flaw: Responsible / Stick in the mud

Why Phil might be hard to identify with: He weakly goes along with the plan to shoot his son. A little racist: he says of his new Vietnamese niece: “Lily, isn’t that going to be hard for her to say?” Won’t let his much-smaller son score in basketball.

Believe

• He’s bursting with personality like a big kid.
• Not as cool as he thinks he is. “I’m the cool dad, that’s my thang. I’m hip. I surf the web.”
• Tone deaf: Can’t help smiling even when he’s shooting his son.

Care

• His self-identity as the the cool dad is threatened: He is expected to shoot his son. “I thought you were my friend!”
• His daughter is bringing over an older boy, and he tries to climb up the steps to intimidate him, but he slips and throws his back out. The boy must pick him up and set him down on the couch.
• He accidentally shoots two people and himself.

Invest

• Not really. We love him, but strictly as a lovable buffoon, not as someone whom we would invest any hopes that he would do anything right.

Strength / Flaw: Friendly / Irresponsible

Why Jay might be hard to identify with: Has no patience for his sensitive stepson, and he’s homophobic to his own son: “If Cam comes out here with boobs, I’m leaving.” A little racist: About his Asian granddaughter: “Let me see the little pot sticker.”

Believe

• Believable situation we don’t see much of on screen: Wealthy man with inappropriately young wife.

Care

• Has to watch another man hit on his wife, then has a hard time getting up to confront him.
• Has to listen to his wife talk about how much handsomer her previous husband was
• Mistaken for a mall walker.

Invest

• Loving in his own way towards his stepson. “The only reason I’m hard on Manny is just because I don’t wanna see him make a fool of himself.”

Strength / Flaw: Plainspoken / Homophobic and racist

Why Gloria might be hard to identify with: We’re used to being judgmental to women who seemingly partially married for money.

Believe

• Her broken English is endearing: Stop being a gloomy goose.
• She’s got a strong personality: She’s passionate.
• She’s tone-deaf, going on about how much sex she had with her previous husband.

Care

• She loves her dreamy son unconditionally, but she’s frustrated that he isn’t as committed to soccer as she is.
• She has to put up with being hit on and people not respecting her husband.

Invest

• She’s a wise and loving mom.

Strength / Flaw: Passionate / inconsiderate of her husband’s feelings

Why Cameron might be hard to identify with: He’s prejudiced: He says they considered a lesbian surrogate, but “then we figured they’re already mean enough, can you imagine one of them pregnant? No thank you. Ick.”

Believe

• Strong personality: When he plays music while announcing his baby, Mitchell says, “Just turn it off”. He says, “I can’t turn it off, it’s who I am.”

Care

• Husband is judgmental of his weight.
• His father-in-law insults him. Assuming Mitchell and Cameron have broken up, he tells Mitchell, “He was a bit of a drama queen.”

Invest

• Brave. Only he has the bravery to face Mitchell’s family.
• His insistence on a sport-guy chest bump is shows that he’s manly in his own way.

Strength / Flaw: Emotional openness and bravery / Drama Queen

Why Mitchell might be hard to identify with: It can be a little off-putting when a character is oversensitive to non-existent slights.

Believe

• Strong personality: Uptight

Care

• Gives a speech accusing people of prejudice that they weren’t guilty of, then feels awful.
• Mortified by the mural of him that Cameron has had painted on the wall.
• Before he can finish announcing that he has a daughter, his family tries to dissuade him: “You’re a little uptight, kids bring chaos, and you don’t handle it well.”

Invest

• Social acuity: He’s figured out that his father always announces before he comes into a room to make sure he never sees Mitchell and Cameron kiss.
• Concerned for his daughter.

Strength / Flaw: Witty / Judgmental

Believe Care Invest: Supernatural

We see Sam and Dean’s mother get killed by a demon when Sam is a baby and Dean a little boy. 20 years later, Sam’s in college interviewing for law school while Dean hunts demons with their father. Their dad disappears, so Dean convinces Sam to come with him and try to find him.

Why Sam might be hard to identify with: He’s the stick in the mud who’s not sure if he should rescue his dad.

Believe

• He has a legacy (demon hunting) that contrasts with his goal (law school), tearing him in two directions.

Care

• Watched his mother burn to death and his house burn down as a baby.
• He has a problematic dad: “When I told dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45”
• He’s estranged from his brother and father (and his dad’s gone missing).
• His brother hits on his girlfriend.
• He has a deadline: “I have to get back first thing Monday.”

Invest

• Just scored 174 on his LSAT
• He’s able to hold his own against an intruder (who turns out to be his brother.)

Strength / Flaw: Smart / Unadventurous

Why Dean might be hard to identify with: He wants to take away Sam’s chance for a better life. He hits on Dean’s girlfriend in front of him.

Believe

• He’s got a strong personality. “What, a job interview? Skip it!”

Care

• Mother murdered, had to raise baby brother.
• His dad (and demon-hunting partner) is missing.
• He feels abandoned by his smarter brother.

Invest

• He’s able to hold his own in a fight vs. his brother.
• He’s a hero. His brother complains about how they can’t find the demon that killed their mother, so they just “kill everything we can find.” Dean says, “Save a lot of people doing it, too.”
• He’s got an awesome car with a trunk full of unique-looking weapons. 

 Strength / Flaw: Confident / Inconsiderate

Believe Care Invest: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Katara narrates a long montage of the history of the Avatar and the war. Sokka and Katara are fishing when icebergs smash their boat. Katara gets mad and her water-bending powers split open an iceberg. A magical boy is frozen inside. They realize he has air-bending powers but don’t realize yet he’s the avatar, capable of all four types of bending. They take him back to their village, where he goes penguin-sledding with Katara and avoids talking about his past. Then the fire nation attacks their village.

Why Aang might be hard to identify with: He’s a little careless: He doesn’t care that his flying bison covered Sokka in snot. He’s kind of a screw-up: He gets his tongue stuck to his flying stick.

Believe

• He has an irrepressible personality. As soon as he wakes up he says to Katara, “I need to ask you something… Please… Come closer… Will you go penguin sledding with me?”
• He has a complicated series of tattoos that individuate him.
• He has a bizarre pet.
• He has secrets that he’s keeping.

Care

• He’s lost everything.
• We see brief flashbacks to some traumatic event.

Invest

• He’s got even more superpowers than other characters with superpowers.
• He’s got a cool glider thing.

Strength / Flaw: Irrepressible / Irresponsible

Why Katara might be hard to identify with: She’s less goofy and more serious than the boys, so she’s the least fun character.

Believe

• She has a bizarre backstory and a unique culture.
• She’s got an odd signature hairstyle
• She has beliefs: “I still believe that, somehow the Avatar will return to save the world.”

Care

• She’s ignored: Her brother won’t look when she’s using her powers and he’s generally boorish toward her.
• Her mother’s dead and her father’s been gone for two years.
• Her boat gets smashed.

Invest

• She’s got water bending powers.

Strength / Flaw: Responsible / No fun


Why Sokka might be hard to identify with: He’s sexist: “Leave it to a girl to screw things up.” He’s unadventurous: “I’m just saying that if I had weird powers, I’d keep it to myself.” He’s unsure if they should get involved with Aang.

Believe

• Like Katara, he has a bizarre backstory and a unique culture.
• Like Katara, he’s got an odd signature hairstyle.
• A man of appetites: “Mmm… I can already smell it cooking.”

Care

• Classic ironic humiliation: “Watch and learn, Katara, this is how you catch a fish.” Then she gets one and he doesn’t.
• “Why is it that every time you play with water, I get soaked?”
• Like Katara, his mother’s dead and his father gone for two years
• Every hero has superpowers but him, which understandably gives him a complex.
• He gets called out on making muscles every time he sees his reflection in the water.
• His boat gets smashed.
• He gets covered in snot
• The “men” he commands in the village are all little boys

Invest

• He has adult responsibilities in the village.
• He hunts food with a spear
• He has a special war club
• When they get attacked, we see he’s a natural leader.

Strength / Flaw: Leadership qualities / Jerky

Believe Care Invest: The Simpsons

How insatiable am I for these things? I’ve started looking at some pilots where the hero is not clear and doing BCI for multiple heroes. We’ll start looking at a few of those today…

In the “Simpsons” pilot, Homer and Marge Simpson attend a Christmas pageant where their daughter Lisa does a torch dance and their son Bart gets in trouble for singing “Jingle Bells Batman Smells”. At home the kids present their Christmas lists and Homer hangs lights outside. They’ve saved up money for Christmas, but Bart gets a tattoo and they have to spend all the money removing it. Homer is told at work he won’t get a bonus this year, so he takes work as a mall Santa to afford Christmas. He gets paid only $13 and takes it to the track.

Why Homer might be hard to identify with: He has no patience for his kids’ Christmas pageant. He’s interviewing to be a mall Santa and they ask if he likes children: “What do you mean? All the time? Even when they’re nuts?” Takes his kids’ Christmas money to the dog track.

Believe

• He has secret honor: He won’t admit he’s not getting a Christmas bonus and tries to take care of the problem by earning the money in secret.
• He has universal envy of his neighbor.

Care

• His kids don’t respect him.
• His neighbor’s Christmas display is better than his.
• He gets shot at when stealing a Christmas tree.

Invest

• Works extra hard, dedicated to family

Strength / Flaw: (Not really flip-sides) Hard-working and loves family / Buffoonish screw-up

Why Bart might be hard to identify with: Not much reason. He’s pretty awesome.

Believe

• He gets a distinctive marking: a tattoo (then loses it)
• He has a distinctive way of talking: “I’m Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?”

Care

• His sisters keep touching his tattoo removal spot.
• His cat died.
• He has poor parents, has to watch neighbor kids with more presents.

Invest

• He’s rebellious.
• He’s resourceful. He talks his way into the tattoo parlor to get a tattoo.
• He’s brave: He accepts a dare to be the one who takes off Santa’s beard.

Strength / Flaw: Rebellious / Lawless

Why Lisa might be hard to identify with: She’s a goody two shoes

Believe

• She has things she wants: She wants a pony
• She has things she loves: She loves kiddie cartoons

Care

• Her cat died.
• She’s told she can’t get a pony
• Homer is her model of manhood.

Invest

• We first meet her doing a Polynesian dance while waving torches: She’s pretty badass.
• She’s clearly the smartest.

Strength / Flaw: Precocious / annoying

Believe Care Invest: 30 Rock

Okay, guys, I know you’re thinking, “It’s nice that Matt’s posting every day, but damn there’s been a lot of these. When will it end?” The answer is “No time soon.” The book is due in 28 days. I’ve got a first draft done (which I won’t submit), but it just doesn’t have enough examples in it. I’m mentioning the same things over and over. I had thought about asking you guys to crowd-source some specific examples I need, but I figured that no, first I just need more examples, then I can crowd-source, possibly after the second draft has been sent in on March 1st. So you’ll get another month of BCIs, probably.

Liz Lemon is in line at a hot dog stand outside the titular building when a businessman breaks in line. She buys every hotdog so he can’t have one, then hands them out on the street. Most people who get one throw it away angrily. She then goes to work, meets with her writers, then gets called up along with her co-worker to Pete to meet their new boss Jack.

Why Liz might be hard to identify with: The first skit that we see that she wrote is making fun of a woman (played by Jenna in a fat suit) for being “overly confident and morbidly obese”! Then she’s told she’s in trouble because she said in a skit that Michael Jackson has a vagina. Her comedy hasn’t aged well!

Believe

• Big personality: She buys every hot dog.
• She has beliefs: You know how I hate it when people cheat or break rules?
• Interestingly, she’s not wearing her glasses in most of the pilot, which takes away a key talisman of her character. One suspects that that was studio meddling.

Care

• Nobody of the tourists clap for her even when Kenneth the page asks them to.
• Jack insults her clothes right away, then makes assumptions about her life: “New York, third wave feminist, college-educated, single and pretending to be happy about it. Overscheduled, under-sexed, you buy any magazine that says ‘healthy body image’ on the cover, and every two years you take up knitting for …a week.” Pete says, “That is dead on!”
• He wants to apply the rules of ovens to TV. “I’m the new vice-president of East Coast television and microwave oven programming.” About his office, “sometimes you have to change things that are perfectly good just to make them your own.” She realizes this applies to her show as well.
• She feels like the sky is falling, and then drywall falls on her head.

Invest

• Outsmarts the businessman who broke in line.
• Holds her own with Jack. He says, “I like you. You have the boldness of a much younger woman.”

Strength / Flaw: Strident / off-putting

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: Black Panther

In 1992, we see T’Challa’s father arrest his uncle. Then we cut to 2008, where T’Challa and his friend Okoye are on a mission to extract Wakandan agent Nakia from an undercover mission with warlords in Nigeria. All three kick ass. 

 
Why T-Challa might be hard to identify with: We don’t meet him until 7 minutes into the movie. When we do, we see that he’s not as confident as some other superheroes. He’s barely in the top five of the most bad-ass people in this movie. 

 
Believe:

• Wakanda has internecine conflicts.
• He has secrets. News reporters report how poor his country is, not suspecting the truth.
• Something Marvel is always good with: He has friends. (Unlike the DC heroes.) He and Okoye josh like old pals, which goes so far to make these seem like real people with full lives.

Care:

• A news report reminds us that his father has recently been murdered, as we saw in another movie.
• He has an embarrassing tendency to freeze up around Nakia, which Okoye teases him about. “What are you talking about? I never freeze!” he says, unconvincingly.

Invest:

• He’s king of his country.
• He has superpowers he gets from eating an herb.
• He has neat gadgets for disabling the jeeps of the caravan he’s raiding. 

Strength/Flaw: Respectful of Ancestors / Too tied to bad traditions

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: Gravity

Dr. Ryan Stone is on a shuttle mission fixing a satellite. Veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski floats around her trying to achieve a spacewalk record. Mission control tells them that there’s been a chain reaction from an exploding satellite and they’ve got to get out of there. 

Why Ryan might be hard to identify with: She will spend most of the movie feeling like a talentless amateur who lacks the survival skills she needs in this environment, but she’ll eventually prove herself wrong. (Although, when she gives herself the advice she needs, she has to imagine that it’s coming from the veteran astronaut in order to convince herself.)

Believe:

• The movie begins with a title onscreen: “At 600km above Planet Earth, the temperature fluctuates between +258 and -148 degrees.” Already, we believe, care and invest. This movie will include sensory information about space we didn’t know, this will make our heroes suffer and our heroes will be bad-asses for going out there anyway.
• There’s no score and no sound other than what’s on the radio.
• One of the first thing she does is ask Matt to turn off his music. She has a sense of self she will assert.

Care:

• Ryan is having a hard time keeping her lunch down.
• No one listens to her. “Engineering admits that you warned us that this could happen, but that’s as close to an apology as you’re going to get from ‘em. We should have listened to you, doc.”
• Her life soon becomes a nightmare.
• We will eventually find out she has a tragic backstory: Her daughter died.

Invest:

• She may feel totally unprepared but it’s been established right up front that she’s a genius in some areas, so we are able to invest in her. Only she could see the problem that she’s fixing. Matt tells her, “You’re the genius up here, I only drive the bus.”

Strength/Flaw: Neither is very clear from the first ten minutes, but we’ll eventually realizes it’s that she’s cool-headed (not at first but she finds it within herself) but chilly (she hasn’t cared much about staying alive since her daughter died)

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: Elf

A baby escapes from his crib at his orphanage and climbs into Santa’s toy sack. He’s wearing Little Buddy brand diapers so they call him Buddy. An elf adopts him. 30 years later, he’s much bigger than the other elves, but doesn’t figure out he’s human until he overhears it. He finally learns about where he came from and sets off to New York to find his human father. 

Why Buddy might be hard to identify with: He can be a little grating.

Believe:

• We begin with some entertaining facts about elves, including showing how elves make plastic toys like Etch-a-Sketches, which is always the sort of things parents have a hard time explaining.
• Buddy bursts with personality every time he’s onscreen.
• We love naïvete, such as when his elf father has to explain to him how it’s possible that some people don’t believe in Santa and he’s baffled.

Care:

• He doesn’t fit in. He’s a big oaf. He’s incompetent. “Why don’t you just say it? I’m the worst toymaker in the world!”
• He’s put in charge of testing jack-in-the-boxes, but they scare him every time they pop up.
• He overhears them saying that he’s not really an elf, which destroys his world. Overhearing humiliation is always good.
• He finds out his human father’s on the naughty list.

Invest

• Just when we’re convinced there will be no reason to invest in him, Santa says of his father: “Some people, they just lose sight of what’s important in life, that doesn’t mean they can’t find their way again, huh? Maybe all they need is just a little Christmas spirit!” Buddy responds, “Well, I’m—I’m good at that!” Santa replies, “I know you are.” So this is a classic story about an incompetent hero with just one valuable quality, put into a situation where that one quality is badly needed.

Strength/Flaw: Exuberance / Inability to do what others ask of him.

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: The Invisible Man (2020)

Cecelia drugs her controlling live-in boyfriend Adrien and sneaks out of the high-tech house they share in the middle of the night. Adrien wakes and catches up to her, but her sister drives her away just in time. Later, she’s hiding out at the house of a friend of her sister’s. 

Why Cecilia might be hard to identify with: She has no dialogue for the first 10 minutes, so we don’t have much chance to get to know her personality until we’ve been with her for some time. Even when she’s free, she’s not bursting with personality. Like many victims of abuse, she has little sense of self left, and must rediscover it over the course of the film.

Believe:

• The pill bottle she uses to drug him is a sort of talisman, but then she drops it in the escape, leaving a crucial part of herself behind.
• The bizarre house, including a mad science lab, feels oddly specific to this situation, not generic.
• But I’m not sure how much we’d believe in her if Elizabeth Moss wasn’t playing the part. Her performance feels very grounded and real. She’s done more work than is on the page.

Care:

• We’re terrified for her when, after sneaking away silently for six minutes she accidentally kicks the metal dog bowl down the hall with a deafening clang.
• We’re not sure if she’s justified in her fear until he catches up to her and smashes open her car window. Now we share her terror.
• She’s still terrified when she’s supposedly free two weeks later, afraid that if her sister visits her, Adrien will follow her there. She can’t check the mail without running back inside in fear.
• When her sister visits to tell her that Adrien is dead, she finally gives us some harrowing details of his controlling behavior.

Invest:

• She’s very clever in the sequence of steps she takes to get away, from drugging him, to turning off the alarm system, to shifting a camera and using the surveillance system to monitor him.
• The dog wants her to take him with her, and she agrees to pull his electronic collar off, though it sets off a car alarm, finally waking Adrien.
• Once she’s supposedly free, she’s still googling ways to protect herself, so she uses nail polish to cover up her webcam.

Strength/Flaw: Alert to danger / afraid all the time

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

I am well aware that I have not yet done my “Best of 2020” list. I usually do it in the two weeks before the Oscars, which gives me a lot of time this year, but this week will include some previews. 

Ma Rainey’s jazz band plays a 1927 tent show in rural Georgia, then some theaters in Chicago. Ma is annoyed at the showboating of trumpeter Levee. Later, Levee and the other musicians, led by a trombonist named Cutler, gather to record some records.

Why Levee might be hard to identify with: The material is stagey and obviously shot on sets. The monologues are a little too monologue-y to seem like reality.

Believe:

• The other three musicians arrive together, but he arrives separately, making him stand out.
• He’s bursting with personality. His first line: As two girls walk by, he says “Hey, hey! Good morning, Chicago!”
• He’s a man of rarified tastes: He’s bought himself some $11 shoes (which he loves a little too much)
• He has a goal: “I’m gonna get me a band and make me some records.”

Care:

• Cutler cuts him down to size: “Just play the piece, [expletive deleted.] Look, you want to be one of them, uh, what you call it, virtuosos or something, you in the wrong place. You ain’t no King Oliver or Buddy Bolden. Just an old trumpet player, come a dime a dozen.”

Invest:

• He’s cocky, he doesn’t look when he crosses the street and expects the cars to stop for him.
• Only he cares about “art” of jazz. One of the musicians replies, “What’s drawing got to do with it?”
• The white boss sees him as having more talent, “Where’s that horn player, the one that gave me those songs? Is he gonna be here today? I wanna hear more of that sound.”

Strength/Flaw: Confidence / Volatility

31 Days of Believe Care Invest: Kitchen Confidential

New York Chef Bourdain begins by directly addressing us, promising to dish secrets that will shock us about the restaurant business. He implies that he’s a rough, tough, outlaw type of guy (“If I need a favor at four o'clock in the morning, whether it's a quick loan, a shoulder to cry on, a sleeping pill, bail money, or just someone to pick me up in a car in a bad neighborhood in the driving rain, I'm definitely not calling up a fellow writer.”) but then tells us about his wealthy childhood, vacationing in France, where he discovers his love of food. 

Why Bourdain might be hard to identify with: Suddenly, he’s sailing to Europe in “cruise ware” to “summer” in France! I quit reading there the first time I tried to read the book. When I tried again, I kept reading and discovered that a few pages later, he calls himself “a sullen, moody, difficult little bastard,” which is annoying enough with average kids, but even more off-putting in rich kids.

Believe

• Lots of fascinating bizarre details about life in France: “Houses had two kitchens, an inside one and an outdoor ‘fish kitchen’.”
• As with any good foodie memoir, the sensory information overwhelms us on every page: “I remember everything about the experience: the way our waiter ladled it from a silver tureen into my bowl, the crunch of tiny chopped chives he spooned on as garnish, the rich, creamy taste of leek and potato, the pleasurable shock, the surprise that it was cold.”
• Looking past these ten pages, we’ll get all sorts of memorable details that you’d only get by being there, such as cooks snorting coke through uncooked penne pasta.

Care

• In the intro, it seems like maybe he’s had a rough life and he’ll be sympathetic, but that quickly dissipates in the next chapter. 
• But there is the moment where his parents go to a great restaurant at night and just leave their kids alone in the car out in the parking lot for three hours so they can eat in peace. Crappy parents always cause us to give a lot of leeway to a hero, and rich parents can be just as crappy as poor ones, if not more so. Most importantly, the moment has irony: “And there came a time when, finally, they didn't take the kids along. I remember it well, because it was such a slap in the face. It was a wake-up call that food could be important, a challenge to my natural belligerence. By being denied, a door opened.” That basic ironic sentence fuels many books.
• Looking past these ten pages, we don’t really start to care for him until he suffers absolute humiliation in his first attempt to work at a real kitchen job in a high-end restaurant. When he burns himself and asks for burn cream, his trainer shows him all of his own burn damage and “the other cooks cheered, hooted and roared at my utter humiliation.” (I think he should have started with that incident, then went back and filled us in on his childhood, so that readers like me didn’t put the book down on first try.)

Invest

• “Spite, always a great motivating force in my life, caused me to become suddenly adventurous where food was concerned.” We like driven heroes, and spite is a great driver. People only want what they want.
• His ability to appreciate food is obviously great, from his orgiastic descriptions, and he seems to have been a very successful chef from what he tells us.
• In the French countryside as a little kid, he kills lizards with explosives for fun, so he’s a little badass.
• He’s a brave eater: “But I, in the proudest moment of my young life, stood up smartly, grinning with defiance, and volunteered to be the first”. Readers always want heroes to grin with defiance.
• He keeps comparing cooks to pirates, and he knows we love to read about pirates. If we go past the first ten pages, we see the first time he meets a chef’s crew: “In the kitchen, they were like gods. They dressed like pirates: chef's coats with the arms slashed off, blue jeans, ragged and faded headbands, gore-covered aprons, gold hoop earrings, wrist cuffs, turquoise necklaces and chokers, rings of scrimshaw and ivory, tattoos — all the decorative detritus of the long-past Summer of Love.”