Compelling Characters vs. Sympathetic Characters

“Appeal comes from truthful and complex characters. I hate when movie people say, ‘Your lead character has to be sympathetic,’ which for them means ‘likeable’. I don’t give a shit about ‘liking’ a character. I just want to be interested in him or her.”

The above are the words of writer-director Alexander Payne whose movie credits include Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways. You will note each of those movies decidedly unsympathetic Protagonist characters, at least in the way that Hollywood means ‘sympathetic.’ Here’s the full quote from an interview Payne did:

Appeal comes from truthful and complex characters. I hate when movie people say, “Your lead character has to be sympathetic,” which for them means “likeable”. I don’t give a shit about “liking” a character. I just want to be interested in him or her. You also have to make the distinction between liking the character as a person and liking a character as a character. I mean, I don’t know whether I like Alex in A Clockwork Orange or Michael Corleone in The Godfather as people, but I adore them as characters. Besides, “liking” is so subjective anyway. So many American movies of the eighties and early nineties bent over backwards to make the protagonist “likeable” in a completely fraudulent way, and I detested them.

Consider Miles in Sideways. When we meet him, he’s the epitome of a self-absorbed, alcoholic loser. In an early scene, he literally steals cash from his own mother. Then there’s his hostility:

Not likeable, not even much in the way of sympathy — at first. But he’s interesting to watch and as we get to know him on this comic adventure, we can’t help but empathize with him. A struggling writer, his passion about wine, his fears causing him to miss an opening with Maya:

We’ve all struggled. We’ve all got things about which we are passionate. We’ve all missed out on golden opportunities. Even though Miles isn’t likeable, we come to find him appealing over time because, as Payne says, he is a “truthful and complex” character with qualities to which we can relate.

This conversation is an especially important one when working with our story’s Protagonist characters. Protagonists who are inherently unlikable or not sympathetic can draw us in by exploring the character’s inner world and revealing something of their humanity. If we resonate with them, our shared humanity, that creates the basis of a ‘relationship,’ particularly if the plot circumstance in which they find themselves is itself interesting.

Look, the path of least resistance in Hollywood has been and always will be to work with sympathetic Protagonists. It’s not a rule, just convention, and one we need to be mindful of as screenwriters. And, of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with sympathetic Protagonists.

However, there is no rule which says we must write a sympathetic Protagonist. Find what makes them interesting and compelling, their human foibles and flaws, aspects of their personality which we can relate to because it’s the same stuff that we deal with in our own lives.

In Sideways, Miles can be an insufferable snob. Myopic and self-absorbed. Prone to fits of anger. Emotionally hamstrung by his attachment to his ex-wife. But taken as a whole person, while not sympathetic, he is interesting and so is his journey… especially with Maya. Which makes the ending of the movie an emotionally satisfying one.

Sympathetic or not, likeable or not, we should strive to make our characters truthful, complex, and possessing aspects of who they are to which an audience can identify. In other words, compelling characters.