Great Character: Grandma (“Parenthood”)
We have all written characters like this. Balding Cop. Bank Teller #2. Vomiting Teenager. Not primary characters who appear in multiple…
We have all written characters like this. Balding Cop. Bank Teller #2. Vomiting Teenager. Not primary characters who appear in multiple scenes and are intimately tied into the events of the Plotline. Not even secondary characters who may have their own small subplot.
I’m talking about tertiary characters who may appear in one, two or three scenes, often with little or no dialogue.
And yet these characters have their own world views, their own lives in that story universe.
Would that we treat them with the respect that screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel did in the 1989 movie Parenthood, specifically in relation to this character:
She’s known in the credits as “Grandma” played by the actress Helen Shaw. You can see her in this photo in the background. And here:
Once again in the background. But if you are a professional screenwriter and you immerse yourself in the story universe, you can find gold in the most seemingly innocuous characters. Like this key thematic moment late in the movie:
Here is the dialogue:
Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.
Gil: Oh?
Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!
Gil: What a great story.
Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.
This movie with bunches of characters winds its way through a dozen subplots, then when it needs to drive home perhaps the central theme of the story, who do Ganz & Mandell pick to deliver that message: Grandma.
There she is on the far right, riding the ‘roller coaster’ of life with all the rest of the gang. There are several characters who wear a wisdom mask in this movie. But it’s Grandma, a tertiary character, who truly deserves the designation as Mentor.
Grandma: A great character.
For more in the Great Character series, go here.