Film Courage: What’s more important to story, the hero or the villain?
Donald F. Glut, Writer, Film Director, and Screenwriter: I think the villain is usually more colorful. The hero can be very bland, without the villain, you don’t have a hero. You’ve got to give the hero something to do that he can triumph over at the end. People say that I would like to see the villain win for a change but they don’t, it would leave them unfulfilled, unsatisfied, missing something. A hero can be pretty boring actually but if you give them heroic things to do that sort of livens them up. The villain can be outrageous, flamboyant, way over the top and a hero can’t really do unless you’re doing a satire or a Lampoon or something.
Film Courage: How does the villain reflect the hero?
Don: Some characters like Batman and the Joker a lot of people point to they’re really reflections of each other, one is both. They’re both obsessive, they’re both go to no ends but there are not yin and yang. Frankenstein’s monster and Victor Frankenstein created is looked at the same way, two personifications Jekyll and Hyde where Jekyll and Hyde is all in the same person. I think that’s true to a lot of heroes that they are simply in some ways finding themselves.
Film Courage: Would you argue that the antagonist should be twice as strong as the hero?
Don: It’s always best to make the antagonist, the villain, bad guy have more advantages than the hero, they’re physically stronger. In the case of superman they…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Donald F. Glut has been active in both the entertainment and publishing industries since 1966. Don has had a long and varied career. He has been a professional musician, actor, film director, executive producer, photographer, magazine editor, proofreader and (very briefly, for an advertising agency) copywriter, but is mostly known for his long career as a freelance writer. He has written and directed feature-length motion pictures, documentaries and music videos, authored approximately 80 fiction and non-fiction published books, myriad TV scripts (live action and animation shows, network and syndicated), comic-book scripts, short stories, magazine articles, even music and theatre. He has been involved with numerous popular franchises such as Star Wars, The Monkees, Tarzan, Spider-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Vampirella, Masters of the Universe, The Flintstones, Jonny Quest and many others, and created original comic-book characters for Gold Key, Marvel and DC.
Arguably Don is best known for his novelization of the second “Star Wars” movie The Empire Strikes Back (#1 Best Seller). Don currently executive-produces, writes and directs “traditional-style” horror for his company Pecosborn Productions, and writes scripts for The Creeps horror comics magazine. Also, he is a Southern California representative of Las Vegas Talent Agency. Note: Any motion picture titles that may be listed prior to Dinosaur Valley Girls (1997) are of amateur movies, the first of 41 of which Don Glut made when he was nine years old.
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