[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: You talked about going to the film school in Denmark or working with the Danish students and how certain cultures have less of a “return with the elixir” [The Hero’s Journey] at the end just as in life that doesn’t always happen.
Christopher Vogler, Author: Oh, I’m glad to talk about the differences from culture to culture because this really just came up and hit me like I’d stepped on a rake or something. When I first started traveling I found that I was carrying with me a bag of cultural assumptions that came from growing up in the midwest. I lived on a farm most of my childhood and my diet was entirely old Warner Brothers movies and cartoons and what was on television then so Superman and Zorro and things like that. There were a lot of cultural assumptions embedded in that the hero is a good Force, the hero can change things, the hero can save us, the hero usually is unselfish and has the best interests of society in mind. As soon as I got out of the frame of the United States of America I started meeting all these other ideas that for instance in Eastern Europe they would say to me Yeah, you mentioned these characters who think they can change the world and who think one person can make a difference. We actually have some of those but we don’t call them heroes, we call them fools and idiots because nobody can really change the world. It just is how it is and you’re foolish if you think you can mark the system.
So I began to understand that I needed to broaden my ideas and some cultures were just outright disapproving of the term hero and I’ve noticed that some people like the screenwriting teacher in Denmark had clipped out the word hero and he just he didn’t teach The Hero’s Journey, he taught The Journey and I think that was actually a wise move because it does away with a lot of cultural baggage that we have about heroes. When I first started teaching about it people assumed…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BUY THE BOOK – THE WRITER’S JOURNEY: Mythic Structure for Writers
BUY THE BOOK – MEMO FROM THE STORY DEPARTMENT: Secrets of Structure and Character
About:
Christopher Vogler made documentary films as an Air Force officer before studying film production at the University of Southern California, where he encountered the ideas of mythologist Joseph Campbell and observed how they influenced the story design of the first Star Wars movie. He worked as a story consultant in the development departments of 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures and Animation, and Paramount Pictures, and wrote an influential memo on Campbell’s Hero’s Journey concept that led to his involvement in Disney’s Aladdin, The Lion King and Hercules. After the publication of The Writer’s Journey, he had a hand in developing the stories of many productions, including Disney’s remake of 101 Dalmatians, Fox’s Fight Club, Courage Under Fire, Volcano, The Thin Red Line and many others. Vogler lives in Los Angeles, California.
CONNECT WITH CHRISTOPHER VOGLER
Advertisement – contains affiliate links
(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
More affiliates:
Camera we use for interviews – https://buff.ly/3rWqrra
Sound we use for interviews – https://amzn.to/2tbFlM9
Other books on Amazon that Film Courage recommends – https://buff.ly/3o0oE5o
