[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Why do you say that we can’t discuss character without discussing structure?
Paul Chitlik, Author/Writer: That’s an interesting question. I have to think about that for a second. We can discuss character without structure but we can’t discuss a movie without structure.
If the central issue of every movie is the growth of the character, so how the character grows is structured and so that’s how they’re interlaced. If we understand how the structure works with the character and the character works with the structure, then we understand what the process of the movie is going to be.
The character overcoming a flaw and overcoming a barrier to his goal that’s what creates the structure of the movie, so they can’t be torn apart for a movie. I mean you can build a character without a movie but you can’t build a movie without a character.
Film Courage: You say that we go to the movies to see characters, that we want to see people go through changes and fight against all odds?
Paul: The first reason we go to a movie is to feel something. The only way we can feel something, feel sadness, feel joy, feel laughter, feel fear, the only way we can feel that is if we can identify with somebody on the screen. If it’s just a rock falling down onto a mountain we don’t feel fear here unless we see somebody about to be hit by the rock. We can see a rocket going to the moon but we don’t feel anything unless we know there’s somebody in the rocket that might get lost, or might hit the moon by accident, or go off course so we don’t see if we don’t see a character, we don’t want to go to the movies. If we don’t get a feeling from the movie, we don’t appreciate the movie…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
Paul Chitlik has written for all the major networks and studios in English and in Spanish. He was story editor for MGM/UA’S “The New Twilight Zone,” and staff writer for Showtime’s sitcom “Brothers.” He has written features for Rysher Entertainment, NuImage, Promark, Mainline Releasing, and others. He has directed episodes and been coordinating producer for “Real Stories of the Highway Patrol” and “U.S. Customs Classified.” He wrote and produced “Alien Abduction,” the first network movie shot on digital video for UPN. He wrote, produced, and directed “Ringling Brothers Revealed” a special for The Travel Channel. (He had been a roustabout for Circus Vargas years earlier.) Most recently he wrote, produced and directed “The Wedding Dress,” for Amazon Prime. He received a Writers Guild of America award nomination for his work on “The Twilight Zone” and a GLAAD Media Award nomination for “Los Beltrán,” a Telemundo show. He won a Genesis Award for a Showtime Family movie. He has taught in the MFA programs of UCLA, the University of Barcelona’s film school ESCAC, Cuba’s film school EICTV, Chile’s film school UNIACC, The University of Zulia in Venezuela, The Panamerican University in Mexico City, The Story Academy of Sweden and as a clinical associate professor at Loyola Marymount University. Now writing full time again and living near his grandson in Chapel Hill, NC, with wife, Beth McCauley.
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