[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: What is the relationship between the main character’s Achilles heel and the moral imperative?
Adam Argot, Story Artist/Instructor/YouTuber: Okay, this is a big subject.
Ultimately to boil it down to its basic essence, the Achilles heel is the flawed belief and the moral imperative is the external world that carries that lesson they can learn.
Jaws, it’s an example I use in the book quite a bit.
You have this sheriff, he’s responsible for the well-being and safety of everyone on Amity Island and he’s new.
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It’s very important that he’s new to the island.
All of a sudden, he sees somebody that’s been mutilated by a shark and he’s horrified because it’s nothing like what he’s experienced before.
His first thought is, okay, this is a crime scene.
He starts treating it like with the seriousness that it deserves.
But a lot of people are like, Well, hold on.
You have the mayor come in, you have like the local shop owners and they start saying,
If you yell shark, say barracuda, no one cares. Say shark, you have a ghost town here.
We depend on the Fourth of July to make all of our money for the entire year.
You can’t just close the beaches.
At the core of it, you have Sheriff Brody who deeply believes,
I’m out of my depths here.
I’m new here.
These people know how to solve the problem.
I need to trust the institutions that are already in place because I’m the new person here. So, I don’t want to overstep…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Adam Argot has worked in film, TV, games, and publishing as a director, writer, author, story and concept artist for over 15 years for both major and independent studios. Along with in-depth podcasts and interviews like Film Courage, Story Kinetics, and a YouTube video series The Art of Story, Adam has also taught story structure at Calarts and as a guest lecturer in the USC Screenwriting Program.
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