Invulnerable

I never pick up a novel or walk into a movie wanting to hate the protagonist. The central character may be an anti-hero, they may have significant personality flaws, but a deft writer or director gains our sympathy for that character anyway. I have rooted for hit men, conmen, hookers, drug addicts, corrupt cops, Mafiosi, adulterers, thieves, liars, gun runners, and Nazis. Conversely, I’ve had kids, moms, priests, quarterbacks, teachers, grandmothers and doctors lose the default sympathy I bring to the protagonist at the outset. I want to cheer for the hero, but some writers won’t let me.

I have been trying to rent the lone copy of The Foot Fist Way at the local movie rental place for months. The premise seemed ripe for belly laughs, but the movie was always out. (Turns out a long haul trucker lost it in his cab, finally found it) The Foot Fist Way was produced, in part, by Will Ferrell—which is part of what drew me in—and was written by Ben Best, Jody Hill and Danny McBride. McBride plays Fred Simmons, an inept Tae Kwon Do instructor with no sales ability, limited social skills and an trampy wife. Right away I want this character to turn his life around, to learn and grow and change. I want to stay with him through his trials, self-generated or not. I couldn’t. I only made it half an hour into the movie before I turned it off.

Fred Simmons is an unrelenting asshole. He verbally and physically abuses his students, mostly kids, sexually harasses his female students, inflates his few minor accomplishments, insults and belittles his wife, and generally blusters and swaggers his way through the first thirty minutes, seemingly unaware of what a dick he is. Perhaps the character softens a bit later, but I’ll never know. The writers and director lost me, hard as I tried to stay with them.

In his book How to Grow a Novel, Sol Stein identifies candor and vulnerability as essential elements for a character to gain readers’ sympathy. Fred Simmons exhibits no vulnerability whatever, nor any level of self awareness or candor about his character flaws, at least not early enough in the movie to make me care. His sad situation might have drawn me in had the character shown, even once, some openness, some hint that he was aware of his shortcomings, some regret or helplessness in the face of his liabilities. But he didn’t. The funny bits were there, the comic situations set up right, except that from scene to scene, Fred was always an asshole. No matter how heartbreaking the situation, Fred was an aggressive, clueless dick unable to garner pity or empathy.

It wouldn’t have taken much. I know right where I would have made a change that could have hooked me, at least. Fred’s wife comes home with a folder from work, in which Fred finds photocopies of his wife’s tits and ass taken at an office party. It leads to his wife’s confession that she gave her boss a hand-job. Fred’s shock is clear, his anger and disgust made obvious, but not his pain, his sadness at his wife’s infidelity. A single tear might have done the trick. But no, we are denied even this paltry evidence of a crack in Fred’s armor or a more guileless emotional life. Fred rants at and insults his wife, then goes on to try to quickly replace what he’s lost in a sexual sense, with no hint that he has suffered any emotional damage. And my thumb went right to the off button on the remote.