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I've noticed a trend in screenplays, mostly written by men.
Every time a female lead is introduced, she is described in some shape or form as "beautiful."
There's also my personal favorite: "NAME (36), beautiful despite her age." Like 36 is old and women are usually ugly by that point.
Anyway, my point is, don't you guys think we could describe them in some other way that doesn't have anything to do with attraction? It seems objectifying, but this really has little to do with not offending people and more to do with understanding characters regardless or gender.
I'm guilty of it too and I'd like to explore other ways to go about it.
HALP.
'Artist' is not a term you should use to refer to yourself. Let others, and your work, do it for you.
I noticed that men and women are usually described as beautiful or handsome or ugly. lol. I like average.
Gabe
Just Murdered by Sean Elwood (Zombie Sean) and Gabriel Moronta (Mr. Ripley) - (Dark Comedy, Horror) All is fair in love and war. A hopeless romantic gay man resorts to bloodshed to win the coveted position of Bridesmaid. 99 pages. https://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-comedy/m-1624410571/
Most actors, be they male or female are attractive.
Most leads in movies are attractive.
People like to look at attractive people. People like to read about attractive people. People are more interested in attractive people than unattractive people.
Do I think using "beautiful" or attractive" or the like is a great way to intro a character in a script? No, I don't, but it also make sense to me for the most part why writers do use such adjectives.
But, I think if you look at scripts that intro a number of characters at a time, or even just a script with multiple female characters, you'll find that they aren't all intro'd as being beautiful or attractive...but the main one? Yeah, usually.
I have no issues with beautiful characters. I just think that having that as the main character description is kind of glossing over who the character really is... Though I guess non visual character descriptions come out more in actions the characters take.
'Artist' is not a term you should use to refer to yourself. Let others, and your work, do it for you.
I know most writers will disagree with me, but IMO, initial character intro's are all about looks, because in reality, that's all you'll see in a filmed version.
Using trendy, hip descriptors may read well to some, but to me, it's cheesy and a apparent attempt to be cool or hip.
Using anything else is really an unfilmable, and therefore, a cheat, IMO.
If your characters are well written, who they are will come out over the course of the script.
Most actors, be they male or female are attractive.
Most leads in movies are attractive.
Though it is much easier for unattractive actors to be successful if they are male. There are very few female equivalents of Paul Giamatti, Steve Buscemi, Danny Trejo, John C Reilly, Sylvester Stallone, Mike Myers, Nick Nolte, Gary Busey, William H Macy...
In fact, I might venture to say none, that I can think of. And those guys all lead multiple movies. Women in movies tend to need to be beautiful. Maybe that seeps unconsciously into the writing.
There are very few female equivalents of Paul Giamatti, Steve Buscemi, Danny Trejo, John C Reilly, Sylvester Stallone, Mike Myers, Nick Nolte, Gary Busey, William H Macy...
In fact, I might venture to say none, that I can think of. And those guys all lead multiple movies. Women in movies tend to need to be beautiful. Maybe that seeps unconsciously into the writing.
Well...a few on this list are actually viewed as being attractive, or at one time were attractive. Even Danny Trejo, who's about as ugly as they come, is not only very unique looking, but he's also perfect as a bad guy.
Women? There's some bigguns out there and other unattractive ones, but alot of the time it's their comic presence or acting chops that make them unique or at least who they are.
Good points. Along with Bates, I guess Helen Hunt was never particularly attractive, to me, anyway.
Stallone...haha no, I'm thinking he's not so handsome. Not even in his porn days...
Trejo I think is a particularly good example...he's usually the bad guy, yes, but he's also the lead in Machete, a relatively major movie, and treated as the romantic/sexual equivalent of (among others) Jessica Biel! So I think that kinda speaks to the issue pretty well in a broad sense...if you wanna be an actress, be as attractive as Biel; if you wanna be an actor, be as attractive as...Danny Trejo... And "unique looking"...that's a particularly interesting part of it. How many actresses are "unique looking"? It pays to look "exotic" for women...not so often "unique," I don't think, though unique works well for men.
It's definitely true that Nolte, for example, was considered attractive, but I think it's fair to say that his mainstream success continued past his attractiveness? Whereas with, I dunno, Rebecca DeMornay, Patricia Arquette, whatever...they look a little older one year and bam, done.
I agree on being visual with initial descriptions, but saying someone is beautiful comes off as lazy. Especially considering, as you said, characters in movies are always beautiful unless noted otherwise.
'Artist' is not a term you should use to refer to yourself. Let others, and your work, do it for you.
"I've always disagreed with character descriptions that amount to mini-biographies of the characters in question.
On the other hand, when a character appears on screen the audience gets a sense of the kind of person it is, just by looking at him.
Casting directors and directors cast to "character" -- and audiences intuitively understand this.
And so what I've always tried to do is to find the prose equivalent of that immediate sense that an audience gets when they first see a character on screen.
They won't start with a blank slate, nor simply with the objective visual information of age and gender and the fact the men are generally ruggedly handsome and the women fashion-model beautiful or girl-next-door beautiful or stunningly beautiful, or beautiful without knowing it or tough-as-nails but beautiful.
No, they'll pretty much immediately get some sense of the kind of people they are, just by looking at them.
In ancient Greek theatre the characters would wear masks, the masks identifying them, even to the most distant members of the audience, the archetypal characters that they were playing in the unfolding drama.
Although audiences today aren't quite aware of it, the way in which we cast movies and in which we select our actors creates a similar situation.
Our actors are archetypal. They project a sense of certain universals types of people. Ideally, as soon as we see them, they project a sense of the sort of person they are, or are meant to be, the qualities that they are intended to embody.
So the goal, in that initial character description, I think, is to find a handful of words that project that initial sense that an audience would get when they first see the character. Not simply his physicality, but how that physicality translates into a sense of character."
Good points all around. In reality, there is definitely an expectation that film actors, especially leads, be attractive in some sense. Granted, there are exceptions but exceptions denote a norm and most of the exceptions are men anyway.
That said, I agree with the initial post. I don't think it's a writer's responsibility to promote good gender politics (though it'd be nice) but it definitely isn't their responsibility to promote lazy writing. We can do better, indeed.
And for the record, "NAME (36), beautiful despite her age" is pretty damn stupid.
Great thread. Hope a lengthy discussion comes out of it. In the mean time, I gotta run. I expect I'll be back.
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