Every Day is Halloween: In Noir, All Characters Wear a Mask

"You think you can catch Keyser Soze? You think a guy like that comes this close to getting caught, and sticks his head out?" - Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects

It's Halloween weekend. Across the country, kids and adults alike are dressing up in costume, trick or treating and attending parties galore. Wearing a costume and, especially a mask, is holiday tradition, one that passes generation to generation. Superheroes, monsters, sexy nurses and the latest political and pop culture references serve as muse for All Hallow's Eve.

For the characters in Film Noir, to quote the band Ministry, "everyday IS Halloween." We, the audience, rarely know who is the hero, who is the monster and who is both. Sometimes we guess and feel good about ourselves and our deductive intelligence. And sometimes we're so surprised, no shocked, that we shiver in flashback, thinking how could we have possibly missed that detail. Remember Verbal Kint?

This is one of the biggest reasons why I love Noir. Because it's the most honest of all genres. It's not just about realism. It's about reality. And the struggle of the human condition. Any ideal citizen, when squeezed, pressed and desperate can be motivated to commit a crime. Prohibition fostered criminal activity. It made criminals ok neighbors because if having an alcoholic drink tipped the scale from good to bad then how can anyone ever really live up to the Great American Standard?

Writing my Cleveland script at Nighthawk
We all wear our masks. Because we all have secrets. We've all lied. Sometimes to others. Sometimes to ourselves. Self-denial is the very worst kind of deceit.

As I was working on my Cleveland script tonight, at Nighthawk, named after the famous noir-ish painting, while researching the genre - there's always so much more to study and learn about Film Noir - I suddenly realized that I had a new homework assignment to complete. I had to think about what secrets my characters are keeping.

And so in one of my two themed notebooks (one is for notes on the genre and Noir films I watch, the other is story notes for the screenplay, including characters, theme, setting, structure and making sure all the details in Act 1 drive a surprise twist pay-off ending in Act 3) I picked up my Sharpie and started listing all the key characters and then in the next column what one big secret each is keeping. Of course there's things they don't even yet know about themselves. That's the job of a good story. The arc of the characters. But first and foremost, in Noir, we have to be very clear on what everyone is hiding. What mask they are wearing.

At least the writer needs to know this. And I'm so happy that as of tonight I know what each of their secrets is. And how all these characters have woven a web of deceit and duplicitous behavior that is no longer sustainable. It's about to implode.

Their masks are finally coming off.


Kevin Spacey image: IMDb.com

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