Great Character: Bill “D-Fens” Foster (“Falling Down”)
The Great Character theme for the month: Rebel. Today: Bill “D-Fens” Foster from the 1993 movie Falling Down, written by Ebbe Roe Smith.
Health Issues. These volatile ingredients were collectively cooked at maximum temperature to bring Michael Douglas’ character Bill “D-Fens” Foster to a brutal boiling point in the 1993 dramatic crime thriller Falling Down. Director Joel Schumacher (St. Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys) turned screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith’s powder keg Los Angeles based screenplay into an adult version of the nursery rhyme “London Bridge is Falling Down,” with tension levels turned up to 11. With the frighteningly frequent real life falling down shootings turning modern news programs into national eulogies, the seriousness of “D-Fens’ morbid melt down is not lost on contemporary audiences 22 years after its release.
Falling Down plot summary from IMDB:
An unemployed defense worker frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society, begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.
We first are introduced to the beyond irritated Bill Foster jammed up in muggy, high humidity Los Angeles sun, trapped in a traffic jam, without working air conditioner to boot. BAM — he snaps — leaving his car behind to walk to his daughter’s birthday party instead.
D-FENS: I am not a vigilante. I am just trying to get home to my little girl’s birthday party and if everyone will just stay out of my way, nobody will get hurt.
Unfortunately for Bill, he may be fairly delusional when it comes to his ex-wife Beth (Barbara Hershey) actually wanting him to show his face. This domestic dilemma may have something to do with that restraining order she has issued against him. Soon Mr. Foster’s unsatisfied need for payphone quarters somehow transforms into a green light to go ahead and trash a convenience store.
A recognizable pattern quickly develops in Falling Down: social interactions, whether Bill is being literally mistreated or mistaking disagreements of opinion for an event worthy of violent eruption are turning ugly with no facelift in sight. The bottom line is that Bill Foster’s psyche needs tape, glue and a million staples to fasten back together. He is a ticking time bomb that has a super sensitive fuse.
Each angry episode serves as our tour guide into Bill Foster’s spiraling descent into madness. He is clearly coming across characters that would be complete outcasts in any neighborhood he has ever lived in. Even when it appears that Bill Foster has complete contempt for cultures other than his own, he meets a white supremacist that tops any level of discrimination he would personally condone.
D-FENS: We are not the same. I’m an American and you’re a sick asshole.
The blade, bat and gat wielding “D-Fens” as his custom license plate so insightful reads, is also aiming his ultra angry disposition at many public observations that may merely just tick the rest of the population.
D-FENS: Two days ago it was fine. Are you telling me the street fell apart in two days?
It isn’t just people of color, the disenfranchised and the low-income members of society that Foster freaks out on, but it is also those much richer than him as well.
D-FENS: It’s not enough you have all these beautiful acres fenced in for your little game, but you gotta kill me with a golf ball? You should have children playing here, you should have families having picnics, you should have a goddamn petting zoo. But instead you’ve got these stupid electric carts for you old men with nothing better to do.
Maybe the most intensely chilling scenario that Bill Foster puts audience attendees through is when he turns a McDonald’s-style fast food restaurant into a gun range over a pretty irrational request — forcing the staff to serve him breakfast at lunch time. Making the menu get altered in his favor is never a sane reason to brandish weapons. With older folks and young children traumatically frozen like they became sculptures, Foster makes it extremely difficult to see the world through his eyes. His point of view is a complex road map with dark tundra of the unknown and steep ravines that threaten to make your sympathy plummet and question whether or not you can relate to his woes.
For his bold and uncomfortable questions of what he considers to be social decay, for the advanced construction of his disintegrating moral code and for the bravery to formulate a protagonist that challenges our ability to understand his erratic behavior — Bill “D-Fens” Foster is a thoroughly GREAT CHARACTER in the cinematic style of rebel leading roles.
A special end note to this week’s Great Character post:
My name is Jason Cuthbert, a GoIntoTheStory.com contributor to GREAT CHARACTERS since June 8th 2012. I’m directing my very first feature length documentary entitled: “COLOURING BOOK: The Mixed Race Documentary” that compares diversity in the United States to Canada, through three generations of my own multicultural family. Academic experts and animated segments will be blended in to enhance the educational value of the core storyline. My team and I are currently raising funds at SeedandSpark.com to finance equipment for “COLOURING BOOK,” as well as future documentaries and scripted narratives. Any support would be incredibly appreciated.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Website Link: http://www.colouringbook.info
Campaign Link: http://www.seedandspark.com/studio/colouring-book-productions
Jason’s Twitter Handle: @A2Jason
Colouring Book Twitter Handle: @ColouringBk
There are at two damn good reasons to throw some support Jason’s way. First, this looks like a fascinating and worthy documentary. Second, a show of gratitude to Jason for his steadfast contributions to this blog and to the life of the online screenwriting community with his insightful weekly Great Character posts.
To contribute to Colouring Book, go here.