Great Character: Donna Stern (“Obvious Child”)

The Great Character theme for the month: Struggling Artist. Today: Donna Stern from the 2014 movie Obvious Child, written by Gillian Robespierre, story by Gillian Robespierre and Karen Maine and Elisabeth Holm, based on a short film written by Anna Bean and Karen Maine and Gillian Robespierre.

The hectic, anti-heckler life of the stand-up comedian has been imbedded into the big screen by Robert De Niro in The King of Comedy, Adam Sandler in Funny People and mostly recently with Chris Rock in Top Five. But the female perspective was brazenly carved into center stage by the kinetic energy Jenny Slate (Saturday Night Live) fueled the wonderfully rambunctious role of Brooklyn humorist Donna Stern with in Obvious Child.

With the screenplay creatively crafted by Obvious Child director Gillian Robespierre, from a story Robespierre gave birth to along with Karen Maine and Elisabeth Holm, we get a flesh and bone, struggling artist with warm and fuzzy blood flowing through her veins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMNMnfE6SsM

Donna Stern may “fart joke” her heart out to complete strangers with an innocent smirk. But once Donna’s beating heart gets used for toilet paper, maturity becomes the only fan that can prevent her soiled feelings from stinking up her sanity.

DONNA STERN: (fart jokes) That’s my butthole’s voice. I gotta be me. I gotta be me.

Obvious Child plot summary from IMDB:

A twenty-something comedienne’s unplanned pregnancy forces her to confront the realities of independent womanhood for the first time.

Donna Stern is in the latter part of her rollicking 20s, but still only reluctantly adapts to the responsibilities of generic adulthood. Her stand-up act still wears its poop humor diaper like a queen’s crown of honor. But this whimsical life of fun and jokes with rum and cokes morphs into a debilitating hangover when her employer of five years Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books has six weeks to vacate and her boyfriend Ryan (Paul Briganti) effortlessly dumps her in a unisex bathroom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcTEfnxyxeA

When young adulthood becomes no laughing matter for Donna, her rusty relationship with her mom (Polly Draper) juices up Donna’s anxiety, not feeling the emotional support from her all-business/reality-checking matriarch.

DONNA STERN: I haven’t borrowed money from you in months. And I just did that commercial for the organic douche, which is going to be a real boon to my image.

The doom and gloom that pukes all over Donna’s normally bubbly disposition also manages to stain her ability to perform. Donna takes out her sudden loss of a significant other and a reliable paycheck out on her audience, as if they were the winners of the blame game.

DONNA STERN: Is this not working for you? Do you want your money back? ’Cause the show is free. I want my life back but I can’t get it back because it’s ruined. So that is a cost I have incurred.

A rebound dude may help Donna temporary forget how she has just gone from relationship to relationship-wrecked. But he will surely need to be onboard with her cute doggy paddle floats through the swallow end of the kiddie pool of her adulthood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoSHuVq_p_g

Even with public microphones no longer being safe-havens for this obvious child to become an amateur adult, pregnancy and a looming abortion make her inner childhood fade from sweet Frosted Flakes to plain healthy Corn Flakes in an instant. But growing up is still a delayed breakfast for Donna to begin any of her days with.

DONNA STERN: I remember seeing a condom; I just don’t know exactly what it did.

Whether or not to tell Max (Jake Lacy) that he is going to be only a 9-month daddy becomes tougher as his real deal nice guy vibe graduates him from one-night stand to proper partner option. Abortion within itself is turning the child-like Donna Stern into a woman capable of creating but not keeping one. Her safety mechanism of projecting nervous energy outward through jokes continues in her interpersonal relationships, while she rebuilds her internal confidence.

DONNA STERN: (orange Crocs) They’re so soft. They’re like made out of like angel’s tittie skins.

If this comedienne needed the strength to grow from her unplanned pregnancy, she got it when her stern mother Nancy Stern softens up enough to admit to having had an abortion in the past also. Bonding with the woman who brought Donna into this world reaffirms that she may be a struggling, but the journey is not a lone voyage.

DONNA STERN: That was like a very funny observation. You made a full joke.

For her unpredictably raw unruly rhetoric, for her deliberately drawn adolescent mannerisms juxtaposed against age 27 and her reluctant but eventual adjustment to change — Donna Stern is an insanely GREAT CHARACTER from the struggling artist standpoint in cinema.

Interesting to compare Donna to Juno MacGuff in Juno, both characters sudden confrontation with ‘adulthood’ caused by an unexpected pregnancy, both characters whip-smart and funny… both characters with some important life-lessons to learn.

Thank you, Jason, for this post and the entire month-long series featuring Struggling Artist characters.

You may follow Jason on Twitter: @A2Jason.