Interview (Part 4): Cesar Vitale (2017 Black List, Nicholl Winner)
My 6-part talk with the writer of the script “The Great Nothing”.
Today in Part 4 of a 6 part series to run each day through Saturday, Cesar and I delve into the Protagonist of his script “The Great Nothing”:
Scott: That is a fascinating thing, isn’t it? I think that’s one of the reasons why I’m so interested in religion and philosophy. How is it we’re able to cope and co‑exist, and go about our lives knowing that each one of us is born with an expiration date?
There’s something that happens early on in life, as children, where we accommodate this into our thinking. Of course, I think you make a really good point. We don’t really think about death that much. It’s a sanitized thing. In most modern urban environments you don’t see cemeteries. We don’t live with our grandparents anymore who die.
Cesar: We make a very serious goal to try and get death away from our eyesight whenever we can and not think about it.
Scott: Then advertising does everything possible to promote the idea of, “Buy this product, and you’ll be young on forever,” right?
Cesar: Exactly. It’s interesting that you bring this up, and I don’t want to stir the discussion towards philosophy too much, but one of the books that I mention in the script is “Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker, which deals with precisely this notion that the reason society exists, and the reason we do pretty much everything we do as a society is as a coping tool, a way for us to deflect and not think about the fact that we’re all going to die.
From building highways to making music, everything is a project of immortality, like Becker says in the book, and I think that’s a very interesting concept. That society was developed as a defense mechanism against the horror of mortal existence.
Scott: Well, it brings to mind, not veer away too far from your script, but I remember reading an interview with Robert Towne, the screenwriter, and he said, “The very best question you can ask of a character to drill down into them, and find out what they’re about is, ‘What are you most afraid of?’” The characters build the entire structures of their psyche around trying to avoid pain and fear. Death would be, probably, at the heart of many people. Certainly in this story. There is that sense of detachment Dan has, when he’s talking in that monologue that I just read.
“You just watch them from far away, and it’s really lonely,” but he’s starting to develop a connection to June over time, right?
Cesar: Yeah, absolutely. I think it happens very slowly, and he even resists to that. There’s that scene where he goes to Bill, and he’s angry at Bill for not caring for June, and he says, “I don’t need a kid, Bill. I already have a tumor,” and all those nasty things he says.
I think it’s his way of also trying to deflect and putting on a face like, “I don’t care about her because I don’t care about anything, because that’s how I lived my life. And now I’m about to die. I’m not going to start caring about people now.”
Ultimately, in the end, he does help her. He does develop this tenderness for her, and this need to help her when he sees that Bill is not trying, that he’s screwing up her life.
Scott: Are you familiar with the five stages of grief? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance.
Cesar: Yeah.
Scott: In a way, I think when you’re talking about June’s arc, she goes through a compressed version of that. Not necessarily those particular stages, but her relationship with Dan and other circumstances do compel her to actually confront the grief she’s been repressing, don’t you think?
Cesar: Yeah, yeah. I didn’t write with the five stages specifically in mind, but certainly there’s an arc that goes from…That is the driving force behind June dropping her mask finally, and facing the fact that her mother’s dead. Definitely.
Scott: She even gets to the point where she’s able to really get in his face. At one time, just offhandedly he says, “Google solipsism.” And she blows up at Dan: “Yeah. I Googled solipsism. It’s bullshit. The world doesn’t stop existing when you die. Other people go on living, and they have to clean your mess after you’re gone.”
How important is it, do you think, for her character to be able to tap into that anger and focus it on Dan?
Cesar: Yeah, I think that that’s a pretty crucial moment because that’s when she finally realizes that Dan’s whole life philosophy is… well, it’s not bullshit, but it’s certainly mean. Dan is a solipsist and his view is pretty much that, “Nothing really matters after I die because the universe only exists inside my head.”
June disagrees, and she’s in a position to disagree, I think, because her mother died and she’s still here. Her father’s checked out and she’s having to deal with the aftermath of a death. She knows for a fact that people carry on even though someone died.
Scott: There are a couple other characters I want to talk about, one of whom very specifically I think exists in the story ‑‑ or at least my experience of her in the story ‑‑ was to make that point, that this shows you how far into his philosophy Dan is, and that’s Michelle, which is…I think you describe her as an ex‑hookup.
She’s very, very pregnant when we meet her, with Dan’s unborn daughter. How early in the story development process did this character come into existence?
Cesar: I don’t know exactly how early, but it was certainly early. She was an essential part of Dan’s arc from a very early stage, because I thought it was important to show that he was not following through with his responsibilities and that there were people suffering very real consequences from the fact that he checked out from the world and decided to just do heroin until the day he died.
She was there from pretty early on.
Scott: Yeah, well, she’s the physicalization of what June is saying. Other people go on living and they have to clean your mess after you’re gone.
Cesar: Exactly.
Scott: At the beginning, he’s saying, “I don’t want to see my daughter.” He’s literally deleting ultrasound photos.
Cesar: Yeah, and I think he feels very shortchanged by the universe — the fact that there’s going to be a daughter, his daughter, in the world soon and he’s not even going to get to meet her, or, if he meets her, it’s going to be very brief — that’s almost a sadist act of the universe.
He doesn’t want any kind of emotional relation with that child, because it’s kind of cruel. It’s just going to lead to pain. He’s going to meet her and then two months later he’s going to be dead.
It’s interesting that you mention June, because when she’s angry at Dan for abandoning Michelle, she’s really also angry at Bill for abandoning her, and she’s like, “You’re doing the same thing that my father is doing to me and it’s mean. Stop it.”
Scott: It’s almost ironic in the extreme, isn’t it? You got the contrast of death versus birth, new life, and then Dan’s going to basically miss out on this. He just chooses to absent himself from it entirely.
Cesar: Yeah, absolutely. That’s 100 percent why he steps away from that. He feels that there’s really no point in getting emotionally involved if he’s going to die soon anyway.
Scott: Yet, as a sign of his heart, and in large part due to his relationship with June, there is a very satisfying moment later on, very late in the script. Did you have that in mind, that moment where he sees the daughter for a glimpse?
Cesar: Yeah, that was always there early on. I didn’t want him to have a very happy ending in that regard, where it’s like he finally gets to see her and everything is fine and perfect.
I wanted that glimpse and then the webcam moment at the end where he sees his daughter and he cries. That’s really the thing, you don’t choose to get emotionally attached to someone or not. By its very definition, emotions are not rational, so you can’t just say “Nah, I’m not feeling these.”
If you’re feeling it, you’re feeling it. In the end, he does love his daughter and, yeah, it sucks. He’s going to die. But he can’t just say no to the love that he feels for his daughter.
Tomorrow in Part 5, Cesar reflects on what it was like to win the Nicholl and make the 2017 Black List.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
Part 2, here.
Part 3, here.
Cesar is repped by APA and Untitled Entertainment.
For my interviews with 25 other Nicholl winning writers, go here.
