Creating Unforgettable Characters Read Online Free Page B

that I could read about the mountain gorilla—all the back issues of National Geographic, anything that I could find in the UCLA library on the mountain gorillas of Ruanda. I learned about their night-nests, which became a scene in the film. I learned that a person should not make direct eye contact with the gorilla because that threatens them and will entice them to charge.
    "I learned about the gorillas' protectiveness toward their families or their groups. There will be one gorilla—a juvenile male—who will guard the rest of the group. This worked very well because Digit, who was a juvenile male, was Dian Fossey's favorite gorilla. He was the one in the film who eventually put his hands in hers.
    "During my time in Africa, I was looking for the smell, the feel, what the environment does to me visually. Although you certainly don't smell a character or an environment in a screenplay, you can get it there in between the lines. And I was looking for a sense of how dangerous the area was to live in. Much of the danger came from the discomfort of living ten thousand feet above sea level. Dian had emphysema, which was exacerbated by the climate. Smoking two packs of cigarettes a day plus living in that humidity made her emphysema much worse. The walking, the hiking, the schlepping up those mountains and sliding around in that mud made me ask, 'What kind of a woman would want to live in that kind of environment for fifteen years?' It's a long time to live in the mud and it's freezing cold. Absolutely bone-chilling cold. The coldest I've ever been in my life. It's so damp and you're always wet. There is no part of your clothing, when you're outside, that is ever dry.
    "I stayed in a little cabin about fifty feet from the cabin in which Dian was murdered, because we were not allowed in her cabin. It had been cordoned off after the murder. However, I could look in the windows of the cabin. I wanted to get in to touch things. Sometimes in touching things that in this case real live people have touched—there is something that happens. And its not even—I can't even express it—but there are certain feelings that you get that you can use in the work. And I knew, if I'd have been able to get in there and touch some things that she had touched, it would have probably been good for me. But I was able to look in the windows and see what it looked like inside this corrugated tin cabin where there were little tablecloths, little vases of dried flowers, little silver picture frames, good china, good silver. It was so bizarre, to see these valuables in this strange place, but that was what intrigued me about this woman.
    "The first time I saw the gorillas, I thought, They're not real. They're so gentle and so docile and just kind of minding their own business that you're not frightened at all. But I never had that feeling about the gorillas that I know Dian had—that feeling of awe and wonder. So I had to create that feeling. But it was helpful for me to see the gorillas.
    "The actual period of the story was more difficult to research, because the civil war which had formed a strong subplot in the story had been over with for a number of years. I did, however, find some information from Dian Fossey s book, where she mentioned a tiny bit in one of the chapters about her run-in at the border. There were other books I read, other historical accounts of the conflict in the Congo.
    "The local people were very in awe and very much in love with Dian Fossey and/or her project. Those that had never met her were very taken with her. She was called Niramachebelli, and that means 'the woman who lives alone in the forest without a man.' But the people that I met that knew her better didn't like her. I only found one person out of the forty that I interviewed that liked her and that was Ross Car [played by Julie Harris in the film]. She had so many enemies. You could point your finger anywhere and find a murderer."
    APPLICATION
    As you think through