• Release: 2018
• Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant
• Directed by: Marielle Heller
• Screenplay by: Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty
• Spoilers? Fer shure.

The film is based on a true story, adapted from Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger, by Lee Israel. The protagonist (let’s not call her a hero) is a talented biographer with a New York Times-bestseller under her belt who’s fallen on hard times. She drinks, she loses her job when she swears at her boss, and her agent (played by Jane Curtin) won’t return her calls. Despite the good advice she gets from her agent to clean up her act, try to get along with people, and establish her own writing voice, Israel chooses another way.

She finds she’s a victim of her own success: in writing biographies, she successfully hid her own voice behind that of her subjects. As a result, nobody knows Lee Israel. However, she’s really good at imitating the voices of others. So she embellishes, then forges outright, letters from late literary luminaries and sells them to antiquarian dealers to pay the rent.

What works?

Holofcenter and Whitty tell a compelling story and yet at no point in the narrative does Israel become a likeable character. She’s not someone we want to have over for dinner, but she’s a fascinating protagonist. Yes, we care about whether Israel will ultimately face justice, but the greater concern lies with her character. Will she grow a conscience?

How does it work?

Holofcener and Whitty (and a brilliant performance from Melissa McCarthy) create a character we root for in spite of her horrible behavior. How? First, we know she’s capable of caring about something: she loves books and writing, and she adores her cat. She shows occasional kindness to her landlord and his mother, and to scam artist Jack Hock (played by Richard E. Grant).

Israel gets multiple chances to turn the ship around. Her agent Marjorie gives her good advice on how to achieve success. She doesn’t take it. She has opportunities to be kind and helpful to others. She doesn’t use them. All these instances represent repeated tests and failures on the hero’s journey, so they create forward momentum, and the stakes keep rising both for Israel and for her victims. Each time, we root for her to do the right thing. But these repeated failures could make us increasingly exasperated with her. Why don’t they? Why do we continue to care?

Israel’s character has a subtle vulnerability. In spite of her clearly articulated distaste for other people, she’s desperately lonely. Israel yearns for success and acclaim because she knows her talent, but she stubbornly refuses to either play the game or accept the consequences for failing to do so. Consequently, she finds herself angry and alone.

Her need to find and value her own voice represents her deeper quest for self-approbation. This is the lesson she has to learn in order to evolve as a character. Paradoxically, it’s in her decision to write the memoir of her worst behavior that results in her greatest professional success, because it’s in this story that the public discovers her true, remarkable voice.

Fiction writing lesson

Don’t fear the unlikable protagonist.

An unlikable protagonist can create a compelling story. In order to make this technique work, give her a vulnerability to make us root for her.