A heuristic for creating composite characters

Composite characters shorten one’s dramatis personae, tighten plot, and give anyone upon whom a personage is based plausible deniability.

But how does one mix two people? One might as well mix last night’s spaghetti and meatballs with this morning’s breakfast cereal.

I was daunted with the prospect of doing so, until I came upon the metaphor of “casting.”

Director Nanni Moretti typically plays the egomaniac protagonists in his films. In his 2015 film-within-a-film Mia Madre (“My Mother”) Moretti casts Margherita Buy of the long-suffering wife roles (the widow in Özpetek’s Le fati ignoranti, the mother in Virzì’s Caterina va in città, the wife of the film producer in Moretti’s own Il caimano, the spouse in Soldini’s Giorni e nuvole) as the self-centered film director, and himself plays Margherita’s sensitive architect brother who brings their mother in hospital all her favorite home-cooked meals, when the most Margherita can think of to do is bring takeout.

That’s the A-story. The B-story is Margherita’s film-within-a-film. She infuriatingly says to one of her actors, “Stai accanto a lei”: stand next to your character, don’t become her. In-film director Margherita can’t explain what the hell such an elliptical statement means. Real-life director Moretti demonstrates it by casting Buy and himself in roles opposite to what I expect them to play.

Rather than compositing characters by mixing one’s face with another’s hairstyle or one’s history with another’s mannerisms, I take the character who will be doing all I the writer ask him to do to advance my plot, then cast someone else from my imaginarium to play him, i.e., “my father in the role of my mother,” “my ex-boyfriend in the role of myself,” “my eccentric childhood piano teacher in the role of my stiff boss.”

Now, even before he faces an external obstacle, my character already struggles with himself.