Year/Job
Owner of Club Brielle
He's good bad, but he's not evil. |
Travis
|
Post by Lawrence Gable on Feb 27, 2024 23:16:01 GMT -8
Origins of the Name
Lawrence is named after Clark Gable. His first name isn't an allusion to anything. Simply tried it on and it fit.
Inspirations
A few months before I created Lawrence, I stumbled upon TV Tropes for the first time and became obsessed. I was staying up into the early hours of the morning clicking down rabbit holes convinced that I had discovered the secret math behind storytelling. Lawrence was my first attempt to build a character from a trope. Affably Evil is a character archetype where a villain is a totally nice person who just happens to be against the protagonist. The most important thing for the trope is that the character is genuinely a nice person. Villains are charming and courteous all the time, but that doesn't make them affably evil.
If there's a specific affably evil character that I took the most inspiration from, it's Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons. Scorpio is an energetic businessman who calls his employees like his friends and rejects the term "boss" because he doesn't like any title that elevates him above anyone else. He's also an international supervillain who plots to extort gold from the UN (I think?) in exchange for turning over "the doomsday device." Hank Scorpio is the single greatest single episode appearance in the history of television guest stars, absolutely legendary performance by Albert Brooks.
How exactly Lawrence is evil was a bit more difficult to establish than his charismatic personality. I didn't want to make a dark wizard or tie him to a hateful ideology, so gangster was the only thing that made sense to me. Once I committed to the idea of Lawrence as a fledgling gangster, I found a lot of ways to explore Lawrence's evil side, including the protection scheme that he ran as a prefect which was his first successful business. Over time, Lawrence developed more into an anti-hero than a villain, but the affably evil title is still a fundamental part of his character. Face Claim History
Lawrence's original face claim was Richard Dreyfuss, most famous for his roles in Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and What About Bob? I could only used pictures from American Graffiti (Dreyfuss would have been in his mid-twenties, but my justification was that he was playing an 18 year old in the movie) which meant that everyone imagined Larry owning a single plaid shirt featured in all of his images. I briefly used Chris Pratt on the first run of Beyond Hallows. This was just after his first major starring role in Guardians of the Galaxy and he was still largely known for playing Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation and bit roles in random movies like Moneyball and Her. I've always had a certain type in mind for Lawrence, and at some point it just clicked with me that Adam Pally was perfect for him. Mostly known for his roles on Happy Endings and The Mindy Project, I actually discovered Pally from his appearance on the podcast How Did This Get Made?
Essential Watching
- Goodfellas (1990) The quintessential gangster movie not called The Godfather, what sets Goodfellas apart from other gangster movies is how it depicts criminal underworld at the working class level. Though not the first of its kind (Scorsese himself depicted working class mobsters in his semi-autobiographical 1973 film Mean Streets), its story is told with so much energy and ruthlessness that it is the absolute best of its kind. Essential for Lawrence in the way it depicts the kind of world he's rising up in, and of course one of the quotes that defines him: "As far as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster." - Miller's Crossing (1990) Miller's Crossing is a Dashiell Hammett pastiche that primarily draws inspiration from two Hammett novels: Red Harvest and The Glass Key. It follows Tom Reagan, the right hand man of political boss Leo O'Bannon. Tom has to navigate a mob war after Leo refuses to lift protection on a crooked bookie for rival gangster Johnny Caspar. After a falling out with Leo, Reagan plays both sides of the war in a gambit to protect Leo from the outside of the organization. There isn't anything particularly Larry in this story except that I love how complicated the pieces of it are, the tightwire act of the criminal underworld to get what you want or simply to survive. Quick witted and sometimes ridiculous, I just adore this movie. - American Graffiti (1973) Another movie that is less of a reflection of Lawrence himself and more of just a vibe. American Graffiti is George Lucas' second film and his last before he entered Star Wars hell. It follows a group of high school graduates on their last night of summer before going off to college, exploring the cruising culture of 1960s Southern California that Lucas grew up around. It's on this list mostly because of Lawrence's original face claim, but it was a huge influence on how I approached Lawrence's teenage years. More of a relic now than a glimpse into Lawrence's character, it's a still fun little piece of Lawrence's history. - "You Only Move Twice" ( The Simpsons S8E2, 1996) Discussed a bit already in Inspirations, "You Only Move Twice" comes out of nowhere as one of these weirdly conceptual Simpsons episodes. Essentially, it's an idea that's been explored in several episodes already: The Simpsons move to a new community and we see a bit about how they adjust to it until they decide that they're happier in Springfield instead, only this time Homer's boss is inexplicably a really nice Bond villain. This one's a top twenty-five episode for me. - The Gentlemen (2019) I wasn't even really thinking about The Gentlemen until I realized that I needed more things to fill out this list and suddenly The Gentlemen makes too much sense. Guy Ritchie's return to form after directing his last gangster caper in 2008, The Gentlemen feels a bit like a spiritual successor Rocknrolla which ended on cliffhanger. It follows an American gangster in England as he brokers a deal to sell his business to a rival. Ritchie's crime movies can feel a bit copy/paste, but they're so entertaining that it's easy to ignore the sameness, not to mention that it had been so long since he'd directed one that this felt really fresh. There's tons of characters and witty dialogue and a fun framing device that casts McConaughey's Mickey Pearson as this mythic gangster. He's American, like Lawrence, and tied to a powerful wife. Like I said, makes too much sense. - Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995) The third in the Die Hard pentalogy and one of only two genuine bangers in the series (The Die Hard movies actually had a pretty good track record until A Good Day To, but Die Hard 2: Die Harder is just way too smirky for me to genuinely love it. Like, there's way too much "can't believe this is happening to me again!" moments in the movie. Conversely, With a Vengeance succeeds as a sequel because it pushes the character beyond territory seen in the first movie. All of this is to say that Jake Peralta's ranking on Brooklyn Nine-Nine is spot on: 1, 3, 4, 2, 5), this one is mostly on the list because Die Hard is my favorite movie and Hans Gruber is not an affably evil villain, but his brother Simon is! Another defining quote: "I'm a soldier, not a monster, even though I sometimes work for monsters." - Justified Season 4 (2013) If you haven't watched Justified yet, you absolutely should. It's a neo-western set in modern day Kentucky that follows federal marshal Raylan Givens as he's forced to confront his past after being transferred to his home state as punishment. The main villain of the series is his old coal buddy Boyd Crowder, a local thug who specializes in blowing shit up and robbing banks. Season four is my favorite of the series. It sets up a D.B. Cooper type manhunt when it's discovered that a criminal who stole from a Detroit mobster is alive and living somewhere in Kentucky. We see a lot of Boyd rising in the criminal underworld and proposing to his longtime girlfriend who is conflicted about his crimes, but ultimately becomes a partner in them. We also see Boyd's conflict with a group of local businessmen who refuse to let him break through into their world. I like this a lot for Lawrence because of the dynamic between Boyd and his fiancée and his maneuvering to rise up in the world. It also features a lot of Detroit mob stuff, which is relevant to Lawrence's history. Soundtrack
1. "Me And Your Mama" by Childish Gambino 2. "Bad Kids" by Black Lips 3. "Give Him a Great Big Kiss" by The Shangri-Las 4. "Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangster" by Geto Boys 5. "Evil Friends" by Portugal, The Man 6. "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" by The Platters 7. "Golden Years" by David Bowie 8. "Rags To Riches" by Tony Bennett 9. "Lengthwise" by Phish 10. "Lover, You Should've Come Over" by Jeff Buckley 11. "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen 12. "Gabrielle" by Ween 13. "Layla" by Derek and the Dominos
Trivia
- Club Brielle is based on the Copacabana as featured in Goodefellas.
- Lawrence attended The Midwest Academy for Magical Boys, which was originally supposed to be in Rapid City, South Dakota but I moved it to Illinois because I preferred its more central location.
- Lawrence's favorite teacher and mentor at Midwest Academy was actor and actual wizard Michael J. Fox.
- Lawrence was conceived as the opposite of Theodore: an evil character with a dead father instead of a dead mother. His birthday is six months after Theodore's.
- I picked Michigan as Lawrence's birthplace because of the Ohio State/Michigan rivalry. Michigan is evil, you see.
- Lawrence's business was going to be called Legitimate Businessman's Social Club, which is a reference to The Simpsons, but I liked the narrative significance of Lawrence naming a club after Brielle.
- On Beyond Hallows Version 1.0, Lawrence was Secretary of Magic, a title which he made up.
- Lawrence's nemesis, Bash Naggston, is based on a background character from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. When I was a kid my sister and I would name the extras and Bash Naggston was one that stuck with me.
- Lawrence's relationship with Brielle was developed entirely in games posts, mostly after one in the morning when Steph and I refused to sleep. This was the original "spamming" which became popular on HM and followed us to other sites.
|
|