It occurs that separate test screenings for men and women would be good. I am especially interested in what women think about the Christina character, if they relate to her as a more elegant cut emerges. Is she despised by some women? What sort of women despise her and which like her? Certainly some men do…
Keeping the genders separate for a couple of tests is worthy because I wouldn’t want female feedback suppressed by negative male reactions. I don’t know why Faisal was so adamant about cutting away Christina – She was working for me then and even more so now that I’ve chipped off the dross. I suspect she rubbed him the wrong way not because of Carmen’s lack of experience as an actor (or my lack of experience as a director) but because the character of Christina might make some guys really uncomfortable. Faisal kept going on and on about minimizing her, she made him itch in a place he couldn’t scratch, perhaps the root cause of our producer debacle.
Whether Christina actually has life and power for anyone else but me can only be discovered through rigorous testing. I’m guessing Christina will be vindicated.
If Faisal is right and Christina is just a poorly conceived and realized presence then DOG is dead – it’s pointless to minimize my main character, the spine of the narrative. The position he seemed to be taking was one of salvage, ‘there’s some good stuff here in spite of your terrible actress so make that work’. Basically – abandon my vision.
If I am right then there’s several important lessons… 1) if Christina triggers intense reactions it’s cause she’s working as a character, 2) I can trust my vision even in the face of scary critique 3) I’m destined to wrangle with some people even though I love them, not *because* I do. Come to think of it, this could be the explanation of why I lost Peterson, huh. I’m reminded of Box, when that guy got up in the middle of our performance and started calling my character an asshole. Wow, that rocked. Maybe that’s exactly what’s happening here.
Now I’m really excited to find out.