Five More Movie Characters I Love

by Patrick Bromley

More movie characters I love more than most other movie characters.

1. Lawrence Woolsey, Matinee (1993)

Joe Dante's Matinee is a rare perfect movie and one of my favorites of all time. A big reason for my affection for it is John Goodman's performance as Lawrence Woolsey, a filmmaker and huckster who's part showman, part conman, all lovable. JB has often talked on the podcast about actors who convey a "joy of performance" in their acting, and he might as well be talking about Goodman's work in Matinee. He gives Woolsey a perpetual gleam in his eye all while making him larger than life, his impossibly enormous stature made even bigger by the booming bass of his voice, the cigar in his mouth, the way he explodes into every frame in which he appears and immediately seizes control of it. Woolsey knows he's a stinker, but that's the fun of the career he's chosen -- he's a big kid who gets to make monsters and play with his theatrical "process" toys for a living. In the hands of a less skilled, less likable actor, Woolsey might just come off as a blustering scumbag. Goodman makes him one of us, a monster kid who refuses to grow up and gets to have his revenge on anyone who ever doubted him by scaring the heck out of them. We love him for it.

2. Daryl Zero, Zero Effect (1997)

Besides being the best movie he's made to date, Jake Kasdan's debut feature Zero Effect is one of my favorite movies of the late 1990s and features my favorite performance from one of my five favorite actors, one Bill Pullman. Kasdan's wry neo-noir positions Pullman as Daryl Zero, the world's greatest private detective who also happens to be the most eccentric, neurotic recluse to ever solve a case. Equal parts funny and tragic, Zero is brilliant but weird, a romantic with no ability to relate to other people unless he's playing a part. I love that Jake Kasdan trusted Bill Pullman with a rare opportunity to carry a movie (it helps that he has Ben Stiller as his perpetually beleaguered sidekick and Ryan O'Neal as the guy who hires him to find a missing set of keys) because my man rises to the occasion and turns Daryl Zero into a totally singular creation. It will always break my heart that we didn't get more of this character. He should have been the Benoit Blanc of the '90s.

3. Nancy Thompson, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The best final girl of all time from my favorite horror movie. Nancy Thompson is smart and resourceful, a good friend and a good daughter despite having something of a rough home life (her parents marriage is on shaky ground, her father is consumed by his work as a cop, her mother is clearly an alcoholic). She's wholesome but not sexless, existing right on that precipice between adolescence and womanhood, which is what makes her arc and her connection to Fred Krueger take on such resonance. Unlike some other famous final girls, Nancy isn't so much a survivor as she is a fighter, willing to take the battle to Freddy rather than wait around to be murdered in her sleep like her friends.

4. Hobie Doyle, Hail Caesar! (2016)

After Marge Gunderson in Fargo, it's almost impossible to pick a favorite Coen Brothers character because they've written so many wonderful and memorable characters over the course of their career. Do I pick H.I. McDunnough? Llewyn Davis? Chad Feldheimer? The Dude? Walter? Hell, just choosing a favorite character from their brilliant and underappreciated Hail, Caesar! proves difficult; I came very close to going with Josh Brolin's Eddie Mannix because I love him, but I'd be crazy not to name Alden Ehrenreich's singing cowboy Hobie Doyle as my favorite of the entire ensemble. Hobie is positioned as the fool largely because of the "Would that it were so simple" sequence, but he's not a fool -- he's just limited as an actor. Hobie is the first and only character to notice that something is wrong with Eddie and the first to offer to help. He's the first character to (correctly) suspect an extra of kidnapping Baird Whitlock and the first to spring into action when he spots a telltale briefcase. Hobie is heroic. Hobie is sweet. Hobie wants more than anything to do a good job and to make the people around him happy, whether it's director Laurence Laurentz or blind date Carlotta Valdez or Mannix himself. I love when the Coens add so much depth and nuance to characters we might otherwise dismiss as fools.

5. Jordan Cochran, Real Genius (1985)

It's hard to steal a movie from the late, great Val Kilmer in manic comedy mode, but that's exactly what the perpetually underappreciated Michelle Meyrink (Valley Girl, Permanent Record) does as Jordan in Real Genius. A hyperactive insomniac who stays up all night studying instead of sleeping and talks faster than most people run, she's one of the only women in a movie full of super smart men. We already like main character Mitch (Gabe Jarrett) when he meets Jordan, but the fact that she likes him makes us like him more. There are so many ways Jordan could have been written and played that would have been awful; in the hands of Meyrink and director Martha Coolidge, though, she's wonderful and original and the best part of a movie full of good parts.