20 Steps in Building a Character

Hi all! 

I got these questions from one of my instructors (Anna Winget) for a playwrighting project, they are good questions for you to ask yourself as your build your characters for The Odd Couple.

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1. Give a one word initial impression. (ex. charming)

2. What animal is the character like and why?

3. What color is the character like and why?

4. What three words describe the character's personality?

5. What does the character look like?

6. How does the character talk? (laconic - garrulous - articulate - semi-literate?)

7. What does he/she sound like? (quality of voice; accent)

8. From what region of the country or world is the character and what influence did that region have?

9. What period of time influenced the character most and why?

10. What is the character's personal philosophy?

11. Describe the character's family?

12. Who inspired the character? (that is, who influenced them?)

13. Who traumatized the character?

14. What is their job? What is their dream job and why?

15. Who is the character's best friend or friends and why? (Who are they closest to?)

16. (a) What does the character want to accomplish in his/her outer world and why?

16. (b) What does the character need spiritually/emotionally?

16. (c) What are they willing to do to get what s/he wants?

17. (a) What are his/her positive traits?

17. (b) What are his/her negative traits?

18. What is the character afraid of and why?

19. What is the character's secret?

20. What does s/he need (by the end of the story) to have a more fulfilling personal life? Spiritual life?

The Play Goes On: A Memoir

Neil Simon's memoirs, notes below. There is a fantastic story about his mother on pages 202-203.

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21: The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park, both true comedies, were successes in both mediums [theater and film].

38: I was playing tennis at a club when I received a phone call from agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar in Los Angeles. Lazar could trace you down if you were in a dungeon in Patagonia. Lazar had initially sold my first three plays, Come Blow Your Horn, Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple, all to Paramount Pictures. Irving now had another offer from Paramount to buy The Sunshine Boys as a vehicle for, and I gulped at this one, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. I grew up listening to both of them on the radio and had seen all their Road pictures as well as Hope's other wonderful comedies. But I told a stunned Irving Lazar that I was regretfully turning it down. The essence of my p lay was that these two aging ex-vaudevillians were Jewish, cranky and tired... not that religion was important to the characters, but their culture and background was.

70: The first preview of The Odd Couple in Delaware drew notices that were anything but exuberant. We had a third act that didn't work at all. Seven weeks and fifty pages of rewrites later, we had a smash.

87: Roy Gerber [was] the original model for Oscar in The Odd Couple.

171: I always knew you could trace my life through my plays (not all, but many) and in the above paragraph there are listed three common themes that show up in various forms throughout my career: the abandoned child, a father with a failing heart (my father died of one) and a mother dying of cancer, which of course was Joan. Always abandonment in one form or another. It shows up in Chapter Two, in Jack's Women, in Broadway Bound. Even in Proposals the father dies of a heart attack and both he and his daughter feel abandoned by the mother who left them. And in the comedy The Odd Couple, the wives of both Oscar and Felix have left them. Oscar copes but Felix is almost suicidal. Abandonment, of course, doesn't always mean someone actually leaving you. They can be there with you, but not be there for you. My mother's inability to deal with my childhood illnesses made me feel just as alone as if she were the one who packed up and left instead of my father, who did it time and time again.

191: I found The Odd Couple, drafts one through twelve. I didn't remember doing it over so many times. I was about to close the file when I noticed that in a faded manila envelope, unmarked, was another script. I took it out and read the title: Brighton Beach Memoirs. I had written it nine years before and had never even looked at it since then.

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20: Jack Lemmon was the only actor ever who said yes to doing a film of mine after I gave him a mere five-sentence description of the story.

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227: Comedy is not always profound, but laughter often makes it feel as if it is.

Playbill Vault

Info about the original production!

Roy Gerber

Real life odd couple, from left, Roy Gerber and Danny Simon with playwright Neil Simon and TV odd couple Jack Klugman and Tony Randall (Photo courtesy Pam Gerber)

Inger with talent agent Roy Gerber

This is the obituary for Roy Gerber, the "original model" for Oscar in The Odd Couple.

This is a news story about Roy from his daughter's perspective.

Both are quick and interesting reads!

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Obituary:

In the early 1960s, Gerber and Weiss joined General Artists Corp., where they represented the Beatles, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Mamas and the Papas, Johnny Rivers, Richard Pryor, Tom Jones and others.

Gerber was newly separated from his first wife in the early 1960s when Simon's brother, comedy writer Danny Simon, who was also newly separated, moved into his West Hollywood home.

Bill Gerber said his father was just like Oscar in "The Odd Couple."

"He was sloppy, he was a womanizer, he was the life of the party," he said. And like Felix Unger, he said, "Danny was literally anal-retentive, he did the cooking, the cleaning."

One night the two men invited friends over for dinner, an occasion for which Simon cooked a pot roast.

"My dad was late, and it got dry, and Danny never forgave him," Bill Gerber said.

The next day, as the story goes, Gerber told Simon: "Sweetheart, that was a lovely dinner last night. What are we going to have tonight?"

To which Simon replied: "What do you mean, cook you dinner? You never take me out to dinner. You never bring me flowers."

Bill Gerber said Walter Matthau, who played Oscar on Broadway and in the 1968 movie version of "The Odd Couple," later told him that in playing the role, "I just did Roy, and it worked out great."

Although Danny Simon originally planned to write a stage comedy about two divorced men who move in together, he stalled after 14 pages.

He finally passed the idea to brother Neil, who thought it was a great idea for a play.

"The Odd Couple," which opened on Broadway in 1965, won four Tony Awards, including one for Neil Simon as best author.

In the front of the original published version of the play, Bill Gerber noted, "Neil said, 'Thank you Roy and Danny for the use of your lives.' "

News Story:

“He went from one dysfunctional marriage to another,” Pam said of her father’s new living arrangement.

She said the two men moved in together partly out of economic necessity, but also because neither man liked being alone.

Despite the five-year run of the 1970-75 version of the TV show, which starred Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, Pam said her father and Simon only lived together about two years.

Of all the actors who’ve portrayed Roy, Pam said Walter Matthau was the one most like him. Once, when asked how he created his character, Matthau said, “I just did Roy, and it worked out great.”

Pam said Klugman, who not only starred in the original TV show but also replaced Matthau in the original Broadway run of the show, did a good job as well.

Along the way, other actors — including Craig Ferguson, Eugene Levy, Nathan Lane and even Rita Moreno, who starred in a female version — portrayed Pam’s father.

But the worst portrayal she’s seen, she said, comes from Matthew Perry, the current CBS Oscar Madison. “He’s too angry,” Pam said, recalling her father as always being the life of the party, always doing “shtick.”

Beginning with the first TV version starring Randall as Felix, the character based on Danny Simon, Felix started to become prissy. But Pam said Simon wasn’t prissy, just anal retentive.

She said when the two golfed, Danny would take out a tape measure to see which ball was inches closer to the hole to determine who putted first.
For two men with such high handicaps, Pam said, that hardly made a difference.

Danny was a good homemaker, with skills in chores such as cooking. Pam said the spaghetti scene in the play where Felix throws the pasta against the wall actually happened.

In her father’s obituary, Pam’s brother Bill told a story about how, soon after moving in together, the two men invited friends over for dinner. Danny made a pot roast.

“My dad was late, and it got dry and Danny never forgave him,” Bill Gerber said.

The next day, Roy asked Danny what he was making for dinner that night. Simon replied, “What do you mean, cook you dinner? You never take me out to dinner. You never bring me flowers.”

But despite the way the character of Felix is being played as probably gay in the current CBS reboot of the show and even the way Randall portrayed him, Pam described both men as womanizers.

She said her father was somewhat messy, but it was more a matter of collecting things. She called it “clean clutter.”

“He had snow globes — from every city,” she said. “Hats — dozens of them. Canes.”

Pam said there was paper everywhere, but not half eaten sandwiches; he wasn’t dirty. “He knew where everything was,” she said.

Danny, who was a TV writer, began writing a play about himself and his roommate Roy. But he never got past 14 pages and instead turned the idea over to his brother, who had already had a few hits on Broadway. Neil Simon won his first Tony Award for The Odd Couple, and it was that play that established his career.

Not-So-Simple Neil Simon: A Critical Study

It's a bit of a stretch to call this book a critical study, but it was one of the first comprehensive looks at Neil Simon's oeuvre, and it has some valid points. The chapters read like detailed synopses--which could be valuable in their own right--and it does offer some interesting insights to the story. I've included relevant notes. I will bring this book to rehearsals as well. Please take these notes with a grain of salt - the business of interpretation is still up to us in the rehearsal room!

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37: In this play Neil Simon has captured the essence of incompatibility among humans who repeat again and again their self-defeating patterns of personality, patterns which make it impossible for them to live together, all good intentions notwithstanding.

37: Simon is obliged by his characters to present them as men with totally different orientations to life, not at all connected to their masculinity or lack thereof.

38: Because the playwright is skilled at creating people recognizable to the audience, the poker players come off as distinct individuals who interact humorously just because they are what they are, rather than by reason of one-liners.

38: There is Murray, the policeman, a good-natured clod... There is Roy, Oscar's accountant, somewhat sarcastic about unpleasant odors of dirt in the first act, but equally put out by the smell of ammonia in Act II. There is Vinnie, who is going to Florida in the middle of summer because the rates are cheapest then, the winner who must "leave early," a definite cheapskate. And there is Speed, who is interested primarily in playing cards with his male friends in order to "get away from the aggravation" he has at home.

39: We also get a picture of Oscar as a very careless and supposedly carefree person as he good-naturedly continues to borrow money from the other players to "stay in the game," and laughingly describes the brown and green sandwiches as "either very new cheese or very old meat." He is also far behind in his alimony and child support payments for his ex-wife, Blanche... but this debt doesn't seem to disturb him either.

40: [During Felix and Oscar's first scene] we begin to see under the stereotyped conformities two rather nice human beings who will never be able to communicate with one another simply because each man has a completely different way of viewing the world and is committed to what amounts to an extreme position with no intention of compromise... this inflexibility will continue to block [their] achieving happiness regardless of the sex of the "mate" [they] choose.

40: Underlying Felix's behavior is his feeling that he is "nothing" without Frances or the children... a common problem with people who define themselves in terms of their jobs, their families... of extraneous circumstances and/or other people.

40: [Felix] is powerless to change.

41: [Felix] thinks his way is always the only right way, a conviction which evokes inevitable conflict and causes him to fail in his relationships with other people.

43: [Felix's tears are shed in self-pity.]

45: Completely in character, Felix will have none of such a reasonable attitude. He prefers to imply by his words and his behavior that he will now commit suicide and that it will be Oscar's fault... he leaves with "that human sacrifice" look again.

46: It is not that Felix is compulsively neat whereas Oscar is careless; it is not that Felix cries aloud while Oscar represses his feelings; it is not even that their total "chemistries" clash when they are forced to see each other on a daily basis. More significantly, neither man is able to compromise... on even the smallest details of living.

47: The inevitable need for a middle course rather than an extremely polarized position in pursuit of harmony.

Understanding Neil Simon

I read through the chapter in this book based on The Odd Couple, it had some interesting points that I've shared with you below - some of it I think will help you focus your characters circumstances. I'll bring this book to rehearsal if you'd like to read through it, it's an easy read.

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28: The central premise of The Odd Couple is, after all, a fairly serious one: two men who are separated from their spouses try sharing an apartment, only to discover that they cannot get along any better with each other than they did with their wives. When he began the play, Simon was actually thinking about the problem of divorce "and about two men who are basically unhappy."

29: As Ruby Cohn has noted, the technique of using "a comically contrasting pair [of characters] is at least as old as Plautus, with his Menachmus brothers, and that device was undoubtedly reinforced by the two-brother structure of Simon's own family.

29: Oscar Madison, a successful sportswriter, is sloppy, easy-going, and unreliable. Recently divorced, he is eight hundred dollars behind in his alimony payments and owes money to his friends as well.

30: Felix Ungar is compulsively neat, fastidious, and high-strung... Felix is nervous, hypochondriac, and at time hysterical.

31: The poker players themselves... serve as a kind of Greek chorus who support this golden mean [of the balance disrupted between Oscar and Felix, between freedom and discipline, spontaneity and order]... [They complain about the state of Oscar's apartment and are equally critical of Felix's habits]... in their role as Greek chorus, the poker players thus emerge as a voice for moderation.

31-2: Like most buffoon comedies, The Odd Couple pictures its main characters as loners, suggesting that integration with society (i.e., through the revitalization of a marriage) is not a viable alternative for them. Oscar and Felix were not able to live compatibly with their wives, nor could they get along any better with each other.

33: Not only are they [Oscar and Felix] opposite in behavior and personality, they are incapable of compromise. This inflexibility, this inability to change or to learn from past mistakes, is, in fact, a major reason for the failure of both men's marriages.

34: Even before Felix appears onstage... the audience is well aware of his stereotypically feminine qualities.

35: During the second poker game, in which Felix plays the role of attentive hostess--Simon basically makes use of the same stereotypes and incongruities that Kaufman employed in his comedy [If Men Played Cards as Women Do]

35: Although they never appear onstage, the wives of the poker players exert a strong influence over the men, at times controlling their husbands' behaviors.

36: The "man's world" that Simon portrays in The Odd Couple is thus, in reality, not a masculine haven at all but a world that is constantly impinged on by women [in Cecily and Gwendolyn and the wives' calls]

38: Addressing subjects such as divorce, depression, friendship, and incompatibility, The Odd Couple is the first of Simon's comedies to confront serious issues and, in this sense, represents a turning point in the playwright's career... "after 'The Odd Couple,' I was convinced that I could make people laugh, so I no longer felt compelled to... I've learned to protect the serious moments of my plays."

Neil Simon: Toward Act III?

Below are notes from an article on Neil Simon, published in the journal (I think) MELUS, by Oxford University Press. 

It's dated, but the play had already been around for 15 years, and it has some good stuff in it about Simon. Enjoy!

If you would like to read the entire article, let me know and I will try to get you a copy.

Vol. 7 No. 2, Between Margin and Mainstream (Summer 1980)

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78: The conflict between Simon's sensitivity to pain and suffering and his extraordinary talent and success is central to understanding his play.

78: "I grew up in a family that split up dozens of times," he recalled. "My father would leave home, be gone for a few months and then come back, and then -- zap, the string would break and he was gone." ...according to Danny Simon, who tried to shield Neil from the brunt of it all, his brother "must have felt pain that he didn't show. He saved it for his writing."

78: Danny Simon says that after his own divroce he wanted to write a play about his experience but after writing fourteen pages he couldn't go on. It was the germ of a work "about two divroced men living together, and the same problems they had with their wives repeat with each other."

78: As Neil Simon has admitted, "I suppose you could practically trace my life through my plays... they always come out of what I'm thinking about what I am as a person."

79: Known as a surefire gagwriter, as a manufacturer of machine gun humor, he had created a kind of monster. There was always the question whether a serious play of his, unleavened by humor, would be accorded fair treatment.

81: By the playwright's own admission, he dealt with some of the really ugly, painful things in his youth by blocking them out and later relating to them through humor. To Simon, the ideal play is one where the audience laughs all night but in the last few minutes is touched by a sense of tragedy.

81: The success of the The Off Couple, produced in 1965, has convinced Simon that he could make people laugh. Having learned that he had that capability, he no longer felt compelled to produce non-stop amusement, but worked to protect the serious moments within his plays.

83: After almost two decades of criticism, it appears that the critics only partly understand Neil Simon. Walter Kerr is surely right in noting that Simon creates character and is not just a gagman. And the Village Voice's Gordon Rogoff is surely right in pointing out that telling jokes does not confer distinction or immortality....

84: "The humor is often self-deprecating and usually sees life from the grimmest point of view. Much of that, I think, comes from my childhood."

84: [Edythe McGovern:] "..his plays, which may appear simple to those who never look beyond the fact that they are amusing are, in fact, frequently more perceptive and revealing of the human condition than many plays labeled complex dramas."

85: [Edythe McGovern:] "to Neil Simon, who thinks and feels, the comic form provides a means to present serious subjects so that audiences may laugh to avoid weeping."

Simply Simon: Not Just For Laughs

Link to a short, sweet, and juicy article on Neil Simon by everyone's friends over at PBS. It's put together to support a documentary on the playwright, but I can't seem to find it (at least not easily), if anyone finds it please push it my way.

Oscar and Felix, A New Look at The Odd Couple

Here is a review of "Oscar and Felix, A New Look at The Odd Couple," which, apparently was a thing in 2002, where Neil Simon updated the script to modern times, produced at the Geffen. I'm sure it would be interesting to see, but I'm glad we're doing the original.

Elliot Norton Reviews Art Carney

The following are excerpts taken from an interview of Art Carney (who played the original Felix Ungar) and a renown Boston theatre critic, Elliot Norton. It was filmed in 1973. I apologize that I cannot link the video to this blog as the video hosted on a protected database.

Elliot Norton Did he tell you anything about, what I as thinking about was the background. When you played in the Odd Couple, uh, you were playing, or were you playing one of the people that he knows? His brother is one of the characters in that play, isn't he?

05:00Art Carney (crosstalk) Yeah.

Elliot Norton Isn't that based on?

Art Carney He and Danny, yeah, his brother Danny.

Elliot Norton (crosstalk) Oh.

05:05Art Carney Uh, Neil...

Elliot Norton (crosstalk) Well, is Danny the part you played, the Felix Unger?

Art Carney (crosstalk) The lint-picker? The Felix Unger?I thi-, I don't know Danny too well. I would, I would think that, knowing Neil better than Danny, I would think that Neil would be, uh, now, I'm not quite sure, Elliot, whether it was, uh, whether he wrote the play about he and his brother, or it was his brother and another fellow, or Neil and another fella. I'm not quite sure about that. Uh, but of Neil and Danny, I would say, uh, Neil would be more the Felix Unger type.

05:35Elliot Norton Mm-hm.

Art Carney But Neil told me that when he did write the play, and after it got through with it, that he, that he did definitely have me in mind to do, to play Felix Unger.

05:45Elliot Norton Oh, really?

Art Carney Which, uh, pleased me and flattered me very much. Cuz, uh, I'd known Neil for a while, and, uh, he just, uh, he had seen me do several characters and things on the Gleason Show. I wasn't always the store-worker. We did various characterizations, and one of the characters in the Gleason Show was the fella at the lunch counter, Charlie Bratton, the loud-mouth, played by Gleason, and Clem Finch, the timid soul. And I think, maybe it was seeing me do that, uh, meek, timid sort of a fellow that gave Neil the idea that I'd be right for Felix, you know. Cuz I'm a lint-picker any-, anyway. I'm...

06:20Elliot Norton (crosstalk) Are you?

Art Carney You ea-. you saw me eatin' the sandwich in there, and the potato chip fi-, I'm the kind of a fellow that after you're through with the meal, and I'm like my mother, I go like this with the bread crumbs, you know. Which was Felix Unger.

06:30Elliot Norton Well, does, uh, has Neil Simon that close in, uh, following actors? I mean, is he that shrewd? Does he watching, in addition to writing plays, is he watching actors and thinking about them for parts? I mean, does he tend to cast plays as well as write them?

06:50Art Carney Yea. I, he has a lot, uh, a lot to do with the casting. Cuz when we were in the Odd Couple, uh, which was, as you know, directed by Mike Nichols, we, uh, rehearsed in New York for about three weeks, then we went out on the road. And, uh, Neil and Mike, constantly were, uh, working together. And Neilattended practically all rehearsals.

07:10Elliot Norton Mm-hm.

Art Carney And then he'd haul himself up at night and make changes, and, uh, we were floundering around in Wilmington, Delaware for an end to the play. And we had meet-, uh, I threw in things, uh, one night to, off the top of my head to see if we could search for an ending to the play. And, of course, as we were talkin' a little while ago up here with you, the two Pigeon sisters, the, those wonderful British gals, how you miss them an everything, and, uh, we brought them, Neil and, uh, and you and Mike (laughs) brought them back into the play.

07:45Elliot Norton Yeah.

Art Carney All for the better, too.

Elliot Norton Oh, yeah. That helped out a good deal, and it helped you, the character,

07:50Art Carney Oh, yeah.

Elliot Norton Felix Unger, comes out a whole lot better when the Pigeon sisters take him over in that particular part.

07:55Art Carney (crosstalk) That's right. That's, that's his victory over his, uh, loudmouth roommate.

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and everything I have been saying thoughts that comes outta this fella's head. Neil Simon, nobody else, cuz he works alone. And I've known the fella for a long time. I know he's a sensitive, kind, uh, funny man. As I said before, the, uh, the things that happen in, in these two plays, I'm usingOdd Couple and Prisoner, are not funny at all.

09:55Elliot Norton No.

Art Carney You know, I mean, the, uh, the Odd Couple, two fellas thrown together, and unhappy marriages, and divorce, and everything, and goin' through hell. It's, uh, it was a sad situation, particularly for Felix.

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Art Carney Because, uh, Neil Simon, uh, his writing is so, the only word I can think of is human. It is real, and Mike Nichols direction is so honest. In other words, he would always say to me, uh, and the other actor, "Don't worry about that laugh. Don't punch that line. You don't have to punch a line of Neil Simon's. It's there. You don't punch it to get that laugh." That, and Mike always said, this is difficult, "Try not to compare audiences." Andactors are human beings, right? Which you said in a column, (laughs) not log ago about me and my problems. That actors have problems, and so forth, and they get over them, and sometimes they don't. So, anyway, uh, it's very difficult for actors or actresses to, uh, to stop comparing audiences. Cuz when you have a house like you did last night, for example, and tonight maybe it won't be that, that strong, uh, you gotta numb yourself. And it's discipline, I guess, is the word. Just say, "Well, maybe they did enjoy it just as much." Or the Wednesday and Saturday matinee sometimes, in Chicago, they would be very quiet. And I'd say, "Well now just, you know, they might be enjoying it. Maybe there's not as many audible laughers out there." And at the end of that, that curtain call they were whooping itup, and, and you'd say something mean to yourself like, "Where were you when I needed you?" You know? But they loved it, you know.