There are notable differences between having real people and fictional characters as role models. The latter are, of course, less likely to disappoint you, but they can also feel that much harder to live up to. That may be why I didn’t really have any when I was younger, and when I found one in my late teens, he was a particularly down-to-earth, human example: Patrick Kenzie, the protagonist of six crime thrillers by Dennis Lehane. Unfortunately, the first real person to bring him to life didn’t measure up.
Patrick is a private eye who works the mean streets of Boston with his partner and eventual wife, Angie Gennaro. In a vacuum, this could describe a billion mystery protagonists of varying quality and staying power, but there’s much more to Patrick. He’s a survivor of horrific childhood abuse who loves a survivor of domestic abuse, and this background has inculcated both of them with a fierce protective instinct, a visceral hatred of bullies, and a personal mission to help “the people who started out in the cracks and then fell through.” Patrick isn’t naïve about how this world treats marginalized people, but he’s resolved to do everything in his power to be part of the solution. In the fourth novel, Gone, Baby, Gone, he recalls a childhood memory of asking his priest “how to get to heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world.” His response, Patrick remembers, was “what God told His children; ‘You are sheep among wolves, be wise as the serpent, yet innocent as doves.’” To the extent that I have one, Patrick is my role model for healthy masculinity.
I’m not the only fan of the series, and some of them are far higher-profile than I am. Nearly 11 years ago, Ben Affleck co-wrote and directed an adaptation of Gone, Baby, Gone as his directorial debut. Affleck was coming off of a creative slump at the time, but the movie was universally praised for its gritty authenticity (helped along by his casting of locals) and the performances of Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, and Amy Ryan, who was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Also singled out for praise was Casey Affleck, who played Patrick; when he was cast, numerous obvious jokes were made about how hard the director’s brother must have had to work for the part. However, the younger Affleck held his own in the role, imbuing Patrick with the same baby-faced combination of kindness and weariness that would net his performance in Manchester by the Sea an Academy Award a decade later.
These days, of course, Casey Affleck’s intensity as a performer is not what we talk about when we talk about him, and it shouldn’t have been since 2010, when he was sued for sexual harassment by both the producer and cinematographer of I’m Still Here; Affleck later settled both lawsuits out of court, and they went largely unremarked upon in the press until he made the rounds ahead of last year’s Oscars. While the settlements weren’t enough to keep Affleck from winning, Brie Larson, who had won Best Actress the previous year for playing a sexual abuse survivor in Room, visibly refused to applaud him as she presented the award, and in January, he announced he will not be presenting at this year’s ceremony. Affleck’s announcement didn’t specifically attribute his decision to a climate of backlash against unpunished abusive men in the industry, but it didn’t really need to.
Ever since the settlements were reported on, I’ve struggled with separating actor from character. There’s a bit of emotional whiplash inherent in your favorite character being brought to a life by a man who, if they met, that character would probably want to fight him, or at least key his car. The more I consider the film (which still holds up for the most part), the more I notice the other major way it betrays the characters I loved: Angie, Patrick’s partner, is one of the most badass female characters in the genre in the books. In the movie, however, she’s largely sidelined, reduced to playing the same kind of fretful background player Hollywood normally slots the supremely talented Michelle Monaghan into. In the film’s climax a random bartender replaces Angie’s role in the novel in shooting and disarming the film’s villain. Affleck’s script rubbed salt in the wound by having said villain chuckle, “That bartender wasn’t fucking around.”
That’s why I was thrilled by the announcement in early February that Fox has ordered a pilot based on the series. In the era of Peak TV, I’ve long thought the books had elements that made them better-suited to the medium. They’re full of side plots, subtle characterizations, and examinations of issues like race, class, and generational violence that simply wouldn’t fit into a movie. Then there’s the fact that there are, of course, six books, which isn’t much by the standards of the mystery genre, but practically unheard of for any film series that isn’t a billion-dollar franchise that has the name recognition to keep people coming back. It’s ideal, however, for a format something like the late FX series Justified, based on the works of Elmore Leonard, which padded out its seasonal arcs with tangentially-connected cases of the week.
Besides the issue of what medium the books are best served by, of course, I’m excited for an adaptation of the books (hopefully) created by people who live up to the books’ moral code. In the era of #MeToo, it’s not enough for a show about a man who looks out for and listens to marginalized people to pay lip service to those values while enabling the opposite in the real world. The viewing public that has spent years with the likes of Jessica Jones, Annalise Keating, and Olivias Benson and Pope deserves a female lead who does more than worriedly whisper things like “Don’t you die on me, Brick Brannigan.” It’s too early to know whether the show will be any good or not, but I’m hugely excited by the idea that maybe, just maybe, my hero can be brought to the screen by people who actually understand what he’s all about this time.
(image: William Morrow)
Zack Budryk is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Style Weekly and NOS Magazine. His novel Judith, a feminist crime thriller, is available now.
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