At what point does trend become infestation? This I ask because by now I've seen and heard enough. I cannot take any more movies with characters named John or, even worse, Jack. It's become a god-awful plague and, like Howard Beale -- "Jack" Beale if the screenplay were written today -- in "Network" I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore! OK, maybe I'm not mad, but by now my Jack/John bubble is about to burst.
I don't know when this began for me. Perhaps with the first "Die Hard" movie back in 1988. Bruce Willis' character being named John McClane. I didn't set out to notice it. It reared its head and hollered and I just happened to have ears and eyes. I've whined about it for years now and a good friend -- a screenwriter who, by the way, has never named any of his characters "Jack" -- has been prodding me to vent my frustrations to my heart's content. Honestly, I'd been putting it off until a few months back when, while inside the AMC Theatre lobby here in Los Angeles, I found myself standing next to the cardboard cut out ad for "Four Brothers." The ad ran more-or-less as follows:
"Tyrese Gibson is Angel Mercer. Andre Benjamin is Jeremiah Mercer." OK, by now, I'm already thinking to myself "Well, there's gotta be a Jack in here somewhere." And sure enough: the print ad didn't let me down… "Mark Wahlberg is Bobby Mercer. Garrett Hedland is Jack Mercer." Yes!!! The pattern holds. Pattern you ask? Using the Internet Movie Database as my guide, I surfed around to back up what had merely been years of anecdotal memories, and the results were staggering.
Most all of the big name male actors, box office champs among them, have on many occasions played characters named John or Jack. Not to bore you with numbers, but here we go. The following actors have played Johns (Johnny in some instances) or Jacks this number of times (and for the record I am excluding sequels):
Ethan Hawke 2, Sean Connery 7, Arnold Schwarzenegger 4, Johnny Depp 2, Robin Williams 5, Michael Douglas 1, Patrick Swayze 4, Richard Gere 4, Robert DeNiro 4, Sylvester Stallone 4, John Travolta 3, Russell Crowe 5, Andy Garcia 3, Bruce Willis 3, Nicolas Cage 5, Jack Nicholson 4, Al Pacino 4, Dustin Hoffman 2, Nick Nolte 2, Jon Voight 3, Robert Redford 4, Burt Reynolds 5, Paul Newman 3, William Hurt 3, Samuel L. Jackson 3, Benicio Del Toro 2, Denzel Washington 2, Daniel Day-Lewis 5, Gene Hackman 5, Jeff Goldblum 3, Bill Murray 3, Anthony Hopkins 7, Kevin Spacey 3, John Cusack 5, and Clint Eastwood 4. Heck, even John Malkovich played someone named John in, well, you know the movie.
Here's my personal favorite, however, and let me state right off that Jeff Bridges is one of my favorite actors so I am not picking on him. Who am I blaming? Well, we'll get to that… Ready? Here we go with the year, the movie, and Jeff Bridges' character 's name:
1960 "Silent Night," Lonely Night" - Young John
1973 "Rancho Deluxe" - Jack McKee
1976 "King Kong" - Jack Prescott
1980 "Heaven's Gate" - John L. Bridges
1985 "Jagged Edge" - Jack Forrester
1989 "The Fabulous Baker Boys" - Jack Baker
1991 "The Fisher King" - Jack
1992 "American Heart" - Jack Kelson
1999 "The Muse" - Jack Warrick
2000 "The Contender" - President Jackson Evans
Seriously, this John/Jack trend is as dangerous as a Dove Bar coupon and has only gotten worse over time. For example, Jack Lemmon spent thirty years acting without ever once playing a John or Jack before he, too, jumped on the bandwagon with:
1979 "The China Syndrome" - Jack Godell
1988 "The Murder of Mary Phagan" - Gov. John Slagan
1989 "Dad" - Jack Tremont
1991 "JFK" - Jack Martin
1993 "Grumpy Old Men" - John Gustafson
1995 "Grumpier Old Men" - John Gustafson
In the last decade alone, George Clooney has played a character named Jack three times. Impressed? Don't be, Ben Affleck pulled it off in only six.
Prefer statistics? Since the millennium began, Adrien Brody has played a character named Jack three separate times. Put another way, in his last eight movies, Adrien has been Jack three times. This is a "Jack Batting Average" -- a JBA if you will -- of .375. Truly Hall of Fame numbers. Try doing this with a relatively common name like Jeff and see how well you do.
In a fourteen year span, Dennis Quaid played a Jack four times. As did Kevin Bacon. Gabriel Byrne did it in only ten years. I could go on but you get the point.
How about Harrison Ford? Three times he has played a character named Jack. Four, if you include the sequel to "Patriot Games." And let's face it, I'd bet money that a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, "Han" was the "Jack" of his day.
Play this with any actor, see how it comes out. Let's try Keanu Reeves:
1991 "Point Break" - Johnny Utah
1992 "Dracula" - Jonathan Harker
1993 "Much Ado About Nothing" - Don John
1994 "Speed" - Jack Traven
1995 "Johnny Mnemonic" - Johnny Mnemonic
1996 "Feeling Minnesota" - Jack Clayton
2005 "Constantine" - John Constantine
2007 "Stompanato" - Johnny Stompanato
Steven Seagal, in only sixteen years, hit the "Jackpot" three times:
1990 "Marked for Death" - John Hatcher
1996 "The Glimmer Man" - Jack Cole
1997 "Fire Down Below" - Jack Taggart
2004 "Clementine" - Jack Miller
2005 "Black Dawn" - Jonathan Cold
2006 "Mercenary for Justice" - John Seeger
So what's up with this? Are we talking lazy, unimaginative screenwriters? Or "creative" studio execs sending notes saying that they're lukewarm to the idea of the character Matt Keller, the plays-by-his-own-rules homicide detective. But somehow "Jack" Keller, seems to strike their fancy. Seriously, why do we have so many movie characters named John or Jack?
Let's analyze it. John is a common name and I'm much more tolerant of its prevalence than I am with Jack. Hell, my own brother is named John, as is the Uncle who he's named after. At my place of work, for example, there are 98 males, eight of whom are named John. There are no Jacks. Nor do any of these Johns GO by the name of "Jack." And while this is by no means a representative sample, ask yourself this: How many men do you know who are actually named John? I'll wager quite a few. Then ask yourself this: how many Jacks do you know? Not that many, right?
If we look to our leaders as a guide, it certainly seems that the influence of John F. "Jack" Kennedy utterly decimated the ranks of the Millards, Calvins, Chesters, and Zacharys, not to mention Rutherfords when it comes to naming characters.
Still don't believe me? As I type these very words, there are three, count 'em, THREE movies playing at a theatre near you with a lead character named Jack: "Brokeback Mountain," "Firewall", "16 Blocks." (Why in every movie playing in America right now, I'll bet there is not a single male character, lead, supporting, or extra named Rutherford.)
Theory two: Jack Nicholson. Let's be blunt: the man is the very paradigm of male cool and nine times out of ten screenwriters are attempting to create a masculine character who, in the end, is "cool." I mean, Jack Nicholson is so cool he can actually play a character named, of all things, Melvin in "As Good As It Gets" and win an Oscar doing it!
Now, why is all this significant? Well, it's not really and to a large extent I'm merely venting, but my gripe has always been that naming your character something as bland as John or ineptly flair-laden as "Jack" is the first tangible proof of lazy writing. And what does lazy writing breed? Certainly not originality and hardly quality. Want proof? Despite a veritable plague of Jacks through the long history of movies, no Best Actor award has ever gone to a character named Jack. Nor has any movie ever won a Best Picture Oscar with a lead character named Jack, "Titanic" being the lone exception, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing Jack Dawson. "Titanic," however -- which I loved by the way -- is the Tiger Woods of movies to which no others can compare and the exception that proves the rule. Besides, I'm sorry, James Cameron could have named Leo's character Adolf and it still would have won Best Picture and raked in millions.
Only one film ("Dances With Wolves") has won a Best Picture Oscar with a lead character named John. (I am excluding "A Beautiful Mind" since this was about a real-life character, John Nash, played by Russell Crowe.)
If you still don't believe me, try this icon on for size. And, by the way, this is not, repeat NOT, a typo: John Wayne, "The Duke" himself, played a character named John forty (40) times! And a Jack twice! But despite all that, he finally won his only Best Actor Oscar playing a character named (drum roll please…) "Rooster."
So what's the bottom line you ask, since that's all that Hollywood really cares about anyway? Succinctly stated: If you want to sell your screenplay, name your lead character Jack. If you want an Oscar, don't.
