By Pat French
I’m what you might call an avid tabletop gamer. I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since 7th grade. I started creating my own homebrew systems in High School. For over a decade I’ve run (almost exclusively) custom-made campaigns in worlds I built from the ground up. I have spent an embarrassing amount of hours refining dungeons and customizing the minutest details of my villains. I’ve even LARPed on occasion. I say all this so that you can know I am serious when I say that Zero Charisma is easily the best movie on this subject I have ever seen. This movie effortlessly, effectively, and sublimely examines the psychology of being a nerd and a societal loner.
Scott, our protagonist, is the saddest kind of nerd. He is so utterly devoted to his fantasy that he is unable to even fathom the tribulations of the real world. This is made evident to the viewer in the film’s first scene: a player in his game decides to drop out to save his ailing marriage, and Scott literally cannot understand why. Scott is the guy who still dresses like Silent Bob and thinks it makes him cool. Scott is the kind of arrogant nerd who has alienated almost everyone in his life because he believes anyone who hasn’t memorized the Dungeon-Master’s Handbook isn’t worth his time. He spends more time than one can fathom perfecting the tiniest nuances of his world and weaving sagas borne of his own loneliness.
There’s a sort of twisted pathology to Scott’s condition. Because he lacks the ability to do this elsewhere in life, he uses the game as a way to exercise control over his players. Being the Game-Master (for you norms, that basically means he is a rules-arbiter and storyteller) makes him the god of the game’s world, and he uses that as a vehicle to bully and belittle the few people capable of spending 4 hours a week with him. Years of this have obviously warped his mind to a point of ignorant egomania. Remember when you were a little kid and you lied all the time. Oh fess up, we all did it. You would lie about being able to jump 10 feet in the air or having an uncle who killed people for the CIA. Scott’s the guy who never grew out of this, and has maintained every tall tail he’s ever told. He literally believes that the Wachowskis stole the idea for the Matrix from a story he wrote at age 14.
On top of all that, the scenes of Scott being an awkward, delusional jerk reach Taxi Driver levels of tension. The aforementioned scene of Scott’s delusions regarding the Matrix is long and uncomfortable. With each second of the story you can see Scott’s friends rolling their eyes and sitting back waiting for it to be over. They’ve all heard it before, multiple times I would wager. They know that there’s no convincing Scott that it could all be in his head. Scott -apparently oblivious to all this- blunders through the tale. The film’s delivery of Scott’s discomfited delusions is sublime. My jaw dropped several times and I squirmed in my chair. Kudos to both star Sam Eidson and directors Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews, these scenes are what absolutely made the film for me.
After 3 paragraphs of me railing on the guy, you’re probably wondering what this movie’s appeal could possibly be. “Why, Pat,” you ask, “Why should I care about such a pathetic protagonist?” Well first, I would answer, Pathetic Protagonist would make an excellent band name (wouldn’t it?). But seriously, the film does an excellent job of balancing scenes of Scott awkwardly exerting his (non)dominance with expository scenes of his horrific family situation. His mother abandoned him with his grandmother as a child to go off and (presumably) join a pot farm or some such irresponsible selfishness. Scott’s condition is one of both nature and nurture (or at least lack therof). When his mother does show up in the film, she takes the immediate opportunity to emasculate her son in front of his only friends, doing the only thing he cares about.
In addition to the derisive treatment from his mother, Scott is also confronted with a nemesis in the form of the newest player in his group, Miles. Miles and Scott are flip-sides of a coin. No, that’s not right… Miles is the shiny new dime to Scott’s gum-covered penny. Miles is everything that Scott is not: Handsome, witty, fun, likeable. Miles drinks beer like a real adult. Miles has a girlfriend (a real one!). Miles runs a successful geek website and is about to have his comic published. His effortless infiltration of the game challenges Scott’s status as the group’s alpha male. Before too long, the game moves from Scott’s house (well his grandma’s house) to Scott’s swinging apartment. He is everything that Scott hates and everything Scott wishes he could be.
Miles, you see, is part of the new breed. He is, for lack of a better word, a hipster-geek; A tourist. Miles was probably not bullied in High School. The world has changed significantly in the past 14 years (let’s consider 2000 and the release of the first X-Men film as the dawn of the Nu-Geek). The things that used to get you made fun of are now hip and chic. When I was in school the Goths were the outcasts, and the nerds were the outcasts of the outcasts. It was absolutely uncool to be into comic books, anime, Star Trek, even Star Wars. If you wanted to talk video games, you had best stick to FPS’s, sports games, and shitty wrestling games. Nowadays I encounter fellow adults with neckbeards and Spiderman shirts, pontificating about how Attack on Titan compares to Full Metal Alchemist.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about this, but it’s usually pretty obvious when you encounter a fellow nerd whether he’s new to the culture or old-hat. To those of you only just discovering how amazing anime or comics or whatever is, more power to you. However, you should expect a certain degree of mistrust and resentment from those of us who suffered years of social awkwardness loving these things before they were cool. I’m not trying to throw stones here, and I’m certainly NOT AT ALL condoning crap like that “fake nerd girl” nonsense that made the rounds some time ago. I’m just saying there are levels to all things, and some of us have been deeply entrenched for a long time. This is the dynamic Scott and Miles have, and why they must be nemeses.
(It’s also very interesting that Chris Hardwick and the Nerdist produced this project. Hardwick seems legit but he’s a lot prettier than me, therefore I don’t completely trust him. Not that I’m bitter or nothin’…)
So who has the actual moral high ground here? Miles, by all appearances, is the one you would probably want to hang out with. He certainly seems friendlier than Scott, and easier to carry on a conversation with. There is a sinister arrogance to Miles however: not-so-unfounded sense of superiority among the other gamers because he possesses all these traits. Miles, for instance, throws a party and doesn’t invite any of the other gamers to mingle with his hipster friends. Scott on the other hand has the virtue of being one of the legit nerds I was talking about earlier. As much as he might fabricate things about his world, he is consistent in who he is and how he presents himself. He is truly passionate about the things he loves, despite how they might damage his reputation. In this sense he is truly a hero.
I really liked this movie. It delivered all that I had hoped for and more. It is easily the best movie on this subject I have ever seen. It’s not at all anti-gaming propaganda like Mazes and Monsters (check out Melissa’s awesome article about that turkey) nor is it exactly comedic satire like Gamers: Rise of Dorkness. If you like movies like Observe and Report, Big Fan, or the aforementioned Taxi Driver –films where the protagonist is a psychological mess building towards an explosive climax- then this is an absolute must-watch. If you are a tabletop gamer, or are even just interested in it, this is a must watch. Hell, this is just a straight-up good movie, go watch it! Zero Charisma achieves the ultimate function of good cinema: portraying a real story about a real person with profound and interesting problems. Different as he may seem, Scott wants what we all want: love and acceptance, even if it has to come from the realms of make-believe.
