The giving of last names to movie characters

When screenwriters are writing a character, or when actors are portraying a character, they're told to have a whole backstory in mind for that character, the sort of thing they can call on to explain a character's motivation in any particular scene -- even when that backstory is otherwise nowhere on the page. It's all a part of rounding out that character and lending greater verisimilitude to a fictitious creation. Now of course you can go too far and imagine a backstory that's actually contradictory to, and distracting from, what the other characters are doing on screen -- we're talking actors now -- but usually if you do that, you're not long for the project. 

Part of fleshing out the character, you could argue, is going to the trouble of giving them last names. But I just think it's a bit weird. 

Remarkably Bright Creatures is hardly the only, or anywhere near the best, example of this, but it's the movie I happened to be looking at on IMDB -- having watched it Sunday night and reviewed it yesterday -- when this idea struck me.

As much as you do want characters to be full inhabitants of the world in which they exist, there are little details that seem too particular by half. And last names might be one of those.

Oh there's never any doubt that a character needs a first name, if only so the actor reading the script can figure out when it's their turn to talk. Some films would not even have this, of course, but they need to be going for something fairly particular if they don't name the characters, and it's certainly not a common approach. 

But a last name? Does it even matter?

I feel fairly certain that no last name of any character is spoken in Remarkably Bright Creatures, with the possible exception of the lead, played by Sally Field, whose character's name is Tova Sullivan. 

With the others, the screenwriter just has to decide, based on essentially nothing, what the character's last name is. (The first names are also based on nothing, but because they are essential, there's no getting around it.) 

I'll give some examples, but first I should mention that Remarkably Bright Creatures might be a particularly poor case study, in that it is based on a novel. In a novel, you are a bit more likely to give a character a last name because it's all there on the page. It doesn't need to fit awkwardly into the dialogue in moments when it's not relevant. So it seems quite possible that the screenwriters here -- director Olivia Newman and her co-writer, John Whittington -- are entirely guiltless, and they are just transferring what's already on the page. 

But because Remarkably Bright Creatures was, indeed, the movie that gave me the idea, let's just look at this one.

The second lead, played by Lewis Pullman, is Cameron Casserone. Good alliteration. I suppose alliteration is as good a way to choose someone's last name as any. Just ask Donnie Darko.

Tova's love interest, played by Colm Meaney, is Ethan Mack. He's just the local shopkeeper. He does not need a last name. However, a love interest is a reasonably significant character, so I'll allow it.

It's when we get to Tova's friends, who are not major characters, that the silliness of giving all the characters complete names becomes clear.

Joan Chen plays Janice Kim. Now, Kim is in fact a Chinese surname -- I just checked to be sure -- but it is far more commonly known as a Korean surname. So it's possible Chen is playing Korean. It's not the first time, I'm sure, that she's been asked to play a character from a different part of Asia than she's from. She might be playing a person of Chinese descent, but the common Korean surname begs the question, where no surname would not have.

Kathy Baker plays Mary Ann Minetti. More alliteration. And I guess she's Italian? All appearances to the contrary? Or maybe she just married an Italian. We never meet her husband. 

Beth Grant plays Barb Vanderhoof. Now we're just getting really creative. Barb has a Dutch background, or her husband -- whom we also do not meet -- does. But this is the first of the surnames that just seems way outside of the path of least resistance. You're not going with something that's either alliteration or that points to a character's obvious ethnic origins. (And while we're at it, couldn't Janice have married someone who wasn't Asian? Don't put limits on Janice.)

There are other characters listed on IMDB who also have surnames even though I could not identify how they appeared in the story, just from my memory of it. I've already mentioned all the important characters. So they're giving last names even to characters who have one or zero lines. 

I should say, I've already mentioned almost all the important characters. 

As the second lead, Pullman's Cameron Casserone also gets a love interest, played by the actress Sofia Black-D'Elia (speaking of complicated last names). And what's her name?

Avery.

Just Avery.

I guess they didn't want to go with Avery McManus-Martinez.