rook

Long post warning.

OK, so this is going to sound like a pretentious question, I know, but I'm genuinely torn on this one.

First the set up: I have a scriptwriting tutor who is a stickler for clear motivations in main characters. I mean a real stickler. She has this hard-on for what she calls 'wants vs. needs'; where the audience knows clearly what the character wants, but also what the character really needs, that even the character themselves might not know.

An example is a kid who wants to score a goal at his soccer match because his father is going to be there for once. Obviously the kid 'wants' to score a goal, but what he really 'needs' is his fathers attention...blah blah blah...

So this tutor 'wants' to see this sort of thing clearly defined in our scripts. But she also 'wants' to see real conflicted characters; characters who aren't 100% good guys or bad guys but a human mix of both positive and negative traits. Which I find odd, because if it's a conflicted character, there's every chance that their motivations are going to be just as conflicted. I disagree with her that a conflicted character should have clearly defined motivations. Real people do the things they do for many reasons, not just one.

Anyway, my question is this; I have an idea for a script that questions motivation and challenges what the usual good guy character actually is. I have a main character who does some very, very bad things, but may (or may not) have a good reason for doing them. I just set up the barest framework and leave a lot of things to the audience to interpret. And many of the events can be interpreted in different ways to make for different stories. I really think the idea is a good one, and it would make a film that I'd like to see. But I know my tutor, who's marking it, is going to hate it. Not because its bad, but it doesn't conform to the 'wants vs. needs' shit she bangs on about.

So do I go for broke and do my own thing, damn the mark I get, or should I give her what she wants to read so that I get a higher grade? (she can't actually fail me as long as I turn in a script of the right length at the right time, regardless of whether she likes it or not)