Douglas Hall - The Thirteenth Floor
TITLE: Unplugged
AUTHOR: lonelywalker
AUTHOR SITE: World On A Wire: 13th Floor Resources // Lonelywalker's Fanfiction
CHARACTER: Douglas Hall
FANDOM: The Thirteenth Floor
SPOILERS: The entire film The Thirteenth Floor, and the book Simulacron-3 by Daniel Galouye, on which the film is based.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters and I'm not making any money.
UNPLUGGED
You pull the plug, I disappear. And nothing I ever say,
nothing I ever do, will ever matter.
- Douglas Hall, The Thirteenth Floor.
THE FILM
“Hey, what’d you do to the world?”
“Turned it off.”
Synopsis
The Thirteenth Floor (1999) is a science-fiction film based on the novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel Galouye. It focuses on the mystery of who killed Hannon Fuller, a computer genius who had devoted six years of his life to creating a virtual world. This virtual world, a replica of 1937 Los Angeles, is entered through a complex computer system located on the thirteenth floor of a corporate building in modern day LA. The film confronts philosophical issues of reality, creation, morality, and metaphysics in the quests of its main characters to solve the murder.
The Main Characters
Douglas Hall: a returning employee of Fuller’s.
Hannon Fuller: creative genius and owner of the company.
Jason Whitney: primary technician / programmer on the thirteenth floor.
Jerry Ashton: bartender at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in the virtual 1937 Los Angeles.
Jane Fuller: a visitor from the ‘real world’ masquerading as Fuller’s daughter.
Larry McBain: a homicide detective with the LAPD.
JACKING IN
Caught the last 50 minutes of The Thirteenth Floor, which was indeed rather unintelligible, but turned out to be better than I thought it would be.
- my journal, December 7th, 2005.
In retrospect, I should never have become hooked on The Thirteenth Floor. The odds were against it. When it was shown on cable television, twice in two days, both showings significantly overlapped with my university classes. However, I raced home, dumped my bag and coat on the floor, and hurried to switch on the television.
The Thirteenth Floor has a complex plot, weaved around multiple characters and spanning time from 1937 to 2024. Missing the first 45 minutes or so of the film was not particularly helpful in terms of having a clue what was going on. And, indeed, I was totally lost. But, within a minute or two of switching on the television I knew I was irrevocably in love with the film.
In the summer of 2005 I had started watching the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, starring the actor Vincent D'Onofrio. I became interested in D'Onofrio's extensive and varied body of work in film, particularly because of his "chameleonic" ability to portray widely differing characters. For The Thirteenth Floor, the four lead actors - D'Onofrio, Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol and Armin Mueller-Stahl - were all charged with the unusual task of playing two different characters in the same film (Bierko played three). Producer Ute Emmerich explained:
Casting was a long process because we tried to find actors who could play both parts convincingly. Some actors we saw were great in one [half] of the characters but not as good with the other. Also, we wanted actors who would bring a certain sympathy to one of their characters, to balance the [darker] side.
Although I was immediately enthralled by D'Onofrio's two characters - sweet, well-intentioned computer expert Whitney, and the devious, violent bartender Ashton - the hero of the piece, Douglas Hall, took much longer to make an impression.
Actor Craig Bierko, a relative unknown, certainly fit the bill for being tall, dark, and handsome. However, my own first impressions, as well as most of the film's reviews, saw his character as being irredeemably bland. As I encountered Bierko in other roles, including a darkly witty sadist in The Long Kiss Goodnight and a lovably dopey Tom Cruise parody in Scary Movie 4, I began to wonder what had gone wrong with Hall. My thoughts led me to look deeper into the background and actions of this apparently "cardboard" hero, to discover that he was, in fact, a very interesting character.
PERSONALITY PROFILE
"It must be déjà vu or something..."
Douglas Hall: History
The character of Douglas Hall is originally from The Thirteenth Floor's main source material - Simulacron-3 by Daniel Galouye. Hall is the first-person narrator of the novel and, unfortunately, we never receive much of a description of him. Despite differences in the plot, the character of Hall appears to be broadly similar to the Hall who appears in The Thirteenth Floor. He is, generally speaking, a "good" guy, or at least unobjectionable, if a little antisocial - we first encounter him sitting alone at a party. He is an expert in computers, but appears to be more proficient in the boardroom, leaving the actual technical operations to his assistant, Whitney. As in The Thirteenth Floor, he ends the novel living someone else's life in "the real world".
A draft script of The Thirteenth Floor, by Josef Rusnak and Ravel Centeno-Rodriguez, gives only a very general description of Hall:
The camera moves along the almost empty rows of the business class section, and closes in on a MAN: mid-thirties, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and tie.
He sleeps soundly, as if exhausted, a laptop computer resting on his knees. His name is DOUGLAS HALL.
Unlike the descriptions of other characters, there is never any suggestion of his character or demeanour. Interestingly, given that Bierko would play three characters in the film (Douglas Hall, John Ferguson, and David), there is no attempt to set up any simple way to distinguish between the characters. Producer Marco Weber discusses the importance of differences of character (rather than different appearance), in the film's production notes:
It also turned out that he really had two faces. In the '30s and in the present, you get the feeling that these are really two different people.
Whereas, for example, the draft script calls attention to Whitney's thick glasses, and Ashton's perfect sight (something that changed in the film to different haircuts). It is possible that this was an intentional absence, meant to blur the differences between the three men, and illustrate that a person must be judged on their character and actions, and not their external appearance.
Douglas Hall: Biography
Douglas Hall works for Hannon Fuller's corporation in Los Angeles. However, his role in the company is never explicitly defined (it is also rather vague in the novel Simulacron-3). Promotional material for the film suggested that he was a "computer genius", however the film shows Whitney to be far more capable than Doug. Doug in fact only causes problems when he tries to use the systems himself. He explains to McBain that they work in computer research, but evades the question of what, exactly, they do (Whitney, by comparison, is quite happy to tell McBain everything). The messages on his voicemail from his assistant, Hillary, prompt him about getting contracts to the lawyers, and it is probable that Doug is more heavily involved with the business side of the company. After Fuller's death, Doug assumes the role of chairman of the board.
Doug lives in an apartment that is (or appears to be) part of the Ennis Brown house in Los Angeles. He drives a 1950s Porsche 911, and dresses well. He also takes Jane to what appears to be a fairly upper class restaurant. It is obvious that he either has money, or wishes to appear to have money.
It is unclear whether Doug comes from a privileged background. He has trouble at the checkout of Natasha's supermarket, but that only indicates that he hasn't done much shopping for himself in a while. He claims not to be able to dance, but in fact does quite well (although this may be an effect of having David's memories in his head). He is able to fight and (at least temporarily) subdue Ashton, and use a gun, as well as bribe a cab driver. However, he looks down on Fuller's sexual adventures with teenage girls, so his morals are not entirely lax.
Doug's attitude to the program is generally positive, although he is hardly as emotionally attached to it as Whitney is. As time goes on, Doug becomes more focused on the dangers of the program - first being mildly annoyed that Fuller had used the program when it was possibly not safe, and moving on to being furious after he himself almost dies in the program. At that point, he tells Whitney that he will order the program to be shut down - despite the fact that both men have worked on it for six years of their lives.
Like the other characters in The Thirteenth Floor, Doug apparently does not have much of a social life. Whitney does, however, refer to "shooting hoops" with him, and Doug has an old arcade game in his office. He also watches old movies on two occasions.
Douglas Hall: More Than Meets The Eye?
As I've mentioned above, it took me a long, long while to truly get interested in the character of Douglas Hall. Compared with the more emotionally resonant roles in the film, Doug was a blank slate - dull, unemotional - there to look good and ask the questions required to get the plot moving forward. His love story with Jane seemed equally uninspired. When I started wondering why Doug came across so badly, even in the hands of a good actor, even in an otherwise thought-provoking film, some points started to surface.
Doug is not a hero. Director Josef Rusnak has mentioned in interviews the trouble he had, as a German/European filmmaker, struggling with the expectations of an American audience. Primary amongst these is that Doug is expected, in this kind of story, to be the hero, perhaps in the mold of Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, if not Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. The fact that Doug lives in the same apartment as Ford's character does little to subdue this idea. He is played by Craig Bierko who, even though he is more of a character actor than a leading man, looks the part.
But Doug has no special skills, and no prior experience. He's not a computer whiz like Whitney. He doesn't appear to have any background in investigations, although he does do a half decent job of tracking down Jane when she disappears. Ashton is obviously much better at fighting, and has no trouble lying through his teeth to Doug. One of the reasons Doug seriously falls down as a hero is that, prior to the finale, he gives up. He has no plan. The day is saved, instead, by a secondary character - McBain. Doug neither saves Jane nor himself (and, arguably, gets both Whitney and Ashton killed through his inaction).
Although this is disappointing, it does make Doug a much more realistic character. Few businessmen or computer programmers are ace detectives, know kung fu, or would be chipper enough to form a master plan after learning they were nothing more than cogs in a machine. Doug is an ordinary guy, caught in a storm of unusual and traumatic circumstances. The fact that it all works out for him in the end (despite his two best friends meeting violent deaths) is more or less an accident.
At first glance, Doug is a bland failure of a character. However, looking deeper, beyond expectations, we find a regular guy just struggling to survive.
LINK UNITS
"These people are real - they're as real as you and me."
The Thirteenth Floor takes place over a relatively short time period - two or three days - and there is little capacity for seeing anything of Doug’s “normal” life. What we do see of Doug's life in his apartment and office does little to suggest a vibrant social life. The messages on his voicemail all seem to be related to work, and the pictures he has on his desk are of his colleagues Fuller and Whitney. In an interview conducted for the German 13th Floor DVD, actor Craig Bierko emphasised Doug's lack of a social life:
Well, I think Douglas Hall is extremely driven and intelligent and dynamic but he doesn’t have much of a personal life. I think he’s sort of a lonely guy, who’s very good at what he does, but there’s a whole side of life that he’s missing, and I think doesn’t even give much of a thought.
Perhaps part of the reason for Doug's lack of concern with this other "side of life" is that he does have a kind of surrogate family formed around him.
Hannon Fuller
Doug doesn't have any scenes with Fuller. However, the effects of their relationship have a resonance throughout the film. Doug is accused of murdering Fuller - probably the person he would be least likely to murder, and also the accusation most brutal to him emotionally. Doug says that he has worked for Fuller for six years, and that the older man was not only his boss, but his friend.
It seems reasonable that Fuller may have filled the role of a surrogate father for Doug: Doug has two photos on his desk, both of which are of Fuller (although one also has Whitney and several other men). Doug is listed as Fuller's next of kin, to be contacted in case of medical emergency, and Fuller's will is in his favour - giving him some money (Fuller's money is to be split amongst the employees), and making him chairman of the board. Fuller also leaves his last message to the world indirectly in Doug's care - giving it to Ashton, and then attempting to lead Doug towards it via a curtailed voicemail message. At the very beginning of the film, we find out that Doug is apparently a man to be trusted. Fuller writes, "you are the only one I could tell this to... the only one who could understand."
The events of the film, however, tend towards shaking this father-son relationship, as Doug learns more about Fuller than he ever really wanted to know. His confidence is shaken initially by the idea that Fuller had a daughter he never mentioned to Doug, and also that Fuller had been planning to shut down the company. These are both lies told by Jane, but they lead Doug to question his mentor's motives. Finally, when he discovers via Ashton that Fuller had been using the program to have sex with girls, he no longer knows what to believe.
Interestingly, the last moments of the film seem to attempt to restore Doug's faith, by introducing a "real world" facsimile of Fuller: healthy, wholesome, and presumably not with any quasi-paedophilic tastes.
Detective Larry McBain
McBain is the main outsider in the film, threatening to disrupt the company family by investigating Doug (and, to some extent, Whitney) for Fuller's murder. Doug's relationship with him is largely adversarial, and it appears that Doug is McBain's main suspect from the very beginning. However, the two men quickly become involved in that same investigation - who killed Fuller? - albeit using different methods.
Doug's conversations with McBain are very guarded, and he does little to protest his own innocence. Despite having no memory of committing the crime, McBain seems to do a good job of convincing even Doug that he must be guilty.
Jason Whitney
In the original draft of The Thirteenth Floor, prior to the casting of 38-year-old Vincent D’Onofrio, Whitney was supposed to be several years younger than Douglas Hall. It appears, given the way that D’Onofrio played the role, their relationship in the completed film still reflects this age gap. Doug in all ways assumes the role of an older brother - checking that Whitney is okay after Fuller’s death, talking to the police, and taking the lead in figuring out why Fuller was killed. Whitney very easily defers to him, probably in part because he himself is uncomfortable in social situations. Whitney would prefer to leave the investigation to the police, and get back to his beloved program.
Whitney appears to have a slightly ambiguous relationship with Doug. On the one hand, they are obviously friends and have known each other for at least six years. On the other, there are indications that, lately at least, they have not been particularly close. Doug has been away for a month, and the two men don’t seem to have spoken during that time. Whitney reacts with great irritation to Doug’s attempts to access his files and, for a brief moment, his easy-going demeanour changes as he defends his territory.
This slight hint of Whitney’s defensive nature when it comes to the project deepens into a greater crisis in their friendship. The first time that Doug downloads into the simulated world, Whitney argues against it on the basis that Doug would be risking his life. After Doug begs him for help, he reluctantly consents. Later, when Doug does in fact almost die in the program, and tells Whitney he is going to shut down the project, Whitney at first reacts with fear and then with anger.
The fear is not particularly surprising - Whitney normally defers to Doug, and dislikes confrontation. Despite being Doug’s physical equal, Whitney is frightened and puts up his hands to defend himself when Doug does something as harmless as move closer to pick up his shoes. The anger Doug’s words generate actions seem initially out of character for Whitney who, in all previous scenes, has essentially let Doug walk all over him. Whitney stands up straight for the first time in the film and unreservedly yells at Doug. Admittedly Doug was leaving the room at the time, but there is little doubt that, given the strength of Whitney’s feelings, the two men would have come to blows should Doug have returned. Whitney’s love for his work, and Doug’s failure to think rationally in the moment, have strained their friendship to breaking point.
Despite Doug’s knowledge that the project means the world to Whitney, that Whitney is an emotional wreck following Fuller’s death, and that Whitney was shocked by the idea that Doug might close down the project, Doug apparently never suspects that Whitney would take the initiative and download into the program himself. Yes, Whitney hates confrontation, and tells Doug that going into the program alone is stupid - but we repeatedly see how much emotion and work Whitney has invested in the project. Doug, however, takes no steps to look after or check in on his friend, even at such a traumatic time. Although Whitney saved Doug’s life in the program, Doug doesn’t even think of saving Whitney.
Admittedly Doug is going through a tough time emotionally himself, with Fuller dead, and the police regarding him as a suspect. However, his actions suggest that he is not as good a friend to Whitney as he should be. To his credit, when he is alerted to “Whitney” (really Ashton in Whitney’s body) acting strangely, he immediately goes to see what is going on. However, when he discovers what has happened, he makes no effort to ascertain whether Whitney is, in fact, dead, and only mutters a vaguely sad, “son of a bitch...” Hardly the stuff of which epic friendships are made.
Jerry Ashton
Doug comes into Ashton’s life initially in the guise of a customer, and Ashton relates to him as he would to any patron, pouring him a drink and trying to tempt him with the services of the pretty dancing girls nearby. When Doug shows his hand by asking about Fuller and the letter, Ashton deliberately continues to play the role of the bartender, pleading ignorance and continuing along his theme of directing Doug’s attention to alcohol and girls. However, he also registers Doug as being a potential threat.
Ashton talks to Doug’s 1937 alter ego, John Ferguson, and follows him to ascertain that he is - as he suspects - dealing with two quite different people. He has also travelled to the end of the world and has realised that nothing in his world, including himself, is real. By the time he next meets Doug, his demeanour has changed entirely. He is no servile, dumb bartender. Instead, he lures Doug into the darkness of the locker room below the bar, and into his own territory. Once there, he holds Doug at gunpoint. Ashton is unsure of what threat Doug poses, but he comes prepared.
Due to his limited knowledge of why and how his world has come into existence, Ashton holds Doug responsible for the emotional trauma he is going through. He demands answers from Doug and, when Doug is unable to give him any solace, shoots him twice. Whether Ashton really intends to kill Doug is a matter for speculation. However, after Doug gains the upper hand and shoves the gun in Ashton’s mouth, the conflict definitely changes to being a matter of life or death. Ashton shoves Doug underwater and holds him there, presumably trying to kill him (although we later discover that Doug’s alter ego, Ferguson, survives).
At this point, the two men barely have a relationship. Doug is simply the focus of Ashton’s anger, fear, and physical violence. They are, quite literally, on different levels, and have nothing in common. Neither of them is well-disposed towards the other: when Doug returns to the real world, he tells Whitney of his intention to shut down the project - an action that would essentially kill Ashton.
It is only when Whitney dies in the program, catapulting Ashton into his body in 1999, that the two men can even hope to relate as equals. By this point in the film, Doug also knows that he is a simulation on a computer. Neither one of them, as Doug explains, is a god. Doug has no stomach for violence towards Ashton, and Ashton - almost reduced to tears by the realisation that he is still not free - makes no realistic threats. The two of them may never have managed to be friends, but by the end of the film they do at least understand one another.
Jane Fuller
Doug and Jane's relationship is, at once, the least interesting and most complex of the film. Usually, a romance on film takes some trouble to convince the audience that these two people are in love, and to show the audience why this is the case. Two people being reasonably good-looking and gawping at each other is not, generally, very convincing. However, this is exactly how the Doug-Jane romance is presented and, to the audience, it is pretty much unfathomable.
From Doug's perspective, he feels as if he knows a woman he has never met before - perhaps he even feels as if he is in love with her for that first moment, and he, like the audience, is incapable of understanding why. As he finds out more about her, he should like her less rather than more. Since neither he nor Whitney, Fuller's closest friends, have ever heard of her, she is either a fraud, or part of an elaborate deception enacted by her father. She also intends to close down the company, destroying Fuller's legacy, ruining Doug and Whitney's work, and putting them out of a job.
Despite all of this, Doug finds himself confiding in her about their work (something he wouldn't reveal to the police) and his suspicions that he might have had something to do with Fuller's death (something he didn't tell his friend Whitney). This is entirely irrational behaviour. After all, he would have every reason to expect Jane to run to the police with a "confession" from her father's murderer. They have little in common, and opposing interests, yet they are in love.
It is revealed to be a very artificial type of love, however, since Doug is a simulated character in a virtual world, designed to reflect the best characteristics of Jane's sociopathic husband. Jane fell in love with Doug, without having met him, by watching him from afar. She really knows everything about him, including a huge amount of information to which we, the audience, are never privy. Jane mentions Doug's "kindness" and "integrity", two values we never really see onscreen. Their relationship breaks the key rule of "show, don't tell" in film. We are told that they are in love, but never truly convinced of it by their actions.
When compared against the Hollywood stereotype of epic romances (and this is, at least, structured as an epic romance, spanning reality itself), the Doug/Jane relationship is deeply flawed. However, this is a necessity, not only because of the central conceit of the film, but also because the relationship is not only flawed, but rather sinister.
We know that Jane has watched Doug since he was created - not a moral problem for a game player observing her Sims, but a rather interesting admission of voyeurism for someone who claims to believe that Doug is just as real as she is. We also know that Jane has a rather psychologically complex relationship with both Doug and her husband, David. She loved David, but when he became abusive, she turned to Doug, the perfect copy. This is no story of loving Doug for who he is. Rather, she loves Doug because he is the better part of the man she used to love. daddysmutantkid has pointed out the similarities in this story to the Hitchcock film Vertigo - a film whose hero is named John Ferguson, which is Doug's alias in the 1937 simulation.
Indeed, it is not beyond logic to suggest that Jane specifically engineered the events of the finale to purposely replace the faulty husband with the copy. She certainly deliberately arranged David's death. Whether she knew that Doug's consciousness would leap to the 2024 world is unknown, although she doesn't seem to be very shocked when it happens.
Doug's relationship is hardly the perfect love story, but then it's not supposed to be. With a little contemplation, it becomes deeply dark, sinister, and ominous. One has to wonder: if Doug were to have some unforeseen character flaw, how far would Jane go to replace him, in turn?
USER PROTOCOLS
"We're screwing with people's lives!"
I've taken a fair bit of flak for being so engaged with The Thirteenth Floor. The trouble, of course, is that there's one 96-minute film featuring him and that - excluding interviews, production notes, and DVD extras - is pretty much it. Unlike the characters I admire in other fandoms, I can't watch Douglas Hall develop over five or six seasons of 22 or 24 episodes each. When I stick my DVD in the player and press play, the usual response from those around me is, "haven't you already seen that a dozen times?" And, yes, yes I have. But I never get bored.
I would, of course, prefer the hours of character development that television drama usually provides. But the lack of much material leaves me with a very important benefit: questions.
The greatest favour the makers of The Thirteenth Floor did was to leave the fans with hints. Never underestimate the power of hints. Director Josef Rusnak has spoken of his frustration with the time limits of the feature film industry, and of the cuts that had to be made - after all, this was a story that could have been told over an entire novel (Simulacron-3) or a mini series (Welt am Draht). It would have been simpler and easier to portray Doug as exactly the kind of studly, well-equipped hero we expect him to be. However, the fact that he is not made into this stereotype makes him more interesting - albeit often confounding - as a character.
What does Doug do at this highly secretive company? How did he become so involved with Fuller that he ended up as a billionaire's closest friend? What's his background? Why does he live such a relatively antisocial life? What's behind his ambiguous relationship with Whitney? How does he really feel about Jane? And how would he cope, fitting into David's shoes in the "real world" of 2024?
I never think for a moment that there simply aren't answers to these questions. Watching the film, I've come to realise that it isn't just about the film itself - those 96 minutes of flashing images. The film is only the tip of the iceberg. I've worked in film and in theatre, however briefly, and you very quickly learn that there is always a reason for a prop being in a certain place, or a line being written as it is, or delivered in a certain way. Of course, in most films these things are explained in the dialogue, or are simply inconsequential. In The Thirteenth Floor, we notice, and we wonder.
In my fanfiction, I concentrate mostly on the characters of Whitney and Ashton. However, the film shows us that Doug has (or could have) very interesting relationships with each of them. Whitney is very affectionate towards him, but Doug doesn't confide in him at all during the course of the film (and doesn't appear to be greatly affected by his death). Doug and Ashton have a very antagonistic relationship, but are both probably more similar than they realise. In addition, my fic explores the problems Doug has fitting into 2024, and dealing with the effects the abusive David has left behind.
If anything, Doug is a character in search of an identity - a place in the world. In 1999, he's in limbo. He has accumulated material success, but has no personal ties but the one severed in the opening moments of the film. As he falls in love with Jane, a tie develops, but it is unclear whether he has found himself, or merely adopted the life of someone else - the now dead David.
You have to wonder: did being unplugged from the program really make him free?
FANDOM GUIDE
"You've got your players, and you put your nickel in. This one pitches; this one runs around the bases. Got a bat, got a ball. They play, they score."
General Information and Helpful Links
World On A Wire: 13th Floor Resources // Lonelywalker's Fanfiction My fansite for the film, including interviews, production information, galleries, video and sound clips, and fanfiction.
The Thirteenth Floor @ imdb.com Good general site for information and links.
Scifi Scripts A transcript of the film. Not 100% accurate.
The Editing Room - The Thirteenth Floor A short parody script of the film.
Fanfiction
Much as I am loath to rec my own stories, at present I am the only person writing fanfiction based on the film. All of my fanfiction can be found at my website, which also includes information and articles about the film as a whole.
Most of my Thirteenth Floor fanfiction centres on the Whitney/Ashton pairing. However, Doug does feature, and I have written several stories focused on him, including:
Hunting Season G. Doug returns to his alma mater to recruit a young man who may play a big part in his future.
Stress R. Doug and Ashton really have nothing in common.
I have also written a lengthy re-interpretation of the film from the points of view of Whitney and Ashton, which naturally also features quite a lot of Doug:
The End of the World R. Fuller is dead. Doug has returned. Jane wants to shut down the program. Whitney and Ashton's fledgling relationship is thrown into chaos. Will anything survive the end of the world?
AUTHOR: lonelywalker
AUTHOR SITE: World On A Wire: 13th Floor Resources // Lonelywalker's Fanfiction
CHARACTER: Douglas Hall
FANDOM: The Thirteenth Floor
SPOILERS: The entire film The Thirteenth Floor, and the book Simulacron-3 by Daniel Galouye, on which the film is based.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters and I'm not making any money.
UNPLUGGED
You pull the plug, I disappear. And nothing I ever say,
nothing I ever do, will ever matter.
- Douglas Hall, The Thirteenth Floor.
THE FILM
“Hey, what’d you do to the world?”
“Turned it off.”
Synopsis
The Thirteenth Floor (1999) is a science-fiction film based on the novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel Galouye. It focuses on the mystery of who killed Hannon Fuller, a computer genius who had devoted six years of his life to creating a virtual world. This virtual world, a replica of 1937 Los Angeles, is entered through a complex computer system located on the thirteenth floor of a corporate building in modern day LA. The film confronts philosophical issues of reality, creation, morality, and metaphysics in the quests of its main characters to solve the murder.
The Main Characters
Douglas Hall: a returning employee of Fuller’s.
Hannon Fuller: creative genius and owner of the company.
Jason Whitney: primary technician / programmer on the thirteenth floor.
Jerry Ashton: bartender at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in the virtual 1937 Los Angeles.
Jane Fuller: a visitor from the ‘real world’ masquerading as Fuller’s daughter.
Larry McBain: a homicide detective with the LAPD.
JACKING IN
Caught the last 50 minutes of The Thirteenth Floor, which was indeed rather unintelligible, but turned out to be better than I thought it would be.
- my journal, December 7th, 2005.
In retrospect, I should never have become hooked on The Thirteenth Floor. The odds were against it. When it was shown on cable television, twice in two days, both showings significantly overlapped with my university classes. However, I raced home, dumped my bag and coat on the floor, and hurried to switch on the television.
The Thirteenth Floor has a complex plot, weaved around multiple characters and spanning time from 1937 to 2024. Missing the first 45 minutes or so of the film was not particularly helpful in terms of having a clue what was going on. And, indeed, I was totally lost. But, within a minute or two of switching on the television I knew I was irrevocably in love with the film.
In the summer of 2005 I had started watching the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, starring the actor Vincent D'Onofrio. I became interested in D'Onofrio's extensive and varied body of work in film, particularly because of his "chameleonic" ability to portray widely differing characters. For The Thirteenth Floor, the four lead actors - D'Onofrio, Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol and Armin Mueller-Stahl - were all charged with the unusual task of playing two different characters in the same film (Bierko played three). Producer Ute Emmerich explained:
Casting was a long process because we tried to find actors who could play both parts convincingly. Some actors we saw were great in one [half] of the characters but not as good with the other. Also, we wanted actors who would bring a certain sympathy to one of their characters, to balance the [darker] side.
Although I was immediately enthralled by D'Onofrio's two characters - sweet, well-intentioned computer expert Whitney, and the devious, violent bartender Ashton - the hero of the piece, Douglas Hall, took much longer to make an impression.
Actor Craig Bierko, a relative unknown, certainly fit the bill for being tall, dark, and handsome. However, my own first impressions, as well as most of the film's reviews, saw his character as being irredeemably bland. As I encountered Bierko in other roles, including a darkly witty sadist in The Long Kiss Goodnight and a lovably dopey Tom Cruise parody in Scary Movie 4, I began to wonder what had gone wrong with Hall. My thoughts led me to look deeper into the background and actions of this apparently "cardboard" hero, to discover that he was, in fact, a very interesting character.
PERSONALITY PROFILE
"It must be déjà vu or something..."
Douglas Hall: History
The character of Douglas Hall is originally from The Thirteenth Floor's main source material - Simulacron-3 by Daniel Galouye. Hall is the first-person narrator of the novel and, unfortunately, we never receive much of a description of him. Despite differences in the plot, the character of Hall appears to be broadly similar to the Hall who appears in The Thirteenth Floor. He is, generally speaking, a "good" guy, or at least unobjectionable, if a little antisocial - we first encounter him sitting alone at a party. He is an expert in computers, but appears to be more proficient in the boardroom, leaving the actual technical operations to his assistant, Whitney. As in The Thirteenth Floor, he ends the novel living someone else's life in "the real world".
A draft script of The Thirteenth Floor, by Josef Rusnak and Ravel Centeno-Rodriguez, gives only a very general description of Hall:
The camera moves along the almost empty rows of the business class section, and closes in on a MAN: mid-thirties, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and tie.
He sleeps soundly, as if exhausted, a laptop computer resting on his knees. His name is DOUGLAS HALL.
Unlike the descriptions of other characters, there is never any suggestion of his character or demeanour. Interestingly, given that Bierko would play three characters in the film (Douglas Hall, John Ferguson, and David), there is no attempt to set up any simple way to distinguish between the characters. Producer Marco Weber discusses the importance of differences of character (rather than different appearance), in the film's production notes:
It also turned out that he really had two faces. In the '30s and in the present, you get the feeling that these are really two different people.
Whereas, for example, the draft script calls attention to Whitney's thick glasses, and Ashton's perfect sight (something that changed in the film to different haircuts). It is possible that this was an intentional absence, meant to blur the differences between the three men, and illustrate that a person must be judged on their character and actions, and not their external appearance.
Douglas Hall: Biography
Douglas Hall works for Hannon Fuller's corporation in Los Angeles. However, his role in the company is never explicitly defined (it is also rather vague in the novel Simulacron-3). Promotional material for the film suggested that he was a "computer genius", however the film shows Whitney to be far more capable than Doug. Doug in fact only causes problems when he tries to use the systems himself. He explains to McBain that they work in computer research, but evades the question of what, exactly, they do (Whitney, by comparison, is quite happy to tell McBain everything). The messages on his voicemail from his assistant, Hillary, prompt him about getting contracts to the lawyers, and it is probable that Doug is more heavily involved with the business side of the company. After Fuller's death, Doug assumes the role of chairman of the board.
Doug lives in an apartment that is (or appears to be) part of the Ennis Brown house in Los Angeles. He drives a 1950s Porsche 911, and dresses well. He also takes Jane to what appears to be a fairly upper class restaurant. It is obvious that he either has money, or wishes to appear to have money.
It is unclear whether Doug comes from a privileged background. He has trouble at the checkout of Natasha's supermarket, but that only indicates that he hasn't done much shopping for himself in a while. He claims not to be able to dance, but in fact does quite well (although this may be an effect of having David's memories in his head). He is able to fight and (at least temporarily) subdue Ashton, and use a gun, as well as bribe a cab driver. However, he looks down on Fuller's sexual adventures with teenage girls, so his morals are not entirely lax.
Doug's attitude to the program is generally positive, although he is hardly as emotionally attached to it as Whitney is. As time goes on, Doug becomes more focused on the dangers of the program - first being mildly annoyed that Fuller had used the program when it was possibly not safe, and moving on to being furious after he himself almost dies in the program. At that point, he tells Whitney that he will order the program to be shut down - despite the fact that both men have worked on it for six years of their lives.
Like the other characters in The Thirteenth Floor, Doug apparently does not have much of a social life. Whitney does, however, refer to "shooting hoops" with him, and Doug has an old arcade game in his office. He also watches old movies on two occasions.
Douglas Hall: More Than Meets The Eye?
As I've mentioned above, it took me a long, long while to truly get interested in the character of Douglas Hall. Compared with the more emotionally resonant roles in the film, Doug was a blank slate - dull, unemotional - there to look good and ask the questions required to get the plot moving forward. His love story with Jane seemed equally uninspired. When I started wondering why Doug came across so badly, even in the hands of a good actor, even in an otherwise thought-provoking film, some points started to surface.
Doug is not a hero. Director Josef Rusnak has mentioned in interviews the trouble he had, as a German/European filmmaker, struggling with the expectations of an American audience. Primary amongst these is that Doug is expected, in this kind of story, to be the hero, perhaps in the mold of Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, if not Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. The fact that Doug lives in the same apartment as Ford's character does little to subdue this idea. He is played by Craig Bierko who, even though he is more of a character actor than a leading man, looks the part.
But Doug has no special skills, and no prior experience. He's not a computer whiz like Whitney. He doesn't appear to have any background in investigations, although he does do a half decent job of tracking down Jane when she disappears. Ashton is obviously much better at fighting, and has no trouble lying through his teeth to Doug. One of the reasons Doug seriously falls down as a hero is that, prior to the finale, he gives up. He has no plan. The day is saved, instead, by a secondary character - McBain. Doug neither saves Jane nor himself (and, arguably, gets both Whitney and Ashton killed through his inaction).
Although this is disappointing, it does make Doug a much more realistic character. Few businessmen or computer programmers are ace detectives, know kung fu, or would be chipper enough to form a master plan after learning they were nothing more than cogs in a machine. Doug is an ordinary guy, caught in a storm of unusual and traumatic circumstances. The fact that it all works out for him in the end (despite his two best friends meeting violent deaths) is more or less an accident.
At first glance, Doug is a bland failure of a character. However, looking deeper, beyond expectations, we find a regular guy just struggling to survive.
LINK UNITS
"These people are real - they're as real as you and me."
The Thirteenth Floor takes place over a relatively short time period - two or three days - and there is little capacity for seeing anything of Doug’s “normal” life. What we do see of Doug's life in his apartment and office does little to suggest a vibrant social life. The messages on his voicemail all seem to be related to work, and the pictures he has on his desk are of his colleagues Fuller and Whitney. In an interview conducted for the German 13th Floor DVD, actor Craig Bierko emphasised Doug's lack of a social life:
Well, I think Douglas Hall is extremely driven and intelligent and dynamic but he doesn’t have much of a personal life. I think he’s sort of a lonely guy, who’s very good at what he does, but there’s a whole side of life that he’s missing, and I think doesn’t even give much of a thought.
Perhaps part of the reason for Doug's lack of concern with this other "side of life" is that he does have a kind of surrogate family formed around him.
Hannon Fuller
Doug doesn't have any scenes with Fuller. However, the effects of their relationship have a resonance throughout the film. Doug is accused of murdering Fuller - probably the person he would be least likely to murder, and also the accusation most brutal to him emotionally. Doug says that he has worked for Fuller for six years, and that the older man was not only his boss, but his friend.
It seems reasonable that Fuller may have filled the role of a surrogate father for Doug: Doug has two photos on his desk, both of which are of Fuller (although one also has Whitney and several other men). Doug is listed as Fuller's next of kin, to be contacted in case of medical emergency, and Fuller's will is in his favour - giving him some money (Fuller's money is to be split amongst the employees), and making him chairman of the board. Fuller also leaves his last message to the world indirectly in Doug's care - giving it to Ashton, and then attempting to lead Doug towards it via a curtailed voicemail message. At the very beginning of the film, we find out that Doug is apparently a man to be trusted. Fuller writes, "you are the only one I could tell this to... the only one who could understand."
The events of the film, however, tend towards shaking this father-son relationship, as Doug learns more about Fuller than he ever really wanted to know. His confidence is shaken initially by the idea that Fuller had a daughter he never mentioned to Doug, and also that Fuller had been planning to shut down the company. These are both lies told by Jane, but they lead Doug to question his mentor's motives. Finally, when he discovers via Ashton that Fuller had been using the program to have sex with girls, he no longer knows what to believe.
Interestingly, the last moments of the film seem to attempt to restore Doug's faith, by introducing a "real world" facsimile of Fuller: healthy, wholesome, and presumably not with any quasi-paedophilic tastes.
Detective Larry McBain
McBain is the main outsider in the film, threatening to disrupt the company family by investigating Doug (and, to some extent, Whitney) for Fuller's murder. Doug's relationship with him is largely adversarial, and it appears that Doug is McBain's main suspect from the very beginning. However, the two men quickly become involved in that same investigation - who killed Fuller? - albeit using different methods.
Doug's conversations with McBain are very guarded, and he does little to protest his own innocence. Despite having no memory of committing the crime, McBain seems to do a good job of convincing even Doug that he must be guilty.
Jason Whitney
In the original draft of The Thirteenth Floor, prior to the casting of 38-year-old Vincent D’Onofrio, Whitney was supposed to be several years younger than Douglas Hall. It appears, given the way that D’Onofrio played the role, their relationship in the completed film still reflects this age gap. Doug in all ways assumes the role of an older brother - checking that Whitney is okay after Fuller’s death, talking to the police, and taking the lead in figuring out why Fuller was killed. Whitney very easily defers to him, probably in part because he himself is uncomfortable in social situations. Whitney would prefer to leave the investigation to the police, and get back to his beloved program.
Whitney appears to have a slightly ambiguous relationship with Doug. On the one hand, they are obviously friends and have known each other for at least six years. On the other, there are indications that, lately at least, they have not been particularly close. Doug has been away for a month, and the two men don’t seem to have spoken during that time. Whitney reacts with great irritation to Doug’s attempts to access his files and, for a brief moment, his easy-going demeanour changes as he defends his territory.
This slight hint of Whitney’s defensive nature when it comes to the project deepens into a greater crisis in their friendship. The first time that Doug downloads into the simulated world, Whitney argues against it on the basis that Doug would be risking his life. After Doug begs him for help, he reluctantly consents. Later, when Doug does in fact almost die in the program, and tells Whitney he is going to shut down the project, Whitney at first reacts with fear and then with anger.
The fear is not particularly surprising - Whitney normally defers to Doug, and dislikes confrontation. Despite being Doug’s physical equal, Whitney is frightened and puts up his hands to defend himself when Doug does something as harmless as move closer to pick up his shoes. The anger Doug’s words generate actions seem initially out of character for Whitney who, in all previous scenes, has essentially let Doug walk all over him. Whitney stands up straight for the first time in the film and unreservedly yells at Doug. Admittedly Doug was leaving the room at the time, but there is little doubt that, given the strength of Whitney’s feelings, the two men would have come to blows should Doug have returned. Whitney’s love for his work, and Doug’s failure to think rationally in the moment, have strained their friendship to breaking point.
Despite Doug’s knowledge that the project means the world to Whitney, that Whitney is an emotional wreck following Fuller’s death, and that Whitney was shocked by the idea that Doug might close down the project, Doug apparently never suspects that Whitney would take the initiative and download into the program himself. Yes, Whitney hates confrontation, and tells Doug that going into the program alone is stupid - but we repeatedly see how much emotion and work Whitney has invested in the project. Doug, however, takes no steps to look after or check in on his friend, even at such a traumatic time. Although Whitney saved Doug’s life in the program, Doug doesn’t even think of saving Whitney.
Admittedly Doug is going through a tough time emotionally himself, with Fuller dead, and the police regarding him as a suspect. However, his actions suggest that he is not as good a friend to Whitney as he should be. To his credit, when he is alerted to “Whitney” (really Ashton in Whitney’s body) acting strangely, he immediately goes to see what is going on. However, when he discovers what has happened, he makes no effort to ascertain whether Whitney is, in fact, dead, and only mutters a vaguely sad, “son of a bitch...” Hardly the stuff of which epic friendships are made.
Jerry Ashton
Doug comes into Ashton’s life initially in the guise of a customer, and Ashton relates to him as he would to any patron, pouring him a drink and trying to tempt him with the services of the pretty dancing girls nearby. When Doug shows his hand by asking about Fuller and the letter, Ashton deliberately continues to play the role of the bartender, pleading ignorance and continuing along his theme of directing Doug’s attention to alcohol and girls. However, he also registers Doug as being a potential threat.
Ashton talks to Doug’s 1937 alter ego, John Ferguson, and follows him to ascertain that he is - as he suspects - dealing with two quite different people. He has also travelled to the end of the world and has realised that nothing in his world, including himself, is real. By the time he next meets Doug, his demeanour has changed entirely. He is no servile, dumb bartender. Instead, he lures Doug into the darkness of the locker room below the bar, and into his own territory. Once there, he holds Doug at gunpoint. Ashton is unsure of what threat Doug poses, but he comes prepared.
Due to his limited knowledge of why and how his world has come into existence, Ashton holds Doug responsible for the emotional trauma he is going through. He demands answers from Doug and, when Doug is unable to give him any solace, shoots him twice. Whether Ashton really intends to kill Doug is a matter for speculation. However, after Doug gains the upper hand and shoves the gun in Ashton’s mouth, the conflict definitely changes to being a matter of life or death. Ashton shoves Doug underwater and holds him there, presumably trying to kill him (although we later discover that Doug’s alter ego, Ferguson, survives).
At this point, the two men barely have a relationship. Doug is simply the focus of Ashton’s anger, fear, and physical violence. They are, quite literally, on different levels, and have nothing in common. Neither of them is well-disposed towards the other: when Doug returns to the real world, he tells Whitney of his intention to shut down the project - an action that would essentially kill Ashton.
It is only when Whitney dies in the program, catapulting Ashton into his body in 1999, that the two men can even hope to relate as equals. By this point in the film, Doug also knows that he is a simulation on a computer. Neither one of them, as Doug explains, is a god. Doug has no stomach for violence towards Ashton, and Ashton - almost reduced to tears by the realisation that he is still not free - makes no realistic threats. The two of them may never have managed to be friends, but by the end of the film they do at least understand one another.
Jane Fuller
Doug and Jane's relationship is, at once, the least interesting and most complex of the film. Usually, a romance on film takes some trouble to convince the audience that these two people are in love, and to show the audience why this is the case. Two people being reasonably good-looking and gawping at each other is not, generally, very convincing. However, this is exactly how the Doug-Jane romance is presented and, to the audience, it is pretty much unfathomable.
From Doug's perspective, he feels as if he knows a woman he has never met before - perhaps he even feels as if he is in love with her for that first moment, and he, like the audience, is incapable of understanding why. As he finds out more about her, he should like her less rather than more. Since neither he nor Whitney, Fuller's closest friends, have ever heard of her, she is either a fraud, or part of an elaborate deception enacted by her father. She also intends to close down the company, destroying Fuller's legacy, ruining Doug and Whitney's work, and putting them out of a job.
Despite all of this, Doug finds himself confiding in her about their work (something he wouldn't reveal to the police) and his suspicions that he might have had something to do with Fuller's death (something he didn't tell his friend Whitney). This is entirely irrational behaviour. After all, he would have every reason to expect Jane to run to the police with a "confession" from her father's murderer. They have little in common, and opposing interests, yet they are in love.
It is revealed to be a very artificial type of love, however, since Doug is a simulated character in a virtual world, designed to reflect the best characteristics of Jane's sociopathic husband. Jane fell in love with Doug, without having met him, by watching him from afar. She really knows everything about him, including a huge amount of information to which we, the audience, are never privy. Jane mentions Doug's "kindness" and "integrity", two values we never really see onscreen. Their relationship breaks the key rule of "show, don't tell" in film. We are told that they are in love, but never truly convinced of it by their actions.
When compared against the Hollywood stereotype of epic romances (and this is, at least, structured as an epic romance, spanning reality itself), the Doug/Jane relationship is deeply flawed. However, this is a necessity, not only because of the central conceit of the film, but also because the relationship is not only flawed, but rather sinister.
We know that Jane has watched Doug since he was created - not a moral problem for a game player observing her Sims, but a rather interesting admission of voyeurism for someone who claims to believe that Doug is just as real as she is. We also know that Jane has a rather psychologically complex relationship with both Doug and her husband, David. She loved David, but when he became abusive, she turned to Doug, the perfect copy. This is no story of loving Doug for who he is. Rather, she loves Doug because he is the better part of the man she used to love. daddysmutantkid has pointed out the similarities in this story to the Hitchcock film Vertigo - a film whose hero is named John Ferguson, which is Doug's alias in the 1937 simulation.
Indeed, it is not beyond logic to suggest that Jane specifically engineered the events of the finale to purposely replace the faulty husband with the copy. She certainly deliberately arranged David's death. Whether she knew that Doug's consciousness would leap to the 2024 world is unknown, although she doesn't seem to be very shocked when it happens.
Doug's relationship is hardly the perfect love story, but then it's not supposed to be. With a little contemplation, it becomes deeply dark, sinister, and ominous. One has to wonder: if Doug were to have some unforeseen character flaw, how far would Jane go to replace him, in turn?
USER PROTOCOLS
"We're screwing with people's lives!"
I've taken a fair bit of flak for being so engaged with The Thirteenth Floor. The trouble, of course, is that there's one 96-minute film featuring him and that - excluding interviews, production notes, and DVD extras - is pretty much it. Unlike the characters I admire in other fandoms, I can't watch Douglas Hall develop over five or six seasons of 22 or 24 episodes each. When I stick my DVD in the player and press play, the usual response from those around me is, "haven't you already seen that a dozen times?" And, yes, yes I have. But I never get bored.
I would, of course, prefer the hours of character development that television drama usually provides. But the lack of much material leaves me with a very important benefit: questions.
The greatest favour the makers of The Thirteenth Floor did was to leave the fans with hints. Never underestimate the power of hints. Director Josef Rusnak has spoken of his frustration with the time limits of the feature film industry, and of the cuts that had to be made - after all, this was a story that could have been told over an entire novel (Simulacron-3) or a mini series (Welt am Draht). It would have been simpler and easier to portray Doug as exactly the kind of studly, well-equipped hero we expect him to be. However, the fact that he is not made into this stereotype makes him more interesting - albeit often confounding - as a character.
What does Doug do at this highly secretive company? How did he become so involved with Fuller that he ended up as a billionaire's closest friend? What's his background? Why does he live such a relatively antisocial life? What's behind his ambiguous relationship with Whitney? How does he really feel about Jane? And how would he cope, fitting into David's shoes in the "real world" of 2024?
I never think for a moment that there simply aren't answers to these questions. Watching the film, I've come to realise that it isn't just about the film itself - those 96 minutes of flashing images. The film is only the tip of the iceberg. I've worked in film and in theatre, however briefly, and you very quickly learn that there is always a reason for a prop being in a certain place, or a line being written as it is, or delivered in a certain way. Of course, in most films these things are explained in the dialogue, or are simply inconsequential. In The Thirteenth Floor, we notice, and we wonder.
In my fanfiction, I concentrate mostly on the characters of Whitney and Ashton. However, the film shows us that Doug has (or could have) very interesting relationships with each of them. Whitney is very affectionate towards him, but Doug doesn't confide in him at all during the course of the film (and doesn't appear to be greatly affected by his death). Doug and Ashton have a very antagonistic relationship, but are both probably more similar than they realise. In addition, my fic explores the problems Doug has fitting into 2024, and dealing with the effects the abusive David has left behind.
If anything, Doug is a character in search of an identity - a place in the world. In 1999, he's in limbo. He has accumulated material success, but has no personal ties but the one severed in the opening moments of the film. As he falls in love with Jane, a tie develops, but it is unclear whether he has found himself, or merely adopted the life of someone else - the now dead David.
You have to wonder: did being unplugged from the program really make him free?
FANDOM GUIDE
"You've got your players, and you put your nickel in. This one pitches; this one runs around the bases. Got a bat, got a ball. They play, they score."
General Information and Helpful Links
World On A Wire: 13th Floor Resources // Lonelywalker's Fanfiction My fansite for the film, including interviews, production information, galleries, video and sound clips, and fanfiction.
The Thirteenth Floor @ imdb.com Good general site for information and links.
Scifi Scripts A transcript of the film. Not 100% accurate.
The Editing Room - The Thirteenth Floor A short parody script of the film.
Fanfiction
Much as I am loath to rec my own stories, at present I am the only person writing fanfiction based on the film. All of my fanfiction can be found at my website, which also includes information and articles about the film as a whole.
Most of my Thirteenth Floor fanfiction centres on the Whitney/Ashton pairing. However, Doug does feature, and I have written several stories focused on him, including:
Hunting Season G. Doug returns to his alma mater to recruit a young man who may play a big part in his future.
Stress R. Doug and Ashton really have nothing in common.
I have also written a lengthy re-interpretation of the film from the points of view of Whitney and Ashton, which naturally also features quite a lot of Doug:
The End of the World R. Fuller is dead. Doug has returned. Jane wants to shut down the program. Whitney and Ashton's fledgling relationship is thrown into chaos. Will anything survive the end of the world?