The Kid from Beaver

Though his part in each film changes, most noticeably between the first and second, the filmmaker obviously sees himself as a character in the story. Even in the first film, where he is operating the camera, there is the little bit where he reads the letter from Don as he drives to the town. Clearly he sees himself as more than an impartial observer. In many ways, he is the reason the story happens. In the second two films, it is implied that the reason the show is put on at all is because Don thinks he is going to be on television. Throughout the second and third films you can see the filmmaker develop this idea, as he makes himself a literal character in the film. He has almost become an impartial observer this way. While the first film is filmed live, essentially bringing the filmmaker into the story, in the second two the actual filmmaker is unseen and his doppelganger is on camera, with a prop camera of his own.

As for Don himself, his "character" changes quite a bit throughout the three films. In the first film, he's not a character at all, he's an actual, strange person. The second film brings out his supposed sense of isolation from the community and his fear that people will not accept him, which is not very present in the first film. Don's character in the third film is very different from the first. The real Don seems like a normal, masculine guy, and you would never guess that he likes to dress up like Olivia Newton John unless he told you (which he probably would). Crispin Glover's Don, on the other hand, is very effeminate, and is definitely sort of the person who you would think would dress as a woman. I thought that this change, while not bad outright, did get rid of some of the more interesting parts of the original Don's character.

As for the secondary characters, the first and second films do not really have any. The only people we see Don interacting with are the filmmaker and the woman doing his makeup, and the woman barely says anything. We also see the other performers in the variety show, but they never drive the story forward or ever interact with Don. Their purpose seems to be to give us a feel for the other occupants of Beaver. In the third film, all these characters are fleshed out, and their interactions with Don are shown. This gives us a sense of Don's isolation from the community. The woman doing the makeup is obviously weirded out; the father of some of the performers voices his displeasure with Don's act; the host of the show is shown to be the school's principal. New characters are also introduced, such as Don's best friend and the other kids at the high school, who pick on Don. These characters all serve to show us how Don does not fit in with the rest of the town, and how he seeks to escape through his impersonations. This theme is not at all apparent in the first film, which is almost entirely nothing but Don. It is interesting that, though the story is told from Don's perspective in all the films, we learn the most about him through his interactions with other characters.