Good response. The only thing I'd think to add is that there's a difference between an anti-hero and a villain protagonist.

Presumably, the villain is up to "villainous" things, like in the examples you gave while an anti-hero typically works for the side of "good" though doesn't act in a typically heroic way.

Thanks for the post, Scott. As we see, this is not necessarily a popular topic/concept...

This story, based on the rights to a book I have acquired is haunting me...

Let's see how it all shakes out.

Thanks again.

RC

The first thought that comes to mind is Tony Soprano vs. . Can't remember the character name.

In other words, you have to make every one around the protag worse than him.

Or kind of like an "extreme" DESPICABLE ME.

"Presumably, the villain is up to "villainous" things, like in the examples you gave while an anti-hero typically works for the side of "good" though doesn't act in a typically heroic way."

Travis Bickle plots and nearly carries out an assassination attempt. I don't know how much more villainous you can get.

I do agree that the term anti-hero is widely misused though. I heard someone call Scott Pilgrim an anti-hero. WTF. Slacker hero, passive hero, are NOT anti-heroes. Scott Pilgrim is a straight up underdog story. These are the type of stories Chaplin made his bread and butter. They're very archetypal.

Anti-hero stories aren't (unless they are a Western).

@Allan and @James: I'd stick with Christopher Vogler's definition: “Anti-Heroes may be of two types: 1) characters who behave much like conventional Heroes, but are given a strong touch of cynicism or have a wounded quality, like Bogart’s characters in “The Big Sleep” and “Casablanca”, or 2) tragic Heroes, central figures of a story who may not be likeable or admirable, whose action we may even deplore, like MacBeth or Scarface or the Joan Crawford of “Mommie Dearest”.” Joan Crawford is an awesome villain protagonist particularly because we develop empathy toward her not at her best (when she's just being mildly toxic toward her daughter and antagonist) but at her worst, when her inner contradictions explode and we realize that she lives in excruciating psychological pain, like in this scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUkE9qaVgmo

A protagonist of any type can only remain a protagonist as long as your audience is willing to follow her/him. Even the scummiest villain protags have a line that they cannot cross, and staying (perhaps just barely) on the "good" side of that line is what keeps your story from needing a different protagonist for the audience to empathize with (often, the person trying to thwart the villain-- a cop or hero). That line almost always is: doing really bad things (rape, murder, torture) to "citizens" or "innocent people." Pacino's scarface faces off violently against many characters, but all of them are other gangsters (selling drugs to civilians is not an exception, since they have to buy and "do" the drugs themselves). Montana even draws the line himself when asked to kill the UN speech maker & his kids-- he refuses. Most mobster protagonists (including Tony Soprano) tend to follow the same rules set: only do violence to other gangsters. In Heat, the reason we need Pacino's character AT ALL is because (although forced to by another character's actions), De Niro orders the execution of an innocent guard in the opening sequence, thus negating him as a potential protagonist; we can't fully empathize with a cold-blooded murderer after that, no matter how fascinating he is, or who he falls in love with (and then coolly abandons, as it happens). Specific types and degrees of violence will kill your audience's desire to sit with your villain protagonist for 2 hours. Know where the line is; your gut should tell you.