Special effects are characters. Special effects are essential elements. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.
“Well it seems to me, that all real communities grow out of a shared confrontation with survival. Communities are not produced by sentiment or mere goodwill. They grow out of a shared struggle. Our situation in the desert is an incubator for community.”
“I distanced myself, relatively, from my parents for a year or so in my late twenties. It was necessary for me to feel my autonomy. Other than that brief gap, we have always been a very close family.”