TRANSCRIPT

The supporting character. You know, there's lots of people saying a lot of different things about the supporting character. In essence, as I explain in the course, I like to remember that the supporting character is there to help shift and change the perspectives of the main character, but I want to talk about something a little bit different with you right now, and it's somewhere that maybe a lot of screenwriting classes don't go, but I think it's really important. Aristotle didn't just write a book about the Poetics, where he sort of sets in motion a description of what it takes to make a great story work. He also wrote one of my favorite books of all time: The Nichomachean Ethics. It's essentially a book about how we should live. In the Ethics, Aristotle explains that there are different types of friendship. Now, he doesn't say any of them are problematic friendships, he just says that there are varying degrees, right? So we have to understand that all of these are valuable. On one hand, we have friendships of convenience: “Hey, we're both here, we should be friends.” Then we have friendships of utility: “Hey, I could help you and you could help me. We should both be friends.” But the greatest type of friendship, the one we should all strive for according to Aristotle, is the friendship of the good, and the friendship of the good isn't about making each other feel warm and fuzzy about things. It’s about me wanting the best for you and holding you accountable to that, and you wanting the best for me, and holding me accountable to that. That's what I think the old saying about iron sharpening iron is getting at. We have to push each other forward together and the reason we get there is because we don't have exactly the same view of the world. So I have to confront your view of the world and way of living, and you have to confront mine, and maybe with that perspective together we can go further.

That is the role of the supporting character. In the second act, the protagonist meets someone in the extraordinary world who is equally extraordinary and different than the people they would have known in Act I, and their way of looking at the world, their way of doing life, their way of thinking about relationships between human beings, why work matters, why they get up in the morning is radically different than the protagonist’s, but that difference is going to cause them to sort of brush up against each other and hopefully, if you write an insanely great story, both of those characters are going to grow. Your protagonist is going to be pushed to become their best self and your supporting character is going to become a better person, too. So the supporting character is not a secondary role. That's not what supporting means. It means that the supporting character holds up or supports your protagonist in their growth through the character arc. I mean, they're truly one of the most exciting characters you can develop. I hope you will choose to give them a really strong identity and that you'll have the guts not to make them a puppet, either to your story or to the protagonist. They need to have a mind of their own, and ideally they need to have a mind that’s slightly different than your own as a writer, because your supporting character should push you to grow, too.

I would like to introduce you to the leading supporting character in my life. Hey Coco! (kisses) Come here! Come here! Come to mommy. She’s being uncooperative right now, but I want you to meet my bestie. I’ll be right back. This is Coco Chanel. She's a little tired right now. She's one of the supporting characters in my life. She challenges me to keep my chill. I'm Irish, so I get a little stressed out sometimes. She also reminds me to see the best in people, even when I'm willing to just sort of write them off. She's very sweet, she's very supportive, but she also challenges me, don’t you? She challenges me to… My mom once sent me a magnet. It said “May you always be the kind of person your dog thinks you are,” and she sent that for Coco's predecessor but I think it holds true for her. Coco is a supporting character in my life because she reminds me that she sees the best in me, and she challenges me to live up to that best every day, but at the end of the day, the supporting characters in my life are my friends, they’re my family, they’re my students, they're all the people who see life slightly differently than me and who challenge me to redefine my notion of what right is. They remind me that we never hold all the answers in the palm of our hand. We're constantly growing and that we can all do better, together, and that's the key. We're all in this together.

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