In a manner of speaking, a Love Interest plays the role of psychiatrist to the Hero. That’s why a Love Interest must challenge the Hero as well as support him. Kisses then slaps. Help then confrontation. Constant change.
As L.A. Confidential Hero Bud White (Russell Crowe) shares pillow talk with his Love Interest Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), he confesses his key motivation in life. He tells Lynn about how, when he was a boy, his father tied him to a radiator, then beat his mother to death as young Bud watched helplessly. This explains Bud’s compulsion to save women in jeopardy, and it’s the emotional wound he must overcome. A Hero like Bud White can’t tell this sort of stuff to just anyone. Only in an intimate romantic relationship could this critical revelation come out.
Bud also confesses to Lynn his lack of self-confidence — he doesn’t think he’s smart enough to solve the Night Owl Café murder case. Lynn lovingly encourages him. “You were smart enough to find me. You’re smart enough.” Nice.
A few scenes later, though, Lynn is caught having sex with Bud’s arch rival on the force, Lieutenant Ed Exley (Guy Pearce). See? Emotional support, then a kick where it really hurts.
5. Not every movie has room for a Love Interest, but romance remains the best subplot available.
Whereas the presence of the Hero and Adversary remain an absolute requirement for every feature screenplay, the presence of a Love Interest character does not. Many fine films have been made without a romance in them at all: The Hurt Locker, The Shawshank Redemption, Unforgiven, Apocalypse Now, Iron-Man, Jaws, and The Dark Knight all do not have Love Interest characters.
But a screen romance relationship can be the source of strong emotion for an audience. Love stories get our blood pumping and we enjoy living them vicariously. So if a romance main plot or subplot is a natural extension of the story you wish to tell, then by all means include one.
We come into this world already knowing how to breathe and eat. Beyond that, pretty much everything has got to be learned.
Many different people teach us. Kindly strangers, junkie muggers, that kid on the street corner who made betting on Three Card Monty look like such a sure thing.
Brilliant teachers, clueless teachers, teachers who don’t even know they’re teaching, all leave their mark upon us.
Teachers in screen stories are called Mentors.
A Mentor conveys to each Hero important skills and knowledge that must be mastered before the Hero faces an Adversary in the showdown to come. Whether a physical or psychological battle lies ahead, Heroes must prepare, and for that they need help.
Here are the key traits of a Mentor character:
1. A Mentor can be any person of any age as long as they pass on important knowledge or skills to the Hero.
Most often we think of Mentors as older people.
In Inception, Miles (Michael Caine) is a wise older professor who once taught the Hero, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), everything he knows, and who now offers more insightful assistance. The Matrix offers Hero Neo an older, sage Mentor in Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), father figure supreme.
But even though motherly or fatherly behavior is common for a Mentor, teachers can still come in many other shapes and ages. There’s Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, where a singing bug serves as Mentor to a wooden boy with a penchant for lying. How old can a cricket in a top hat be? And Pinocchio’s already got a father, Geppetto. Still, Jiminy stands as one of the classic Mentors of all time.
In Léon: The Professional, middle-aged hit man Léon (Jean Reno) takes 12-year-old orphan Mathilda (Natalie Portman) under his wing to protect her. But it’s Mathilda who serves as Mentor to Léon, teaching him the real value of life. Here, the Mentor character is a child.
2. Often the Mentor dies.
This usually happens only if the Mentor is an older person, so that their demise will not feel completely outside the natural order of things. Sad, yes. Tragic, no.
The death of a Mentor serves three functions. First, having trained the Hero and having passed along special tools and wisdom for the ultimate battle ahead, the Mentor’s death forces a lead character to stand completely alone and prove himself as the Hero. There’s no longer anyone to fall back on for help.
Second, the passing of the Mentor offers up a symbolic death in the metaphor of story just before the ritual rebirth of the Hero. The lead character emerges from the loss of the Mentor a transformed person, now all grown up and able to overcome the worst any Adversary can throw at her. The Mentor’s death is a rite of passage.
Third, death of a Mentor often comes as Unfair Injury to the Hero. This provides even stronger emotional motivation for victory. A climactic showdown becomes time to win one for the lost Mentor.
In Urban Cowboy, blue-collar Hero Bud Davis (John Travolta) learns the Way of the World and the Truth of the Human Heart from loveable Mentor Uncle Bob (Barry Corbin). When Bob dies, Bud redoubles his efforts to beat the mechanical bull and best his Adversary Wes (Scott Glenn) so he can win back Love Interest wife Sissy (Debra Winger).
3. There can be more than one teaching character serving as Mentor in a story.
For some Heroes there’s just so much to learn it takes a committee.
In Wall Street, young hotshot stockbroker Bud Fox learns from two Mentors, his dad Carl Fox (Martin Sheen) and his boss Lou Mannheim (Hal Holbrook). Bud’s delighted to think Wall Street tycoon Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) might become his third Mentor, but Gekko turns out to be Bud’s Adversary, a Shapeshifter hiding out behind the mask of a Mentor.
Luke Skywalker in Star Wars has Obi-Wan Kenobi for his Mentor, but he’s also got Han Solo.
4. A Mentor often gives the Hero an important or lifesaving gift.
Usually the gifts are only presented after the Hero earns them, through some form of self-sacrifice or commitment to the story goal. The gifts can be tools for the journey ahead, or objects with secret powers, or special knowledge that will turn out to be lifesaving.
In Kung Fu Panda, it’s the Magic Scroll of Power; in The Lord of the Rings it’s the ring; in Last Action Hero it’s a magic movie ticket; in Inception it’s an introduction to a brilliant dream constructing “architect,” Ariadne (Ellen Page).
5. Mentors can be dishonest or immoral, unchaste or bawdy, failures or reprobates.
Some Mentors attempt to lure Heroes down the wrong path. Such negative teachers provide examples for the Hero of how not to do things.
Mentors can also come in the form of hardened cynics or losers who have blown their own chance at success, like failed baseball player turned coach Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) in A League of Their Own. The Mentor may start out as a reprobate, then reform and rise to fulfill the Hero’s need for wise council. Or they may be wisecracking pains in the butt, like the obnoxious insurance salesman Ned (Stephen Tobolowsky) in Groundhog Day.
A committed Hero can learn from them all.
One senior law partner in The Firm, Avery Tolar (Gene Hackman), takes new associate attorney Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise) under his wing to teach him the soulless but profitable ways of working for a law firm that’s secretly run by the mafia. Avery serves as a negative Mentor who teaches Mitch how not to live his life.
In Moll Flanders, Mentor character Hibble (Morgan Freeman) works as a servant in a 19th century London brothel. Bouncer and enforcer, he’s