Screenwriting : The movie High Fidelity by Steve Goodman

The antagonist is the person who invented the CD player. Heh-heh. It's pretty clear that the story moves around a bit, and is primarily a self-examination of one man's life in a few ways that interconnect. Ian is the antagonist for a part of the story. Wait a sec....maybe Ian isn't the antagonist after all. Maybe Ian is a reflection character for Rob, who is both? Heh-heh again. Nick Hornby, the novelist who gave us Fever Pitch, About a Boy, A Long Way Down, Julia, Naked and High Fidelity, among others, sometimes doesn't quite use the same protagonist-antagonist landscape to the extent that other writers do. He's a brilliant writer, who also wrote some of the screenplays for his novels and for the recent films Wild and Brooklyn. When it's all said and done, he'll be recognized as one of the best writers of his generation. Actually, that's already happened. What a brilliant writer Nick Hornby is.

I think Ian is just a nemesis. I read that in a romantic comedy that the love interest is often the antagonist.

The theme of the story is commitment. Commitment to others, commitment to dreams, commitment to ones self. The "antagonist" is Rob himself. He needs to overcome his self destructive behavior.

Yeah, I break down all of the characters in the Supporting Characters Blue Book. And Ian is a symbolic antagonist - he represents all of the reasons why Rob got dumped. The key with anything internal is to dramatize it so that it becomes external - create characters who represent emotional issues. That's a great flick because every character is symbolic of some issue Rob has so that we can see Rob's problems and the solution to Rob's problems play out on screen.

Great insights and analysis as usual, William.

William what does the Barry character represent as a symbolic issue? Also are you sure that the antagonist can't be Laura?