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Speaking of pillars of an American entertainment, uh, it is now the portion of the morning where I remind everyone that life is 50 shades of gray.

I have to assume I'm the first speaker in an academic institution that has referenced the book 50 shades of gray.

But we have already established that I dropped out of college.

I have no right to be here.

So this is where we arrived.

I don't know what you want me to do in my, in my life, there was only one concept that I have determined.

It's that everything is gray.

Every person, every question, every tragedy, even every victory, they all have nuance.

Pay attention to the nuance.

You all in this room, I feel like know that better than anyone.

You know it in your bones because you've devoted your time to building stories, building people.

It's what you do.

You are people architects.

You read a script, and you construct a walking, breathing human from the ground up.

When we create characters, we are encouraged to make them three-dimensional, right? And acting two-dimensional characters they are at the least boring and at the most extreme irresponsible.

We're told to embrace complicated characters.

We are taught that you can't accurately play a villain until you find one thing about him that you love.

One of my favorite producers has a poster over his desk that reads what does the villain want? Because in art, we recognize all characters start with an empathetic motivation on stage.

We prioritize listening because we know the livelihood of the show relies on it.

We are good at remembering those things when we make art, but in our daily lives, we tend to forget when we shift from the stage to reality nuance seems to get lost in the shuffle in real life.

We don't look for the one thing we love about each person.

Complicated characters get cast out, and we view things two-dimensionally.

It's also becoming increasingly apparent.

We're not listening to each other.

Even though like on stage, the livelihood of this entire grand show relies on it.

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