Copywriting

High-quality content is a bad investment for most businesses

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In a recent newsletter, media watcher Simon Owens wrote that high-end, narrative podcasts are a bad investment for most businesses. Cheap, conversational podcasts are a much smarter bet. This made my long and I believe quite attractive ears perk up.

Why is producing high-production-value, valuable content such a bad idea? Simon shares his own experience:

But here we are just two years later, and most of the narrative shows are gone from my own podcast feed. The transition occurred gradually. I’d find myself looking forward to new episodes of the conversational podcasts, whereas listening to the scripted ones just felt like homework. My mind would drift during crucial plot points, which meant skipping back several minutes so I could regain my narrative foothold. In many cases, the narrative series I listened to died off after a single season, and I just didn’t have the energy to try out new ones. Today, only four out of the 23 shows I regularly listen to hinge on a storytelling structure.

Simon says, of course there is still some space for fancy narrative podcasts like Serial, and there will always be some audience. But for most businesses, investing in this kind of content is a losing game.

Like I said, my ears were very perky after reading this.

“What if it’s not just podcasts?” I said to myself. The question is not about complex storytelling versus unscripted conversations. The question is whether your content feels like homework or not.

Or maybe the question is really this:

Is the high production value you put into your content helping your case — or actually hurting it? This might be something to think about if you have a podcast, or a YouTube channel, or — an email newsletter.

But here’s something else to think about:

People don’t just sign up to conversational podcasts. Not just like that. Nobody sets out looking for a random and unknown person to listen to.

No, people initially start listening to conversational podcast because the podcast is recommended by somebody… or because a snippet of it is surprising or fun… or, most likely, because the podcaster has some kind of standing, authority, or status.

Which brings me to my Most Valuable Email training.

It’s about an email copywriting trick. This trick produces surprising content. Content which gets recommended and shared by readers to other potential readers. And which builds up your perceived standing, authority, and status, by you doing nothing more than writing valuable emails regularly… which don’t feel like homework to read.

In case you have an email newsletter around marketing or copywriting, or want to start one, this Most Valuable Email training might be a good investment. To find out more about it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

This email is fresh and I can prove it, but if it weren’t…

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Today is October 4, which marks the 139th anniversary of the first trip of the Orient Express, on October 4, 1883. I’m telling you this for two reasons:

Reason one is that there is something magical about the name Orient Express. It captured the dreams and imagination of the world for the better part of a century.

The mystery train from Paris to Istanbul, stopping at exotic locations like Vienna, Budapest, and the Black Sea port of Varna, featured in Bram Stoker’s Dracula… the James Bond book and film From Russia, With Love… and most famously, in Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express.

So it might be worth thinking a bit about what it was about that name, and the train that bore it, that made it so impactful and sticky.

Reason two is that I want to prove to you, as well as I can, that I’m actually writing this email today, October 4 2022. It’s valuable for readers to feel your content is fresh. But I will make you a little confession:

I don’t always write fresh content. Sometimes, when I am too rushed, uninspired, or simply hung over, I will go and reuse an old email. It’s one of the benefits of having written 1,300+ of them for this newsletter alone.

Whenever I do that, I will select an old email that I still like reading a year or two later. And then I’ll update it. Rewrite it slightly to take out the no longer relevant, and to add in the now relevant.

Whenever I do this, I find I get lots of engagement and positive reactions from readers. And I’ve never once had anybody point out that I’m rewarming last year’s supper.

It turns out I’m not the first to hit upon this idea. Back in 2015, the people at Vox did an experiment. As Matt Yglesias, then editor at Vox, wrote:

“For one week, we asked our writers and editors to update and republish a number of articles — one each day — that were first posted more than two months ago. This is hardly a brand-new idea in digital journalism. But we did it a little differently. Rather than putting the old article back up again unchanged, or adding a little apologetic introductory text to explain why it was coming back and was possibly outdated in parts, we just told people to make the copy as good as it could be.”

Result?

Over 500,000 readers for those rewarmed articles… engagement and exposure to good content that had previously gone unnoticed… and not a single reader writing in to say that Vox was reusing content.

That’s something else to think about, at least if you have a stockpile of old content. Don’t apologize for reusing it. Instead, make the old content as good as you can, today, on October 4, 2022, and then serve that up to your audience.

All right, my mystery train is about to leave the station, so let me say:

This email you just read does not use my Most Valuable Email trick. If you know the trick already, you will see why the content you just read would be 100% incompatible with trick teach in the Most Valuable Email. And if you don’t know the trick yet, and you’re curious to find out more about it, you can do that on the following exotic and mysterious page:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

My storytelling advice to a “storytelling coach”

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Yesterday, I got an email from a well-known copywriter. The subject line read, “It’s story time for your business.”

This email was obviously a solo ad – somebody paid to send an advertisement to the copywriter’s list. The advertised offer was a free training held by a “story coach” who happens to be “one of the world’s top storytelling experts.”

I was intrigued. What might I learn from a top storytelling expert?

The suspicious thing was, the story coach’s email was itself not written as a story.

“Maybe she’s trying to tease me,” I thought. “I must see what kind of wondrous Harry Potter-like yarn a story coach can weave.”

So I went to the website of the story coach herself.

There were no stories anywhere on the front page. But there was a promo video. I watched a few minutes of it. No stories in there either.

The teasing was starting to get a little annoying.

So I went to the about page. Still nothing! All I found was how important stories are, and how life is too short not to share your true story, and how storytelling can help you make more money.

But then finally, at the bottom of the about page, I found it. The story coach’s story. It was there, under the heading, “The Story.” It went like this:

ONCE UPON A TIME, the story coach was born in a country far, far away
She then moved to another country for university
She then worked at some NGOs and got married
She then realized her “passion for adult learning”
She then started working as a corporate trainer
She then specialized as a story coach
She then became, and today still remains, “honored and delighted to empower people and businesses world-wide”
THE END

Maybe, maybe, this story coach has some valuable advice to give to her students.

If so, then she clearly forgets to apply her advice to her own business. Because the above “story” is so un-riveting that it immediately sabotages the claim she is a storytelling expert.

The way I see it:

if you want to sell with a personal story today, you better make sure your personal story is remarkable. Barring that, you better make sure you are a remarkable storyteller.

The trouble is the vast majority of people — most copywriters and “story coaches” included — do not have any remarkable personal stories and are not all that remarkable as storytellers.

So does that mean most people in business should stay away from telling stories?

Well, if I were coaching the story coach, I would advise her, for two good reasons, to pony up $75 and get my Most Valuable Email training before the price goes up on Sunday at midnight PST.

Reason one is that Most Valuable Emails are perfect for anybody who sells services or info products about topics like marketing, copywriting, or writing. If you write about those topics, then the Most Valuable Email trick is immediate and instant to use.

Reason two is that each time you write a Most Valuable Email, it makes you a tiny but significant bit better at whatever it is you are writing about.

So ​​If you are a marketer writing about marketing topics, it makes you a better marketer.

​​If you are a copywriter writing about sales copy, it makes you a better copywriter.

​​And if you are a so-called storytelling expert, then writing Most Valuable Emails at first make you decent and then maybe even good at telling stories.

So that’s my advice. In case you want to find out more about the Most Valuable Email training, take a look at the following, non-storified, sales page:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

FREE REPORT BY RENO AD WIZARD REVEALS 20 AMAZING SECRETS THAT CAN MAKE YOUR BUSINESS GROW LIKE CRAZY ALMOST OVERNIGHT!

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A couple days ago, I sent out an email about the “Man on Wire” sales technique. Even though I saw that technique in a movie, I remembered reading about it in one of Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets. I searched online, and found that bullet.

But I also remembered reading about this sales technique in a drug- and sex-filled tabloid, or tabloid-like publication, which formed my first shock exposure to direct marketing about 10 years ago.

I searched online, but I couldn’t find the relevant issue.

No matter. Because as part of this search, I did find something else. It’s potentially the most valuable thing I will ever share in this newsletter.

Here’s a fact you might or might not know:

“The REAL money in most projects comes from the strategy… and not just from clever copy.”

That comes from a Reno, NV ad wizard who is best know as a high-octane, A-list copywriter. But as he will be the first to admit, “The best copywriters remain in demand and at the top of the ‘A List’ because they are also savvy marketers.”

So today I want to share with you a 15-page free report by this Reno ad wizard. This free report can make your business – or your client’s business — grow like crazy almost overnight.

Ignore this report and suffer.

On the other hand, read it and apply it and — well, here’s the deal:

If you want this free report, then sign up to my daily email newsletter. And when my welcome email gets to you, hit reply and tell me you want the report. I will then send you the link. Here’s where to get started.

Feelings of entitlement may signal copywriting potential

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Today I read a viral pop-science article that made my head spin. The article reported research from Stanford University. The research consisted of two parts.

In the first part, the scientists tested a bunch of people to see whether those people were prone to feelings of guilt.

In the second part, the scientists had those same people interact in group settings, like planning a marketing campaign.

And get this:

The scientists found that the people who tested the most guilt-prone… were also voted as being the most leader-like. That’s according to the other participants in the study.

The underlying message of this research was clear:

If you yourself get burdened with deep guilt from time to time, there might be hope for you yet. In fact, it might be a sign that you secret talents – maybe even a purpose, a mission — that you just aren’t aware of yet.

Inspiring, right? No wonder this article went viral, with billions of upvotes and trillions of comments.

Aye, but here’s the rubbety rub:

The Stanford scientists didn’t just test whether subjects were guilt-prone or not. Instead, they actually tested whether subjects were more prone to either guilt… or to shame.

Guilt? Shame?

Maybe you’re not sure what distinction there is between those two. I wasn’t sure. But the Stanford scientists have their own definitions of the two terms.

Guilt is proactive: You feel bad about something you did, and you want to make amends.

Shame is passive: You feel bad about something you did, and you want to hide and not be seen.

Aaahhh…

So it turns out this inspiring Stanford study was really a bit of clever categorization and reframing. The article I read was titled, “Feelings of Guilt May Signal Leadership Potential.” But really, it could have been more honestly titled, “Proactive Behaviors May Signal Leadership Potential.”

But whatever. This article cannot in any way help us with persuasion and influence. So let’s just drop it.

And in entirely unrelated news, let me pay off today’s subject line:

Perhaps you sometimes catch a sneaking sense of entitlement coming over you.

​​Perhaps you get angry when you cannot get what you want… or you feel you are special and should not have to accept normal constraints… or you cannot discipline yourself to complete boring or routine tasks… or you become easily frustrated… or you have trouble giving up immediate gratification to reach a long-term goal.

All those might sound like very negative behaviors and thought patterns, ones that are destined to keep you from success.

But what if I told you that feelings of entitlement might actually signal copywriting potential?

The missing thing you might not have realized is that there are two related but actually distinct states.

One is entitlement. Entitlement is thinking you are better than others, and is rooted in a sensitivity to outside stimula, to social cues and responses, as well as to your own internal states and your place in the world.

The other is arrogance. Arrogance is thinking you are better than others, but is based in dullness and a lack of sensitivity, both to outside and inner sensations.

And that’s why arrogant people cannot make for good copywriters. They are not interested enough in observing the world, in how others behave and react, in what it all means.

On the other hand, entitled people, well, their sensitivity actually predisposes them to become immensely successful as copywriters.

I won’t name names here, but when I look at some of the most successful people in the direct response industry, both now and in the past, I suspect they felt a strong, even dominant sense of entitlement. Even if they appeared to be modest, self-effacing, humble people.

All right, let’s wrap up this pop science article.

Final words:​​

In case you are trying to make it as a copywriter, and you’re wondering where to start, then here’s a resource that may help you make the most of your latent copywriting potential:

​​https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The sales secret of Man on Wire

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Last night, in a desperate hunt for a movie to watch, I turned to the Rotten Tomatoes 100% Club. That’s a list of some 370 movies that have had uniformly positive reviews — a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.

This led me to Man On Wire, a 2008 documentary about a man named Philippe Petit. In case you haven’t seen this movie, the gist is:

Petit was a tightrope walker. And obsessive.

Back in 1968, when he was just 18 years old, Petit hit upon the idea of walking on a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center.

Problem:

The towers hadn’t been built yet. So Petit spent the next six years scheming, practicing, and waiting in preparation for his audacious August 7, 1974 walk between The South and North Towers, which lasted 45 minutes.

But here’s a question that maybe immediately pops into your head, as it did into mine when I heard about this stunt:

How exactly do you stretch a wire across the two towers? The wire weighed 200 kilograms, or about 450 lbs. Petit was doing his setup clandestinely, in the middle of the night, while hiding from security guards, so helicopters and cranes were out of the question.

So what the hell do you do?
​​
​​You can’t just hoist the wire up from the ground — it’s a 400 meter drop (over 1,300 feet). You can’t just toss the heavy wire across the 40 meters (130 feet) that separate the corners of the two towers.

A hint comes early in the movie.

You see a silhouette of a man packing things into a bag. It’s supposed to represent Petit.

Along with other unrecognizable equipment, the silhouette gives away something familiar — an arrow.

The fact is, one of Petit’s henchmen shot an arrow with a bow from one tower to the another. And that arrow had a fishing line attached to the end of it.

They used that first fishing line to pull across a slightly sturdier string.

Then they used that string to pull across a strong rope.

And finally, they used the rope to pull across the actual wire, which like I said, weighed as much as an adult melon-headed whale.

Maybe see where I’m going with this.

Because when I saw this in the movie, a lightbulb went off in my head.

“I know this technique!” I shouted in the darkness.

But not from tightrope walking. I know this technique from sales. I first read about it in one of Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets. Gary called it one of the “the most powerful master strategies I ever learned.”

You can find the explanation of this sales technique below. But not just that.

You can also find lots of inspiring personal stuff about Gary at the page below. Such as for example, that for a long time, Gary was such a bad copywriter that he considered giving up and becoming a mailman. He even went to the post office to pick up a job application.

The only reason Gary stuck with copywriting, the only reason he persevered and eventually became so successful, the only reason we know of him today, was that he was told at the post office that they are not hiring at the moment, and when they do start hiring again, thousands of prior applicants will be ahead of Gary in line.

So Gary stuck with copywriting and marketing.
​​
And one of the biggest things that Gary learned in the years that followed, and used in all his copy and marketing, from his sales letters to his olive oil business, was this “Man On Wire” sales technique. In case you are interested:

http://marketingbullets.com/bullet-15/

My best advice for beginner copywriters

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If you are a diligent reader of this newsletter, you will know I have been studying Spanish for the past few months.

So far, one of the best resources I’ve discovered is a YouTube channel, Español con Juan.

The Juan of “Español con Juan” is a Spanish teacher at University College London. He’s very likeable and funny. In his videos, he mostly makes stuff up and jokes around, but then he also sneaks in some actual Spanish language lessons when you’re not looking.

Juan usually only makes videos directed at language learners.

But once, he made a video of advice for Spanish teachers. It had five pieces of advice, including:

* Carry around a ruler (it’s a symbol of authority)

* Laugh at students (they will never make the same mistake twice)

* Line up the chairs correctly (students should not be facing each other but should be facing you — you are the star of the class)

Inspired by this video, I decided to do something equally helpful for beginner copywriters. Here goes:

1. Once you know “features vs. benefits” and AIDA, you’ve learned 99% of that’s worth learning from others. The rest is just practice. Copywriting is common sense, and inspiration comes from within.

2. If you really do want to learn something more, make sure you only look at courses and books that came out in the last ~2 years. Recent trainings like this have will have the newest secrets that haven’t been widely published yet. Everything older than ~2 years is too old hat, and the market has adapted to it.

3. The best thing you can do to attract new copywriting clients is to sharpen your copywriting skills.

4. The r/copywriting subreddit is a great place to learn copywriting and mingle with real, successful copywriters.

5. “Date around” as much as possible with different copywriting clients. A new client is always more exciting and potentially much more profitable than a past or present client.

6. The second-best way to attract copywriting clients is to go around asking, “How do you get copywriting clients?” And to keep asking it. Never stop asking.

7. Likewise, never stop studying. There’s always more to learn, and until you have learned it all, it’s best not to try anything in practice.

8. Do not start an email newsletter before you are ready! You could be inadvertently showing off your lack of skill and experience to clients who might hire you otherwise.

9. You are a copywriter. Industry rates start at $300/sales email, $10k/sales letter. Also, you are entitled to get paid royalties, because you’re the one bringing in the sales.

10. If you are unknown, particularly if you have no skills or experience, then make business owners a risk-free offer. For example, tell them you will charge them nothing upfront if they they test out your copy with paid traffic, or in place of a piece of copy which is currently making them money. The offer is, you only get paid if your copy converts, and if it doesn’t, it’s still a learning experience for you both. Win-win!

So that’s my advice. Follow it at your own risk.

But if you’re feeling a little suspicious, if you have some doubts I’m being genuine, if you wonder if this is really the best advice I can give you, then let me point you to a second set of 10 recommendations for copywriters. They apply equally whether you are a beginner or intermediate or advanced. You can find them here:

​​https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

So stubborn they can’t ignore you

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Yesterday, I spent an hour on Google, trying and failing to find good affiliate health offers to promote for my new health list.

Sure, there are millions of “Bates Motel” health offers out there. They will gladly pay you a large commission if you send a gullible victim their way.

There are also millions of worthwhile health offers out there. But they either have no affiliate program, or they demand that you have a list of ~2M names if you want to become their affiliate.

On the other hand:

Last week, I found myself participating in a “JV Mixer”.

This was an affiliate deal-making event. It was in the Internet marketing and personal development niches, but I’m sure equal things exist in the health space.

This JV mixer consisted of people with 7-, 8-, and possibly 9-figure businesses, including big names that I recognized, all pitching themselves and trying to make their best case for attracting new affiliates to promote their stuff.

My point being, it’s surprisingly hard to find good affiliate offers to promote, at least if you’re starting out. On the other hand, there are big and hungry businesses who can’t find enough affiliates to promote their offers.

See the strange contradiction there?

It’s actually the same thing with copywriting clients.

When I got started as a freelance copywriter, I heard that businesses are starving for copywriters. Business want to throw money at copywriters. But businesses don’t know where to find copywriters to throw money at, or there are just not enough copywriters around who want money thrown at them.

Maybe you’ve heard the same claim. And if you’re a freelance copywriter, maybe you’ve been around long enough to call BS.

And why not? I mean, I got decent copywriting work in those first few years. But I never once saw a desperate business owner, running down the street, grabbing random passersby and pleading, “Are you a copywriter? God I need a copywriter right now! If only I knew where to find a copywriter!”

But as I’ve written before, I eventually discovered that yes, that incredible claim really is true.

I discovered it when I suddenly became to go-to guy for a specific format of copy (VSLs) in a very specific niche (real estate investing). It turned out there really are dozens of business owners, running successful businesses, ready to throw money at a good copywriter, if only they could find one. Fortunately, they found me.

So then the question becomes:

How do you go from one to the other? How do you go from being a scrub searching for affiliate offers on Google… to being part of JV mixers where owners of multi-million businesses try to recruit you as an affiliate?

How do you go from being a starving copywriter mass-applying to jobs on Upwork… to sitting back, and having potential clients emailing you every day, and asking politely if you have some time to talk to them?

There are tricks and tactics to do it. Some are common sense.

Some you can pay for.

Some you can extract from your own experience, if you’ve gone down this road before, like I have in my freelance copywriting career, and now in my marketing and copywriting influencer career.

But the thing is, all those tricks and tactics are secondary.

Because there is just one primary resource if you want to go from scrub to success, from starving to satisfied.

This resource is very plain. Very unsexy. And it’s lying all around you.

But with this resource, you can do without any tricks and tactics.

On the other hand, without this resource, no tricks and tactics will help you.

I’m talking about time. Simple stubbornness. Still being at it tomorrow, and the next month, and in a year from now.

Which is why, if you ask me, it’s not worth even starting a new project if you’re not okay with still being at it in two-three years’ time.

All right, so much for my plea for stubbornness. For today, at least. Tomorrow, I will be back at it, with another daily email.

In case you think if you think my years of experience working with 7- and 8-figure direct response businesses could be valuable for you… you can sign up to my daily emails by clicking here.

 

 

“What will cause your death — and when?”

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Serious students of direct response advertising will know the following famous and shocking headline:

“READ THIS OR DIE”

This headline appeared on a Phillips Publishing bookalog back in the early 2000s. It supposedly got Phillips more than 100k new subscribers at $39 a year.

The payoff for the shocking headline starts right in the subhead:

“Today you have a 95 percent chance of dying from a disease or condition for which there is already a known cure somewhere on the planet.”

The rest of the copy continues in this vein, using a bunch of statistics and facts to prove to you that most deadly diseases are now curable or preventable.

“Read this or die” was written by Jim Rutz. Rutz himself was a serious student of direct response advertising.

So is it possible that Rutz, though he was famous for being off-the-wall, creative, and unique-sounding, actually swiped his famous ad?

I would say it’s certainly possible.

Because I am yet another serious student of direct response advertising. And today I found an old ad, from 1926, which reads exactly like Rutz’s “Read this or die” ad. The headline of that 1926 ad runs:

“What will cause your death — and when?”

The payoff for the shocking headline starts right in the subhead:

“If you value your health and life here are some facts that will shock you into thinking more about your body. it is almost beyond belief, yet true, that eight hundred thousand people die in the United States every year of preventable disease.”

The rest of the copy continues in this vein, using a bunch of statistics and facts to prove to you that most deadly diseases are now curable or preventable.

The offer at the end of this ad was the Encyclopedia of Physical Culture, a massive book in six volumes, which sold for $600 in today’s money.

The Encyclopedia was sold with many different ads, but I only found one instance of “What will cause your death — and when?” online.

Maybe the ad ran in many places, but only one of these is archived online.

It’s also possible that the ad only ran once in this exact form.

In any case, a few things are sure:

1. The Encyclopedia of Physical Culture sold out at least 8 editions between 1911 and 1928…

2, ​​Bernarr MacFadden, the author of the Encyclopedia, was worth $30 million as a result of his publishing activities (around half a billion in today’s money)…

3. ​The Encyclopedia was read broadly by generations of impressionable young men, and ended up a huge influence on America’s ongoing obsession with diet, health, and fitness.

All of which is to say:

That “What will cause your death” ad might be worth reading. Assuming, that is, that you’ve got an ongoing obsession with seeing what makes people tick… what they want to become… and what they are willing to pay for, at least when it comes to their health.

In case you are interested, you can see the entire ad at the link below. Before you click away, you might want to sign up to my newsletter here. Now here’s the ad:

https://bejakovic.com/what-will-cause-your-death

The biggest egos in the world

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One morning in 1985, actor Val Kilmer staggered to his bathroom and got ready to shave. He squinted because of how sleepy he still was. But then he spotted something in the mirror that shocked him awake.

In the middle of Kilmer’s chest a perfectly round bruise, the size of a 50-cent piece.

“I didn’t drink,” Kilmer said to himself. “I didn’t fall during the night. What could stab me like this in the chest?”

After a moment, the realization hit him.

The night prior, Kilmer had gone out partying with a bunch of Navy pilots. He was about to start shooting Top Gun, and he was trying to get into the role of Iceman.

The real Navy fighter pilots liked Kilmer a lot.

“You’re the actor that we’re most like,” they kept yelling the whole night. “You got good hair!”

And each time the fighter pilots said this, they emphasized their point by stabbing their fingers into the middle of Kilmer’s chest. That’s how he got the bruise.

Kilmer later said,

“The only egos bigger than actors are rock stars. And the only people beyond that are fighter pilots. They have the biggest egos on the planet.”

My point being, in spite of how it might look in the insular direct response world, email copywriters do not have the biggest egos in the world. Likewise, copywriting and marketing newsletters, podcasts, and books are not the most valuable things to read and study if you want valuable ideas, stories, and inspiration.

I recently made a list of 10 sources where I get ideas for my daily emails.

Most of these sources were predictable, or I had written about them already in emails prior.

But there was one source that I haven’t really talked about much.

And that’s analyses, documentaries, and original material about entertainment I love. Analyses and background info on Looney Tunes cartoons… William Goldman screenplays… Farside comics… and of course, Top Gun. For example, The Val Kilmer story above came from Danger Zone, a feature-length documentary about making of Top Gun.

So that’s my advice for you for today:

Think about your favorite movies, books, TV shows. Read about how they were made, or track down a documentary that saves you from reading.

You will get great ideas you can apply to your business, and in the most enjoyable format, since you will be digging into something you love.

And if you happen to love Top Gun:

I can’t recommend that Danger Zone documentary enough. It’s fascinating, and not just if you are a die-hard Top Gun fan. The documentary shows how complex it is to produce an hour and a half of seamless entertainment… how many specialists are involved… how much thinking lies behind seemingly simple decisions… how many layers of persuasion go into even a jockish, commercial, fantasy flick like Top Gun.

In case you are interested, you can find Danger Zone on YouTube in two parts. Here’s part 1: