Back in 1992, a terrible movie came out called Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
(If you want to go on YouTube for a minute to check out the trailer, go ahead. I’ll wait.)
It starred Sylvester Stallone as a tough cop who has to team up with his overbearing mom to solve a case.
Stallone later said this was the worst movie he’s ever made, and he expressed regret for getting involved.
Critics seem to agree.
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot has a remarkable 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with one reviewer generously saying, “Give it half a star for being in focus.”
All right, so the movie sucks.
The question then becomes, why would Sylvester Stallone, one of the biggest action stars of the 80’s and early 90’s, agree to be in this clearly terrible production?
The answer is simple.
He got conned.
It turns out Stallone had a long-running “Whose is bigger” competition going on with the other massive action star of the period.
I’m talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Who is clearly a better politician than Sly. Case in point:
Arnold read the script for Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
He saw immediately that it was godawful.
And dyed-in-the-wool politician that he is, he then leaked something to the press about how he was tremendously interested in the movie.
Knowing how Hollywood works, he also asked for a huge amount of money to star in the movie.
So of course the producers then approached Stallone, hoping to get a better deal.
And since Arnold had made it known he wanted to do this movie badly, Stallone accepted, thinking he’d swiped a good opportunity from out of Arnie’s jaws.
Clever.
And an illustration of the most fundamental principle of human persuasion, which I heard goes back to Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch:
“Find out what people want, and show them how to get it.”
Of course, you sometimes have to dig deep to find out what people really want.
Stallone didn’t want money. Or even a hit movie. His real motivation was to one-up Schwarzenegger.
Sometimes it takes political genius to uncover this (like in the case of Arnold and Sly).
Other times, you simply have to do extensive research. And if you want to see my approach to doing research to figure out what people really want, specifically for writing up sales copy, then you might like the following: