The camera starts at the face of a sleeping man. It then pans over his forehead, across his bald head, to the stream next to which the man is lying.
The camera keeps panning over the water. It pauses for a second on a clod of dirt that sticks out of the stream.
The camera moves on to more flowing water and in the water, it focuses on some trash:
A large metal syringe… a box with coins in it… a Russian Orthodox icon… gears from a clock, covered with moss… a long black spring… a page of a calendar… a gun… ceramic tiles, covered with floating layers of dirt and algae.
The camera completes its trip and ends up where it started, on the sleeping man’s hand, halfway in the flowing water. A black dog, which has been sitting and guarding the man, stands up. The man opens his eyes.
That’s part of a long, dialogue-free scene from the movie Stalker.
The stalker in the title of the movie is a guide.
For a bit of money, he will take you inside the Zone — a mysterious and magical place, with its own strange and even deadly rules.
But why go inside the Zone?
Well, somewhere inside the Zone there is The Room. And if you can survive the Zone and make it inside the Room, it is said you will be granted your innermost wish.
Stalker is one of my favorite movies. I’ve seen it a grand total of two times. But I’m not here to recommend you see it even once.
Statistically speaking, odds are great you would hate it.
Stalker is dark, depressing, and slow. It’s a scifi movie without costumes, without cool sets, without special effects — unless you count the black dog. There’s no action and little dialogue, and what dialogue there is is philosophical rather than sexy.
So what’s up? If I’m not recommending Stalker to you, then why talk about it? For two reasons:
Reason one is that the Zone in Stalker is why I’m calling my new offer Copy Zone.
Copy Zone will be my travel guide to the magical, mysterious, and sometimes dangerous world of freelance copywritering.
I’ve been walking in and out of the Copy Zone for a few years. I know it well and I’ve already led a few people inside.
If you like, then my guide will show you the rules and signposts to go inside Copy Zone safely — and even to reach the fabled A-List Room, if that’s really what your innermost heart desires.
The other reason I’m telling you about Stalker is that yesterday, I promised to talk about pop culture that your audience isn’t familiar with.
And if you’re still reading, you can take a look at what I did in this email, and how I turned a 1979 Soviet sci-fi film into marketing.
I’ll leave you with two quotes. One is from Andrei Tarkovsky, the director of Stalker. When he was told that Stalker is too slow for human consumption, Tarkovsky replied:
“The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.”
The other quote is maybe more practical. It comes from comedian Andrew Schulz. Schulz has this simple rule about talking about topics that his audience can’t relate to:
“Who cares if they relate to it? Make them relate to it.”
Last thing:
If you’d like to be notified when my Copy Zone guide becomes available, sign up here for my email newsletter.