I was at gym not long ago. Instead of working out, as I should have been, I was listening to a particularly interesting episode of the James Altucher podcast.
This particular episode was particularly interesting because James was interviewing Steven Pressfield, the author of the War of Art and some other books.
It turns out James plagiarized a valuable ideas from one of those books. I later plagiarized the same idea from James.
But I’ve written about that before.
What I haven’t written about is that I recently contacted Brian Kurtz, the former Boardroom VP and current marketing mastermind organizer.
I wanted to see if Brian would like me to give some kind of presentation to Titans XL, his virtual mastermind/community.
Several people who are in Titans XL are also customers and readers of my newsletter. In fact, one such reader suggested the idea that I present at Titans XL.
I’m grateful to that reader. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this myself. After all, I’ve been reading Brian’s stuff for years, and I often refer to his stories and experiences in my own emails. I’ve learned a ton from the guy, both directly and indirectly.
All that’s to say Titans XL and me might be a good fit.
They might be almost as good a fit as Steven Pressfield and porn. Because as I found out listening to that interview:
After Pressfield moved to Hollywood, hoping against hope to become a screenwriter, he got a gig rewriting a screenplay — for a porn movie.
At the time, Pressfield had worked a number of odd jobs, including as an advertising copywriter. He knew how to write.
But could he write a good screenplay? And more importantly, could he write porn?
The producer of the porn movie, a “really nice family man” according to Pressfield, took Pressfield out to breakfast at the start of the project.
Sitting in a restaurant in Santa Monica, with the sun shining in his eyes, the producer leaned in. “Here’s what I want you to do, kid,” he said. And he gave Pressfield two rules of effective porn storytelling. Here’s one of ’em:
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Whenever there’s a screwing scene, always have something else going on at the same time.
For instance, if it’s the wife and the pool repair guy, and they’re in the bedroom, have the husband coming home unexpectedly in the middle of the day, unbeknownst to his wife. Then we can cut back and forth from the couple in bed to the husband coming home, and now you got something interesting going on!
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Speaking of which:
After I wrote Brian Kurtz about that Titans XL idea, I got an automated email saying Brian is mostly unavailable until April 24th. He’s planning and then hosting his final in-person Titans mastermind event.
April 24th has passed. I’m still waiting to hear back from Brian for real. Maybe he’s taking a break after the big event. Maybe he’s just busy. Maybe he’s ignoring me. Maybe he silently decided that I am not a good fit to present to his community, even though I think I am.
But I continue to be hopeful, though with each passing day, I’m getting more unsure. I’ll let you know how it goes.
And as for Steven Pressfield, he applied the two rules of porn storytelling in that script rewrite. He realized how important and valuable these rules were, so he kept applying them later in his other screenplays and even his novels. As he says, the “principles of storytelling I know are all movie principles.”
I told you one of the two storytelling rules above. And if you’re curious about that second one, you can dig up that James Altucher episode, and listen to it yourself.
Or you can just take me up on the following offer:
Sign up to my newsletter. Once you get the welcome email, hit reply and tell me about any paid communities or masterminds you are currently in.
​​If you’re in Titans XL, that’s fine. If it’s another marketing mastermind or community, that’s fine too. If it’s not marketing, but some kind of other paid community or mastermind, that works also.
If you do that, then in return, I’ll write you back and tell you the second of Pressfield’s two porn storytelling rules. I’ll also tell you how Pressfield used those rules in other non-porn scripts he wrote. And I’ll even tell you how smart marketers, maybe even me on occasion, use the same storytelling rule in their own sales copy and marketing content.