William Goldman

To be Home Aloned

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The original Home Alone movie cost $18 million to make. It went on to gross over $476 million.

For a while, Home Alone was the third highest grossing film in history. For an even longer while, it was the no. 1 money-sucking comedy of all time.

According to screenwriter William Goldman, Home Alone was such a success that Hollywood insiders began to use the term “to be Home Aloned.” It meant to have your movie screwed because it was released at the same time as a runaway blockbuster.

The point being that success can have more to do with who else is in your market… than the inherent quality of your product. This is the essence of why you need positioning. Many fine films, including Look Who’s Talking Too and Hamlet starring Mel Gibson, never got much of an audience because they competed head-on with Home Alone.

But that’s enough on the matter of positioning for this holiday. I only bring up Home Alone because, as I publish this post, I too am home alone. Except my home is an empty room at an airport hotel, with probably no other guests on the same floor.

But much like Kevin in Home Alone, I’m making the best of my situation. In fact, I’ll try to use the fact I’m traveling on Christmas (again) as fodder for my new side-project.

I wrote about this project yesterday. It’s an email newsletter about travel during corona. In case you’d like to see it, or you’d like to subscribe, here’s the link:

https://masksonaplane.com/

Fast and Furry-ous choices for surprising readers

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Picture this scene from The Fast and the Furry-ous, the first Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon:

Wile E. Coyote draws road markers on the ground leading to a cliff. Then he paints a tunnel on the cliff, and hides.

​​MEEP MEEP. The Road Runner comes rushing up, and runs straight through the painted-on tunnel.

​​Wile E. Coyote comes out of hiding, puzzled. ​​He takes a step back, gets a running start – and slams himself into the painted-on cliff. Of course there’s no tunnel there. And just as he’s staggering back to his feet, MEEP MEEP, the Road Runner comes rushing back out of the tunnel, and runs over Coyote again.

Screenwriter William Goldman once wrote the following:

“In a sense, a screenplay, whether a romance or a detective story, is a series of surprises. We detonate these as we go along. But for a surprise to be valid, we must first set the ground rules, indicate expectations.”

Like a screenplay, a sales letter is also a series of surprises. And if you want to know how to detonate those surprises in your sales letters, MEEP MEEP, it’s all there in that scene from the Fast and the Furry-ous. You’ve got two choices. Can you see them?

You might expect me to tell you. But no, I will subvert those expectations. You’re on your own for this one.

But for other tunnels and other copywriting lessons, you might like to get my daily email newsletter. Simply send $0 to the ACME company, and you will get something in the mail very soon.

Don’t rape your audience

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Today’s post is on the subject of email marketing, a rather milquetoast topic. The hook, though, is jarring — rape.

I didn’t think of that hook. Instead, it comes from William Goldman, somebody I’ve mentioned often in these emails.

Goldman was first a successful novelist and later a successful Hollywood screenwriter and then again a successful novelist.

Along the way, he also wrote a non-fiction book called Adventures in the Screen Trade. I’m reading it now. It’s a combination of memoir and an insider’s look into Hollywood, specifically as it was in the 60s and 70s of the last century.

Somewhere in the Adventures book, Goldman talks about the most important part of a screenplay — the beginning. And it’s here that he writes the following:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Specifically, Goldman is contrasting movie writing to TV writing. At the beginning of a movie, Goldman says, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

I had never thought about this difference. But it makes sense. And it makes me think of…

Sales copy, which is definitely on the TV end of the seduction/rape spectrum. Just think of some famous opening lines of blockbuster VSLs:

“Talk dirty to me”

“We’re going to have to amputate your leg”

What about email copy? Much of it also opens up in the same aggressive way. Here are a few opening lines I just dug up from recent sales emails in my inbox:

“MaryAnne couldn’t take it anymore:”

“In 1981, a dirty magazine published an article that had the potential to make its readers filthy rich.”

I always assumed this is just the way good copy is — VSLs or emails or whatever. Of course, that’s not true.

When I actually look at some of my favorite newsletters (and even some successful sales letters), they don’t have an immediate and aggressive grabber. Instead, they build up and work their way into their point — without rambling, but without aggression either.

The difference comes down to the relationship you have with your list. Some businesses, including some businesses I’ve worked for, have little to no relationship with their list. Each email they send out is like a random infomercial popping up on TV — if it doesn’t capture attention right away, it never will.

But some businesses have a great relationship with their list. They can afford to take the time to light the candles and sip the wine and stare seductively at their reader across the table. In fact, if they didn’t, things would seem off.

Is it possible to go from one style of email marketing to the other?

I believe so. In my experience, people tend to mirror your own emotions and behavior. That means you’ll have to take the first step if you want things to change. Rather than waiting for your list to have a better relationship with you… start seducing, and stop trying to rape.

Now that we’ve warmed up the conversation:

I also have a daily email newsletter. You can subscribe for it here. And if you do subscribe, I promise to… well, I won’t go there.

Screenwriting & copywriting: “If the structure is unsound, forget it”

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One of my favorite screenwriters of all time is William Goldman, the guy behind The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.

Writing about his craft, Goldman made the claim that “screenplays are structure.” He explained in more detail:

“Yes, nifty dialog helps one hell of a lot; sure, it’s nice if you can bring your characters to life. But you can have terrific characters spouting just swell talk to each other, and if the structure is unsound, forget it.”

Same thing in copywriting.

You can have all the nifty dialog and terrific characters you want, but if your arguments are out of order, or if you introduce a claim that doesn’t belong, you’re a dead duck.

Maybe you think I’m exaggerating. So here’s a relevant quote from one of the great A-list copywriters of the last century:

“If you violate your prospect’s established beliefs in the slightest degree — either in content or direction — then nothing you promise him, no matter how appealing, can save your ad.”

Ahe A-list copywriter behind this thought is Gene Schwartz. In his book Breakthrough Advertising, Gene wrote that the structure of your ad should be a bridge of belief between the facts your prospect currently accepts, and the final facts you want him to accept. Gene called this process of bridge building “gradualization.”

So how does this look in practice?

Well, in Breakthrough Advertising, Gene gave a line-by-line breakdown of gradualization in a famous ad (“Why haven’t TV owners been told these facts?”).

But that ad is kind of old. So I’ll give you a more recent example.

Except, it’s getting late. It’s time for me to quickly re-watch the swordfighting scene from The Princess Bride, and then get to bed. I’ll share that gradualization example with you, and all its structural wonder, in my email tomorrow.

What, you don’t get my email newsletter but you want tomorrow’s email? No problem. Sign up here.

Copywriting star or bust

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In the early decades of the film industry, there could be no stars.

In 1896, the first for-money movie theater in NYC opened up. By 1910 (a landmark year as will become obvious), thousands of movies came out.

These thousands of movies featured performers, even regular ones.

But nobody knew their names.

The producers refused to credit the actors. So the actors just acted their part and got paid a worker’s wage.

That all changed in 1910. That year, a popular actress named Florence Lawrence finally got her name to appear on film.

By 1912, Lawrence was paid $250/hr a week — the highest rate of any movie performer. But that was nothing. Over the next seven years, movie actor salaries went from Lawrence’s $250 a week in 1912… to Mary Pickford’s $2,000 a week in 1915… to the first guaranteed salary of one million dollars a year for Fatty Arbuckle, in 1919.

Stars were born. And they wanted more.

The next big step came in 1952, with a little-known film of Jimmy Stewart’s, called A Bend in the River. The film is mostly remarkable because it was the first time a Hollywood star got a percentage of profits.

That meant stars went from being well-paid to swimming in vaults of gold coins. Suddenly, the stars could dictate the terms. The studios needed stars more than the stars needed studios.

All of the above are some tidbits I read in William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade. And I think they illustrate a hard truth:

If you are in any service business… whether that’s acting or copywriting or haircuttery…

Being a star and getting paid real well go hand-in-hand.

Inversely, doing good work but not having any name recognition… well, you’ll always stay on the ground floor. You’ll get the modern equivalent of a worker’s wage — and that’s it.

That’s something to keep in mind if you are building up your freelance copywriting career. And it’s something you will have to address, if the prospect of being a star makes your bladder clench up right now.

Anyways, I have no interest in being a copywriting star. But the field does interest me. I write about it every day. And if you want to get emails with the stuff I write, you can sign up here.

Miracle Max’s copywriting masterclass

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There’s a scene in The Princess Bride that’s very instructive for copywriters.

(If you haven’t seen the movie, go and watch it. It’s wonderful.)

Anyways, the scene is set in the hovel of Miracle Max, a miracle man who can bring people back from the dead.

And that’s why the main hero, Westley, is lying there dead on Miracle Max’s table.

But Max isn’t convinced he should bring Westley back to life.

So he takes a magical bellows, sticks it Westley’s mouth, and puffs some air into Westley’s dead body.

“Heey? Hello in there?” Max yells at Westley’s corpse. “What’s so important? Whatcha got here that’s worth living for?”

He then presses down on Westley’s chest. And out comes the response:

“TR…OOOOO…LUV…”

I thought of this scene today because I got some feedback from my copywriting coach.

He said my copy needed to be more theatrical.

More dramatic.

More “spicy.”

But how do you copy spicy?

Well, one option is to raise the stakes.

Or like William Goldman, the author of The Princess Bride, puts it,

“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”

Of course, you shouldn’t literally add fencing and giants and torture into your copy.

But if you keep these Goldman ideas in mind, you’ll find the equivalent stories in your prospect’s life… or in the back story of your guru… or in what your competition is doing.

Just make sure you write clearly so your prospects can understand you.

Because (as you can see at the end of the Miracle Max scene in the Princess Bride) “TR…OOOOO…LUV…” can be misheard as “to blave,” which as everybody knows, means, “to bluff.”

And nobdoy’s gonna do what you ask them to do, if they think your only goal is to cheat them or make money at their expense.

Fezzik is a giant and that explains it

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I recently re-read the Princess Bride, the original 1973 novel that William Goldman wrote and later pared down to make the screenplay for the popular 1987 movie.

I love both the movie, which has the perfect cast, and the book, which has more background material.

Such as, for example, the history of Fezzik the Giant (played by Andre the Giant in the movie).

In the book, Fezzik was Turkish, born to normal-sized parents, and was always huge. In fact, when he was born, he already weighed 15 lbs, but the doctors weren’t worried because Fezzik was born two weeks early.

“That explains it,” they told Fezzik’s mother. But as Goldman points out:

“Actually, of course, it didn’t explain anything, but whenever doctors are confused about something, which is really more frequently than any of us would do well to think about, they always snatch at something in the vicinity of the case and add, ‘That explains it.'”

It’s not just doctors, of course. All of us look for a coherent story in order to make sense of our worlds. We will run and leap at the chance for a coherent story much sooner than we will absorb a complex but drearily true explanation.

This is because of evolution. The hypothalamus, the pea-sized complex of neurons which sits directly behind the right and left eyes and is therefore the first part of the brain to process incoming information, is also, according to Harvard Medical School, the part responsible for interpreting stories (and that’s probably why it’s considered to be the seat of the story chakra).

Anyways, if you’re in the business of selling things to people, this information might be useful to you in some form.

And if you want another thing that’s useful, in the form of sales emails that snatch at something in the vicinity of the case, then you might like the following offer because it is valuable:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/