In 1982, Hollywood movie studios apparently froze in fear. None of their old formulas were working and big budget movies turned into flops.
In fact, the only runaway hit for the first half of the year was a small outside production, which managed to reap $136 million on a budget of just $4 million. It was called Porky’s.
I’d never even heard of Porky’s until a few weeks ago. I decided to watch it today.
It turns out to be a teen sex comedy set in Florida in the 1950s. It hasn’t aged brilliantly.
It’s quaint with its boyish pranks (one boy’s “tallywacker” stuck through a hole in wall of the girls’ locker room shower) and its unabashed objectification of the multitasking gender (a hot female PE teacher, played by a young Kim Catrall, is nicknamed “Lassie” because of her coital howling).
But ok. Product of the times, right?
What seems out of place even for 1982 is the subplot involving one Brian Schwartz. Brian is Jewish. In the 1950s Dixie high school, he sticks out like a lobster on a sand beach.
Spoiler alert: Brian rises above and works his way inside the gang. That’s impressive, considering he drives a Richie Rich Jaguar while all the other boys drive pickup trucks.
But Brian wins their approval by 1) speaking calmly and intelligently to get the other boys out of trouble with the police and by 2) coming up with a devious, multi-stage plan to replace the boys’ dumb plan for the climax of the movie.
Way to explode those stereotypes about Jews. You can’t blame Brian, though. He’s just using his God-given intellectual talents. What you can do is blame the screenwriters for resorting to the cliche of the natural-born Jewish schemer.
And that’s where today’s Porky’s email ties into copywriting:
One easy, almost mechanical way to surprise your readers involves cliches. Of course, not salting your copy with even more cliches. But also not avoiding cliches, either.
Instead, what you can do is subvert a cliche. You can do it at the level of your concepts (Gary Bencivenga: “Get Rich Slowly”). You can do it at the level of an individual sentence (Ben Settle: “Take my advice with a grain of chili pepper”).
However you do it, your reader will think he knows where you’re taking him… but Brian Schwartz doesn’t grow up to become a well-paid Hollywood lawyer.
Sure, you can get sometimes away with a cliche. Porky’s proves that, as do many sales letters and emails. But there’s value in unpredictability. As A-list copywriter Jim Rutz wrote:
“The #1 sin in ad mail is being boring, and over half of it richly deserves its quick death by wastebasket. What is ‘always boring?’ The predictable. You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy.”