La Iglesia de Pedro Almodóvar

Estaba pensando sobre la noción de la coincidencia en la pelicula “Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios” y por qué me molestan tanto. Lo que me ocurre es que la razón que no me gustan las películas que dependen en coincidencia para moverse la historia es que coincidencia implica que lo que sucede es fuera del control de los personajes. 

Para mí, una buena historia es una en que lo que pasa es determinada por los actores, no por poderes externos. Y esas acciones son determinadas por los propios caracteres. Quien algien sea determina lo que hará. (Y sí, en mi esquema, fuerzas naturales pueden ser “actores” en el sentido que hacen lo que deben de hacer por su propio “caracter”.) 

En el universo de Almodóvar, lo que tenemos es una historia que depende en fuerzas fuera del control –– y del caracter –– para mover la historia. Que Pepa intercepte una llamada de Iván a la abogada. Que el hijo de Ivan viene a mirar al apartamente de Pepa. 

Lo que dice Almodóvar con una histora tan llena de coincidencia es que el mundo –– a menos el mundo de su construcción –– cosas que pasan que determinan el destino de los actores están fuera de su control. 

Y esto produce la pregunta obvia: ¿En el control de quien están esas cosas?

La repuesta es Almodóvar. 

Él creó ese mundo, y él está en control. 

En el mundo real, cuando nosotros no tenemos control de las cosas que influyen nuestras vidas en maneras importantes, entendemos (o creemos) que hay otra fuerza que sí. El Dios. 

Y por eso, lo que dice Almodóvar cuando sus historias dependen en serendipidad para progresar, es que sí hay un dios y más, el dios es el mismo.

Quando entendemos su trabajo en ese contexto, otra cosa se pone evidente. La razón por los ataques a la iglesia católica. Una función importante de qualqier sistema de creencia es desacreditar otras sistemas de creencia. Su iglesia debe ser la única con razón. Las otras nececitan ser disminuidas. 

Esto es lo que Almodóvar está construyendo con esa película y todas las otras que también confiar en la coincidencia. Una iglesia en oposición a la iglesia católica. Y tal vez por eso, aun que no sea obvio, explica su éxito. 

Sabiendo todo eso, todavía no me gustan las películas que dependen en coincidencia para mover la historia. Y tengo otra razón, una más fundamental: Que yo no creo en Dios.

This blog is no substitute for film school.

What film school feels like, kind of

Every week, I get together with a group to watch a film by Pedro Almodóvar and discuss it, all in Spanish. For me it’s a two-birds-with-one-stone thing. I love film. I speak Spanish. Why not get a little bit smarter about both at the same time?

Turns out, I also get a third thing. A reminder that directing is an extraordinarily solitary pursuit.

Sure, it’s possible to learn a bunch of technical stuff about filmmaking from a blog or an online course or a book. And sure, when you actually make a film you work with a team. But as much as you may –– and should –– collaborate with all the people who are crafting your little masterpiece with you, it’s not the same as banging minds with others whose perspectives may be totally in opposition to yours, but who deserve as much deference and respect as you do. 

That’s what you get from film school. And presumably, that’s what makes the better film schools better. They have teachers who have been selected because they’re more knowledgeable and students who have been selected because they are more passionate. It's insanely invigorating to hear why something you think is a piece of crap can be considered art. Or to have someone point out a symbolic structure that you weren't aware of. 

Lucky me, this group I’m in is every bit as intellectually stimulating as any of the classes I took at NYU. 

After the films and discussions, we generally follow up with a little piece each of us writes on our impressions of the film we saw. If you’re interested, here’s what I wrote about the first film we saw together, ‘All About My Mother’.

Todo Sobre Mi Madre

Lo que me parece interesante es que creo que la película que vimos anoche era mí primera película de Almodóvar. Creí que había visto una de sus películas antes, pero lo que recuerdo es que no me gustó para nada, y la película anoche me sorprendió porque me gustó mucho.

Y ¿por qué?

Bueno. En adición a las temas sobre que hablamos, habían otras mas profundas: 

Las de identidad, de relaciones interpersonales, dependencia (no simplemente en algo físico, pero también de dependencia interpersonal como de Humo Rojo con… no puedo recordar el nombre de su compañera). Lo mas interesante a mí era la tema de cambio. Todas las personas en la película cambiaron, o por su propio voluntad o por factors externos. 

Eso no es algo nuevo. Peliculas dependen en cambio, particularmente del cambio de la protagonista. Lo que me parece interesante en esa película es que todas las caracteres cambian:

• Manuela cambia de prostituta a enfermera a madre a monja (simbólicamente);
• Rosa cambia de monja a Manuela de la empieza de la película (excepto que muere, tal vez por que no tiene lo que necesita para cumplir el cambio)
• Lola cambia de camionera a transgénero a prostituta;
• La Agrado de algo (no me acuerdo que) a mujer fabricada a prostituta a asistente;
• El padre de Rosa cambia de padre a Blanche Dubois; etc.

Fuera de esto, es interesante la facilidad y gracia con la que la mayoría de los caracteres navegan los cambios. No es que las transiciones no vienen con dolor, pero sin excepción, hacen las transiciones con aceptación de los cambios. Tal vez eso puede ser una debilidad de Almodóvar –– no presenta nadie que resiste haciendo un cambio –– pero a mi, es una característica que me encanta, como la característica que tengan la mayoría de las caracteres también, de entrar fácilmente en nuevas relaciones profundas con gente totalmente extraña. 

Una cosa que quiero explorar es la importancia simbólica del color rojo o a Almodóvar en general o en esa pelicula en particular. Fijé que el usó el color selectivamente en casi cada escena, aun no podí entender lo que era haciendo con el. Me pareció que era simplemente algo estilistico, pero entonces me acordé que dos de los caracteres tenían nombres derivantes de la palabra "rojo" –– Rosa y Humo Rojo. Me interesa de que me peude decir de eso.

Exactly *not* the movie I wanted. Exactly the movie I needed.

I finally saw ‘Silver Linings Playbook’. I know. Back off. I’ve had a rough last couple of months, what with friends passing away and an increasingly vitriolic divorce from a woman whose moral compass points to an entirely different north from my own. 

So you can understand my reluctance to see a movie about a guy whose wife betrays him meeting up with a woman dealing with the death of her husband. 

It was exactly not the movie I wanted to see. But it was exactly the movie I needed. 

Why? Because it's a  good story. And at this moment in my life I've had so much bad that I need all the good I can get.

I have a theory about good stories. That good stories require a protagonist overcoming obstacles in order to achieve something.

That’s nothing new. All of us story geeks will tell you pretty much the same thing. Where I go a little different is that I look for one more wrinkle. I like to see the protagonist’s Want in opposition to his or her Need.

‘Silver Linings Playbook’ is a textbook example. 

The main character wants to save an unsavable marriage (hmmm –– that sounds familiar). What he needs is to accept the truth that his marriage can’t be saved. 

I’m going to tell you how it ends. He gets what he needs. But you know this already, even if you haven’t seen the film, because I said I liked it. For a story to be satisfying, the protagonist must fail to achieve what he or she wants in order to achieve what he or she needs. 

Yeah, there needs to be more. Otherwise, my going to see the movie would make a good movie. The Need has to be life-altering. The protagonist has to be single-mindedly dedicated to achieving his or her goal. The forces conspiring to thwart the protagonist must be formidable. 

This film had all that. Plus extraordinarily good acting, nice writing, and fresh, likable characters. 

In short, it does what any good film does: Provide an escape from our own miserable lives. 

I know, speak for yourself, Brian.

Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Advertising I Learned From A First Century Babylonian Rabbi

Rabbi Hillel making fun of crappy advertising. 

My nephew just called with a “quick question”. His high school Spanish teacher gave his class an assignment to create a TV commercial that communicates the value of speaking a foreign language. He wanted to know how to make a TV commercial. 

Oh, and the assignment is due tomorrow. 

When I was a kid, I remember a hearing a story in Sunday school about one Rabbi Hillel, who was challenged to explain the entire Torah while standing on one foot. The Torah, in case you didn’t happen to have the good fortune to be raised Jewish, is, to quote Wikipedia, "the foundational narrative of the Jewish people: their call into being by their God, their trials and tribulations, and their covenant with their God, which involves following a way of life (halakha) embodied in a set of religious obligations and civil laws." It's five books long, plus, oh, 58 centuries of commentaries and interpretations by a people who, to put it mildly, have a thing for commenting and interpreting.

Okay, so what my nephew was asking me wasn’t quite as daunting. If you count the entire history of TV commercials, you can’t really go back before 1939, when RCA began broadcasting TV signals. 

Still, Dude? Seriously? You want me to tell you how to make a TV commercial while standing on one foot?

In the Torah story, the rabbi thinks for a moment, raises one foot, and says, “Do not do anything to others that you would not want done to yourself. The rest is all commentary.”

So I raised my own foot and told my nephew exactly that. Except that I substituted “inflict anything upon” for "do anything to". 

And then I hung up. I have to come up with a commercial for a client that communicates the value of buying something much less worthwhile than learning a foreign language. And the assignment is due tomorrow. 

'Jack Reacher' breaks the law.

I don't like Tom Cruise. Personally. Which is ridiculous because I've never met him. There's just something about him that doesn't sit right with me.

So whenever I go to see a movie he's in, it's with the expectation that I'll dislike it.

More often than not, I'm disappointed. Meaning I end up enjoying his movies and even liking him in them.

And yet I refuse to budge from my position on him.

I feel like a Republican congressman on an anti-gay crusade who can't help but hook up with strangers in the airport men's room.

Okay, not quite, but you know what I mean.

So I went to see 'Jack Reacher', fully expecting that it would suck. I should have figured that it wouldn't.

Sure, it's a thin premise. The main character has lapses in the very characteristics that are supposed to define him. The story veers from action to farce, sometimes in the same scene. The whole conspiracy (action films are always about conspiracy) is a house of cards built on a huge flaw. And the woman who plays opposite Cruise? Who let her onto the set? Were all the trained actresses in Hollywood out getting their lips Botoxed the day they cast that role?

Still, it's a fun ride. And up until the end, it's a Hollywood movie.

And then it does something remarkable. It breaks one of the biggest unspoken precepts of American filmmaking. Yes, I'm going to give away the ending. (If you don't already know that the bad guy dies in the end of a film like 'Jack Reacher', please stop reading. Not just this post. Stop reading this entire blog. You're singlehandedly bringing down the average IQ of my readership by a substantial number of points.)

What's interesting about 'Jack Reacher' isn't that the bad guy dies in the end. It's how. Tom Cruise kills him. Not in a protracted fight. Not in self-defense. He pulls out his gun and shoots him in the head.

This does not happen in a Hollywood movie.

Think about it. When was the last time you saw the good guy kill the bad guy? I'm not talking about the bad guy's minions. They're not really people, in movie terms, and if you want proof look at the way their characters are usually named in the credits: Henchman 3, Cop With Scar, Tall Guard.

But Hollywood has a rule about good guys killing bad guys and that rule comes down to one word: Don't. More specifically, the bad guy has to set in motion the very thing that causes his own demise. In essence, it's the bad guy's badness that kills him. In the idealized Hollywood scenario, in spite of it all, the good guy (usually) tries to save him.

Two examples:

'Spider-Man' (2002): The Green Gobblin remote controls his own glider, ultimately killing himself.

'The Incredibles' (2004): When Jack-Jack self-immolates, Syndrome drops him and his cape gets caught in the suction of his aircraft.

The reason for this is moral –– and yes, Hollywood films do adhere to a pretty strict moral standard. The good guy wouldn't be good if he were to actively cause the death of the bad guy. There are exceptions, of course. In 'Lethal Weapon', for example, it's self-defense, but even that's not enough. Both Murgaugh and Riggs fire their weapons simultaneously and we don't know who actually kills Joshua.

'Jack Reacher' is notable because the main character is not an anti-hero. He's a good guy. Unconventional, sure. Off the grid, yes. But unimpeachable. A former army cop who served with honor. For him to pull out a gun and shoot an unarmed man sitting in a chair? That's Hollywood heresy.

And that makes me think two things. First, it makes me not like the movie as much. I want my heroes to be heroic. Jack Reacher leaves the film different from the way he entered. He's tainted.

Second, though, it makes me like Tom Cruise better. This was a huge choice. Most of the people involved in the making of 'Jack Reacher' would have had every reason to fight against violating the convention, not least of which Tom Cruise. In fact, few people in Hollywood even have the power to challenge that unwritten law.

Tom Cruise owns that decision, and whether you like the decision or not, it was a brave one.

Maybe I'll go into his next film with a more open mind.

A 46-year-old advertising lesson and the boneheads who refuse to learn it.

In my capacity as a consultant to a certain automotive group, I was recently asked to review Buick's new TV spots. One features Squaquile O'Neal talking about how spacious his Buick LaCrosse is.

Take a look and see if anything strikes you as... uncomfortable.

See that? The part where he's wedged into the driver's seat? 

The seat is all the way to the back and the poor guy still can't get his legs under the steering wheel. That car isn't going anywhere –– not with Shaq in it.

Here's the deal. Saying that Shaq is a big guy is like saying Donald Trump has a healthy ego. He –– O'Neal, not Trump –– stands 7' 1" tall. (For the record, The Donald is 6' 3", which actually qualifies him as a big guy, particularly compared to an average someone like me who stands 5' 9".)

The LaCrosse may actually be roomy. It probably is. But cramming Shaq into the front seat in order to make that point is ridiculous. Even if you could make it look as if Shaq fits into the front seat of a LaCrosse, the best you can hope for is that 7-foot-tall guys will swing by the dealership, only to have them realize the extent to which you were lying. 

Good for Buick? I'm going to say no.

What makes this spot particularly interesting is how nicely it parallels the situation in 1966. Back then, Volkswagen wanted to convince people that the Beetle was roomy. 

To make the point, Volkswagen hired another very large basketball player: Wilt Chamberlain. 

Guess how tall Wilt Chamberlain was. You got it. 7' 1". 

I know, eerie.

What the folks at Volkswagen understood that the folks at Buick don't is that honesty is more compelling than lying. Rather than try to tell people that Wilt actually fit into a Beetle, they did the opposite. They told people that he didn't. 

Here's the ad:

In case you can't make out the body copy, here's how it starts:

We tried. Lord knows we tried. But no amount of pivoting or faking could squeeze the Philadelphia 76ers’ Wilt Chamberlain into the front seat of a Volkswagen.

So if you’re 7’ 1” tall like Wilt, our car is not for you. But maybe you’re a mere 6’ 7”. 

In that case, you’d be small enough to appreciate what a big thing we’ve made of the Volkswagen.

A lot has been made about how Volkswagen's ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, revolutionized advertising in the 1960s by creating powerfully motivating messages with honesty and empathy.

But the sad truth is that for all Doyle Dane Bernbach and its ilk did to show how mass communications could be created with respect for consumers, that revolution has clearly failed. Forty-six years down the road, companies like Buick continue to create unmotivating, unbelievable turds. And today, unlike those Mad Men days when integrity and conviction were the tools deployed to support decisions made based on common sense, ad agencies and clients alike defer to legions of "consumer advocates", analysts, and brand strategists who rely on "powerful tools" like focus groups, quantitative research, and consumer insight studies to develop messages that "resonate".

Call me old fashioned, but I think there's a really simple way to tell whether any of those experts deserves the six-figure salaries they make: See if any of them would spend their own money to buy a LaCrosse.

What I keep saying, only not in my words.

Isn't it funny how the better you develop your skills to master one form, the better you're able to master others? Or to put it another way, when you get to be a black belt in kung fu, you're a pretty even match for someone with a black belt in tae kwan do.

Or to put it yet another way, if Mothra and Spider man got into a fight, who would win?

Okay, enough.

I came across this article by a venture capitalist named Josh Linker, and look at that. Take away the stuff about funding and VCs and it could be a blog about making advertising. By me. 

Which makes sense, really. After all, a pitch is a pitch.

Here's what he wrote. Verbatim. 

Five Disaster Moves To Botch Your Pitch

Not me. Josh.

Most of us have something to pitch. You may be pitching your startup to a VC to secure funding. Or perhaps you’re pitching your product or service to potential customers. Whether you are pitching your case to a jury, your hypothesis for a research grant, yourself for a new job, or your best friend for a date with that cute guy, a simple rule applies: the better the pitch, the better the results.

As a venture capitalist, I hear pitches every day. In this highly competitive environment, a strong pitch can be the difference-maker between securing millions in funding and completely missing the mark.

There are many obvious cliché moves: give a firm handshake, communicate with passion, make strong eye-contact, and try to relate with your audience. Yet there are approaches I see constantly that sabotage an otherwise good pitch. To significantly improve your batting average, avoid these disaster moves when pitching just about anything:

1) THE RUN-ON SENTENCE: One of my pet peeves is listening to someone drone on for a 45-minute monologue. In your big moment, your instinct is to communicate everything you know, the entire history of your idea, and endless amusing anecdotes. Avoid this urge! Your pitch will be 100 times more powerful if you can make it concise. Make every word count.

2) THE FACT LEAP: Anyone who is being pitched has turned on their highly-developed BS-detector to full tilt. We are questioning everything you say and trying to poke holes in your story. So the minute you exaggerate a stat, make an outrageous claim, or state a fact that can be challenged, your credibility crumbles.

3) THE OVERSELL: If you make a strong point once, it resonates. If you feel the need to make the same point several times you end up diluting the power of the message. If you keep pushing a point, you transform before our eyes from a passionate world-changer to a used-car-salesperson or infomercial pitchman. If what you are pitching it that special, you don’t need to oversell it.

4) THE S.A.T.: When responding to a question, just answer it directly. If you tell a four-minute story that includes 73 data points, the listener feels like they are taking an S.A.T. exam in which they need to sift through all the irrelevant stuff in order to get the answer. This does not help you shine or get your message heard.

5) THE GREAT GATSBY: Grandiose braggers may entertain at cocktail parties, but they rarely win the battle of the pitch. Keep it authentic and real. Your startup with 11 beta customers isn’t a billion-dollar company just yet. Think big, but stay humble. After hearing a pitch where the daring hero outperforms Groupon and Apple in their second year with trillions of revenue and six billion customers, I’m ready for a shower instead of a closing dinner.

Hone your pitch to stand out from the hapless masses that continue to fall into the same traps. In turn, you’ll land the job, get the girl, win the capital, and seize your full potential.