Recently I was reading an interview with an old school crotchety screenwriter (is there any other kind?) from the book Backstory 2 by the name of:
Phillip Yordan.
Very interesting guy.
Street-wise, and battle-hardened.
And one theme that goes through not just his career dealing with high level Hollywood producers and studio owners, but a lot of those old school writers is, just how little the “script” mattered to their bosses at the end of the day.
Yes, they needed a script.
But for some it was like an afterthought.
As an example from the book:
“I worked for Walter Wanger once. . . he was a Dartmouth graduate and they wanted to bring somebody out here with some class. So they brought Walter. Walter says to me, ‘I don’t want to read this script. Scripts are shit. They’re nothing. It’s the subject matter, the story, the title, the cast, the costumes, and the set, that’s the picture.’ Like Cleopatra [1963]—names, costumes, set. Wanger wasn’t interested in the rest of it. Didn’t believe in scripts.”
Movie was ultimately considered a disaster.
Most people remember the drama behind the scenes more than the movie.
And it was all based on everything but a good script. These producers thought far more of the actors than the stories. More of the sets than the script. And more of the costumes than coherence or continuity. And while sometimes that worked (on accident), mostly it resulted in dumpster fires.
We got a bit of that in the marketing world too.
Example:
I have lost count of how many of my customers, Email Players subscribers, friends, and colleagues up in this industry have worked for clients — big and small — far more interested in the “name” than the talent or skill those names possess.
People chase names & status.
They want this guy’s style of email.
Or that guy’s style of doing sales copy.
Or some other guy’s style of doing launches, funnels, whatever it is.
The copywriting craftsmanship itself is almost an afterthought.
Real life instance:
I once coached someone on their copy.
And I will never forget one of the client saying:
“I want my sales letter to read like Ben’s Email Players sales letter.”
Zero awareness or caring about context whatsoever.
That sales page is not written to a mass market.
It’s certainly not written to people who do not know who I am.
It’s written “to” people who have been pre-exposed — via days, weeks, months, even years or possibly over a decade — of emails from me prepping them for the page. Someone lands cold on Email Players would be dumb to buy from it. It’s not meant for them. It’s not talking “to” them. I don’t even want such a customer as they aren’t sufficiently prepped unless they’ve been on my list first. And so to have a sales page written in that structure and flow of information in that particular case would make no sense for 99% of people who think it worthy of being modeled.
This is just how people are.
They are followers seeking & adhering to dogma.
Good dogma, bad dogma, relevant dogma, irrelevant dogma… doesn’t matter.
But I like Dan Kennedy’s long-time attutitude about marketing dogma:
“All dogma is bad”
Yes, including my “dogma” if I have any – perceived or otherwise.
But I do not teach dogma.
I never say there’s an “only way” to do anything.
There’s only the way that works.
This includes anything I teach, sell, advocate.
More here:
Ben Settle
