Wyzga On Words

Movies Have Messages.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is what my dad would call "a nice bit of a movie."

Give me anything with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith and I am quite happy.

Here's one of my favorite lines from the movie:  "Everything will be alright in the end.  And if it is not alright, it's not the end."

I keep repeating it to myself in trying times.  How do I know it's not just a throw-away movie line, but maybe a message?  Trust.

Trust
    by Thomas R. Smith

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

"Trust" by Thomas R. Smith, from Waking Before Dawn. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2007.

Driving Distracted Video Is Good Reminder: Hands On Wheel & Eyes On Road.

Perhaps like me you were taught to drive with your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.

Today we have our hands on the coffee cup, breakfast bar, newspaper, driving directions, CD changer, mascara brush, Big MAC, toothbrush, cell phone, iPad, iPhone, and the like while our eyes are engaged with what's in our hands and on our laps.

Studies - as well as the increasing wreckage on our roads and in our communities - continue to remind us that driving distracted is the new drunk driving.

Community Medical Centers Central California commissioned my friend and colleague Bonni Montevecchi to shoot a video on distracted driving as part of its National Trauma Awareness Month (May 2012).

Click here to watch this short and well-done piece on what happens in that split second when we take our hands off the wheel and our eyes off the road.  Maybe Montevecchi's work will help save a life.

Q&A Tuesday: Why Invest In Focus Group Research?

Q:   Why should I invest in focus group research?

A:    Reconnaissance.

I am often asked what is the worth of investing in focus group research.  The answers are as many and as varied as the lawsuit you have filed or are considering filing:

1. learn attitudes
2. learn opinions
3. learn biases
4. learn notions
5. get ideas for discovery
6. get ideas for strategy
7. test the legal story
8. test the experts
9. test the experts' opinions
10. test the other side's story(ies)
11. test the visuals, demonstratives
12. test your own platform skills
13. ferret out the landmines
14. learn all the ways you can (or might) lose your case
15. learn whether you should even file a lawsuit
16. value of the case
17. whether alternative dispute resolution is feasible
18. ideas for direct and cross examination
19. witness preparation
20. whether and how to go to battle
21. and so on.

Still, lawyers are not convinced that they should invest a reasonable amount of money to learn what is bad and worse about their cases, their clients, and their own strategy.

So I am forced to go to a movie to plead my case.  The other night I was watching Steven Spielberg's Academy Award nominated production, "War Horse" based on the novel of the same name.

Early on in the movie, British cavalry officers listen to a report from their scouts about the location of enemy German soldiers.  The Brits learn the number of German troops, number of mounts, artillary, best positions of attack, strategy for attack, risks of loss of men, and so on. 

As the Brits prepare to attack the German soldiers, the officer in charge tells the scout, "Time spent on reconnaissance is time well spent."   

And then they went to battle. 

Billy Wilder Knew How To Look Through A Lens To Get The Story.

 

Billy Wilder abandoned the idea of becoming a lawyer for the life of a reporter on a Viennese newspaper. He eventually came to this country in the 1930s and broke into American films creating some of Hollywood's classic and Oscar winning works as a screenwriter, director and producer.

He once gave the order, "Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award."

A few trademarks: His movies frequently started with narration.  His films feature a sharp wit and characters who frequently try to change their identity, as well as dangerous and manipulative women.

Billy Wilder, who said, "An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation." left a legacy for filmmakers and storytellers alike:  You gotta have a plot.  If you don't got a plot how you gonna make the story come to life? 

TIP:    The plot of your story goes like this:  Who * Did What * To Whom * Under What Circumstances (remember what I wrote about context on Q&A Tuesday?) * Toward What Ends * and, With What Means.

TIP:     Lay out the pieces and listen to how it sounds.

TIP:     If the situation doesn't ring true for you, do it over.

What's Really In That Plastic Bottle Of Bottled Water You're Drinking?

There's nothing odd about 3 corporations taking control of our drinking water.  It's just business.

Nestle, Coke and Pepsi have their eye on the future.  The future is water: who has it, who controls it, who needs it.

Mahatma Ghandi said, "There is enough water for human need, but not for human greed."

This is where we have arrived: corporate greed.

Yet, it's not all their fault.  Corporations sell what we buy.  When we stop buying we change things.

Water covers 75% of planet Earth; only 1% of that is drinkable.  In the next 15 years almost two-thirds of the human race will be struggling for clean drinking water.

Water is the new oil.

Now does it make sense?

Nestle, Coke and Pepsi are sucking the earth dry, bottling the water and selling it back to you at 1900 times the original cost to them.

What do you think goes into a bottle of Arrowhead, Ozark, Dasani or Aquafina water?  Pure mountain stream refreshment?

Over 40% of the bottled water on the shelves is merely good old-fashioned municipal tap water.

Recall a few years back when Atlanta was suffering the drought?  Lakes were down to dirt?  But the local Coke plant kept on bottling?

The joke's on us.

Compounding the problem is the petrochemicals that make up the plastic bottles that hold the water.  These cancer-causing petrochemicals leach out into the water you drink, you give your kids to drink.

And it doesn't stop there.  Not everyone gets curbside recycling service.  And even if we did there are not enough recycling plants or uses for the bottles.  So they end up in landfills where the petrochemicals leach into the soils and ground water.

And it doesn't end there.  Our oceans are becoming a toxic plastic stew as more and more bottles are swept into the lakes, rivers, streams and sea.  Marine life eats the broken down plastic pellets.

Here's a few sources you can check out to begin your research and then decide for yourself if it's time to give up the bottle:

Tapped - the movie. This 2009 Indie Winner examines the role of the bottled water industry and its effects on our health, climate change, pollution, and our reliance on oil. The high cost -- to both the environment and our health -- of bottled water is the subject of this documentary that enlists activists, environmentalists, community leaders and others to expose the dark side of the bottled water industry. Americans may rethink their obsession with bottled H20 when they learn of the unregulated industry's willingness to ignore environmental and health concerns, and the problems that arise as a result.  Produced by Atlas Films.  Trailer.

We made it easy for you: click here to watch Tapped, all 75 minutes of it.

Just to balance the argument a bit, here are Top 10 Reasons why bottled water is a blessing.  And from a Quaker.

Grading your bottled water.    

"Emotional Meaning Leads To Listener Action."

My dear friend, colleague, author, writer, mediator, blogger and story-tracker, Stephanie West Allen, emailed me the link to The Inside Story, an article on the power of narrative by Peter Gruber published in Psychology Today.

Gruber's article is a tidy review of what we storytellers live and breathe.  Excerpt.

"Telling stories is not just the oldest form of entertainment, it's the highest form of consciousness. The need for narrative is embedded deep in our brains. Increasingly, success in the information age demands that we harness the hidden power of stories. Here's what you need to know to tell a killer tale."

I was encouraged to revisit many of the themes I have been writing and speaking about since 1994 when a book of stories fell off a shelf into my hand and said, "Come follow us."  Themes like "virtual journey" which Gruber calls "virtual transportation."  Either way you look at it the notion is a well told story invites the listener inside the story to share the experience. Remember to release them at the end.   

Stories are not fluff - they have become the "cornerstones of our conscience" as lawyers have learned. Pull accurately on the collective community conscience and you are likely to get them on your side of an argument.

This is another oft-told notion:

"The first rule of telling stories is to give the audience—whether it's one business person or a theater full of moviegoers—an emotional experience. The heart is always the first target in telling purposeful stories. Stories must give listeners an emotional experience if they are to ignite a call to action."

As I wrote on bookmark give-aways in 2003:

"Storytelling thrives on imagination.  Images touch the heart and become sensations, sensations trigger memories, memories create meaning and meaning leads to listener action."

Any story must be emotionally meaningful for the listener to care about it. That does not mean the story has to be emotional and fraught with drama.  No.  It must evoke a value or values that the listener identifies with as personal to them and their life experience, their view of how the world turns.  This is especially true of decision-makers, those people you want to give you some action in exchange for the story.

Not all of us are called to be storytellers.  There are three distinct and interwoven parts to any story: the story itself, the teller and the listener.  Listening attends to the images and helps translate the metaphors into "this is like that."  Without the listener there is no story.

If it's true that we read to know we are not alone, I believe we listen to stories for the same reason. 

You, Your Secrets & What Companies Learn About Them.

We think we know all about marketing, branding, advertising.

We say: "I buy just what I need or want, not what someone or something tells me to buy."

Would that it were so. As Ralph Nader says, "You get away from marketing when you are asleep."

Start here if you have not already seen POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Morgan Spurlocks' documentary about branding, advertising, and product placement brought to you by the very folks who do the branding, advertising and product placement.

Or here.

Or here.

Then ask yourself what you buy and how come you buy it.

When you are done talking to yourself, visit a fascinating and in-depth article by Charles Duhigg reporting for the NYTimes, "How Companies Learn Your Secrets."  It's so rich for mining I  don't know where to turn first.

Number 1: we are habit-driven creatures.  The habit works like this: cue + response + reward.  For example, it's Saturday night (cue) and on Saturday night I have fish and chips (response) because it's fun and greasy (reward).  And so it goes until something pretty drastic breaks the habit.  Drastic like a move, a divorce, a marriage or the like.

Raise your hands: who here uses the same dish washing detergent their mom used?  See.

Number 2: companies collect information on customers.  No news here.  But apparently Target is ahead of the game turning demographic collection into a data driven, statistics-based enterprise that makes the most of "the intersection of data and human behavior." 

Number 3: all the demographic information companies collect is meaningless (as we have learned in other areas of practice)

..."without someone to analyze and make sense of it. That’s where Andrew Pole and the dozens of other members of Target’s Guest Marketing Analytics department come in."

The article claims that Target has gone so far in its analysis as to know when a couple is pregnant so they can target (ahem!) the new parents and turn them into loyal customers for years. A Dark Art or admirable enterprise?  

Admittedly, the article will take almost as long to read as it takes to watch The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.  Yet, it sure is worth knowing a bit more about what they know about you so you can decide for yourself who or what is the

Iraq Vet With PTSD Finds Solace In A Film Role.

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, has seen its share of wounded military men and women.  Many have war-inflicted wounds you can see.  Many others have something not so easily detected: post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Sgt. Matthew Pennington is one such survivor.  James Dao brings his story to clear relief in his reporting for the NYTimes, "Acting Out War's Inner Wounds."

When I read the article I was reminded of the line by pre-eminent writer Zora Neale Hurston that I have embedded in my email signature line and on which I have written: "There is no greater burden than carrying an untold story."  I believe that what Hurston meant is when we share our stories we find we are very much alike.  I don't know whether the sharing or the reflection of our experience in that of another human being is where the burden lightens; but I can tell you that it does.

“We are lonesome animals.  We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome.  One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the Listener to say - and to feel - ‘Yes! that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.  You are not as alone as you thought.’” [John Steinbeck]

 The story continues:

"For Mr. Pennington, medications seemed to worsen his depression and therapy did not ease his anxiety. He seemed headed for divorce, isolation and perhaps alcoholism. And there his story might have ended, a case study on the intransigence of war’s psychological scars. But it did not end there.

In 2009, an unexpected opportunity landed in his e-mail inbox: a casting call, forwarded by a friend in Nashville, from an undergraduate filmmaker looking for someone to play a combat veteran who had lost a leg, had post-traumatic stress disorder and lived in Maine.

This is my life, Mr. Pennington thought.

So on a lark, Mr. Pennington — whose last appearance on stage was in middle school and who had become nervous in crowds and, indeed, avoided most human contact — decided that fixing his life depended on performing before a camera.

“I thought acting would be so out of the normal that it would force me to deal with things,” he recalled. “I wanted my life back.”

The struggle by wounded veterans like Mr. Pennington to reclaim their lives is the unfolding next chapter in America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2001, 46,000 American service members have been injured in combat, perhaps a third or more seriously. Those veterans now face years of rehabilitation at a cost of billions of dollars annually.

In the coming weeks, The New York Times will profile a few of those veterans. Their cases say much about the critical importance of high-quality health care and loving families. But as with Mr. Pennington, they also underscore the individuality of recovery, where the most effective therapies are often discovered by the veterans themselves."

I am not writing a happy ending.  That's not for me to write.  If one is written it will be Pennington's doing.  What strikes me is that yet again the story of who we are, where we've come from, what we've seen, how we have persevered will help all of us get home.

You might wish to click here to watch the story in video form.

Glamorous Movie Star + Weapons Systems + Cultural Story Themes Of Bias Against The Beautiful.

My father used to wax nostalgic about the glamorous Hollywood actress, Hedy Lamarr.  And no wonder!

Who knew that behind all the glamour was a brain?  And imagination? 

When Lamarr put those skills to work she invented and patented weapons systems that were a precursor to today's "smart bombs" as well as technology for cell phones, the Bluetooth and GPS. 

Could she sell it?  Not a chance.  The problem was that the men in charge could not be persuaded beyond her beauty.  And Lamarr assumed that the men in charge would overlook her looks and bank on her brains. 

Bias against the beautiful.  Then as now you have to prove yourself twice as much.

Lamarr got nowhere until at the age of 82 when she was awarded the Pioneer Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Click here to read John Adams' review of Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World in his NYTimes Book Review article, "Brainy Beauty."

Here's the best part that resonates with this storyteller:

"Behind the uniqueness of this story lie deeper themes that Rhodes touches upon: the gender biases against beautiful and intelligent women, the delicate interpersonal politics of scientific collaboration and, perhaps most important of all, the never-ending, implacable conflict between art and Mammon in American culture."

Bias against the beautiful.  Then as now you have to prove yourself twice as much.

Q&A Tuesday: What Does Legal Writing Have In Common With Walt Disney?

Q:    What does legal writing have in common with Walt Disney?

A:    Before you put pen to notepad or fingers to keyboard you must identify the story you want to tell.  Only after identifying the story will you be able to shape and deliver it.

Walt Disney was a master of the storyboard to identify the story.  This simple idea made him the single most influential fellow in animation.

Click here to view the short process.

TIP:    Before you write know the bones of the story you need to tell on behalf of your client, issue or project. 

TIP:    The bones of a story are the skeleton or major elements.   

TIP:    Some folks find it useful to sketch out their story in icons or stick figures. Others use key words.  And still others rely on shorthand phrases or a mnemonic.

TIP:    Imagine that your story will be a Tweet; you have 160 characters to work with.  What is the story? 

TIP:    Reduce that Tweet to a text.  What is the condensed version of your story? 

TIP:    Now that you have created the bones of your story you can flesh out the rest by writing your brief, argument, opening, and so on.