317. Plot Twist: The Second Story Hiding Inside Every Great Pitch

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: When communicating, there are often two stories being told at the same time. My name's Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today I'm excited to speak with Rhett Reese. Rhett is an acclaimed American screenwriter and producer best known for co-writing massive blockbuster hits like Deadpool, Zombieland, and GI Joe: Retaliation. Alongside his longtime collaborative partner, Paul Wernick, together their films have grossed over $3 billion. Rhett has also been very vocal on the impact of AI on films and television. Well, welcome, Rhett. Not only am I a huge fan of yours, we go way back. 

[00:00:48] Rhett Reese: We do, and I'm so happy you had me so we could catch up because we do, we go back all the way to the psychology department as undergrads many years ago.

[00:00:57] Matt Abrahams: At, at Stanford, we had a professor, Phil Zimbardo, who was a guest on the show, and he would have people take tests in pairs. And we were actually, we took tests together, and I'm sure you carried me. 

[00:01:06] Rhett Reese: We each reached out to each other as a lifeline, I think. And we got an A, I remember. We, we did very well on that test. 

[00:01:12] Matt Abrahams: It was a great class. Well, I really appreciate you being here. Thank you. 

[00:01:15] Rhett Reese: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:16] Matt Abrahams: Yeah. Shall we get started? 

[00:01:17] Rhett Reese: Yes, let's do it. 

[00:01:18] Matt Abrahams: So you've had an amazingly well accomplished career. Congratulations. And you are known for very witty and punchy lines. I'm curious, how do you toggle being really concise and clear in getting ideas across, but at the same time being playful and allowing for that spontaneity that you're known for? 

[00:01:38] Rhett Reese: Well, I mean, I do think that comedy, much like other forms of communication, is best delivered in short bursts. I do. And I am pretty ruthless when it comes to reducing a line to its absolute essential, you know, number of words and its comedic elements. And when we write comedy, we tend to try to find a rhythm that ends with the funniest word of the sentence. So for instance, we try not to write past our punchline or to write past the funniest word because when you're hearing a joke, you are hearing a setup, a setup, a setup, and then the word that contains the surprise or the twist or the humorous thing that makes you laugh.

[00:02:21] And the rhythm is very much like ba ba ba ba ba ba boom, like that. You know, it comes at the end of the sentence. And if you write past that, if you write a line that has the funniest word not at the very end but near the end and you write extra words, I think what happens to the brain is that the brain hears the funny word, it wants to laugh, but then it hears subsequent words, it needs to assimilate those words and understand what's being communicated there, and I think it somewhat muffles and, or mutes the comedy. So we really try, whenever we write a line that's intended to be funny, to pare it down to its bare minimum, A, and then B, have it finish with the funniest word. And that has held us in pretty good stead, that strategy. 

[00:03:03] Matt Abrahams: And those very same rules apply to writing presentations, pitches.

[00:03:08] Rhett Reese: Absolutely. 

[00:03:09] Matt Abrahams: This is like a reunion show. Hilary Price, who was a Stanford undergrad with us as well, writes the, uh, single panel comic strip Rhymes with Orange. She talks very similarly to you about whittling it down to what's the essence of the most important part, the humor. Because if you think about a one panel, you gotta do that right away.

[00:03:28] Rhett Reese: You, you don't have a lot of time, yeah.

[00:03:29] Matt Abrahams: But it's the same idea that you have to be thinking about the exact word, the placement of the word. So you're echoing that advice that as we think through our communication, many of us just wanna get that information out there, but you can be very strategic about that. And I appreciate that. Let's talk about pitching, because you've had to pitch a lot of movies. Do you, beyond sort of seeing it as a story, which I think is really important in taking people on that journey, what other advice and guidance do you have and have you learned in the pitching that you do?

[00:03:57] Rhett Reese: Well, one of the things I would say is that we're all salespeople at the end of the day. Everybody who works in freelance work certainly is. And so we're selling. When we go into that room, we're selling, and we're selling with two stories, really. The first story is the actual story we're telling, right? And we treat it very much like a campfire story, like we're sitting at a campfire. When I say we, I've got a writing partner. We are sitting around a campfire, and there's someone opposite us, and it's at camp late at night, and we are telling them a story.

[00:04:28] And we really treat it as such, where we take the listener's needs into account. We try to keep it short and fun and funny and exciting, and it builds, and it has a climax, just like the actual screenplay. So that's one story we're telling. And then I think the second story we're telling, which is a subtle one, is one in which the executive to whom we're pitching is the protagonist, and we are basically pitching them a story of their success should they buy this project, if that makes sense.

[00:05:01] Matt Abrahams: No, absolutely. 

[00:05:02] Rhett Reese: So everybody has got their own problems and their own challenges, and an executive's problem and challenge is, I've only got so much money, and I've gotta spend it in ways that are beneficial to my company. I've gotta buy the right ideas, and I've gotta make hits. And in order to do that, I have to place faith in the right people. And so I think part of what we do is sort of pitching them a vision that, "Hey, we know what we're doing. You're in really good hands. You have a problem. You need good movies," right? Like, "We are the solution to that problem. If you decide to hire us, if you decide to buy this pitch, it is going to lead to you and your life having greater success.

[00:05:42] It is going to pay off down the road. You are gonna see a vision where you, the protagonist of your story, succeed and win out," so to speak. And I think that, that is the second story that's very subtly being worked in, not in a manipulative way, but in a way that just says, "Look, I'm here because I have an idea for a movie. I'm here because I really believe in that idea. I'm here because, you know, I kinda know what I'm doing, and my goal is to convince you that you can bet on me and it will succeed for you. So those are the two stories that we're telling ultimately. 

[00:06:17] Matt Abrahams: I really like this idea that whenever you're pitching, there are actually really two stories. The story of the thing you're pitching, but then the story that you're creating for the person who needs to buy into that. Maybe in your case, it's an executive producer- of a film.

[00:06:30] Rhett Reese: But this, you could apply this to,

[00:06:31] Matt Abrahams: A VC, it could be a boss asking for a raise.

[00:06:34] Rhett Reese: You name it. You know, it's like if you're a plumber, you could apply that lesson as you're talking to the client trying to convince them why to hire you.

[00:06:40] Matt Abrahams: I also wanna distinguish, because we talk a lot on this show about how we can use frameworks and structure, and the structure of the story you're telling for the movies you're pitching or for the businesses the, the entrepreneurs are pitching can have a different structure than that second story. The second story has the structure of you have a problem, I have a solution, and you're gonna benefit in some way in your personal career. And the other thing I heard you say that I think is so important when pitching is helping the person understand that you're the safe bet. Your credibility, in your case, the experiences that you've had, that makes the person feel more comfortable taking the risk on you. So this notion of two stories. 

[00:07:16] Rhett Reese: You wanna lower the risk in their mind and amplify the reward in their mind. And really, ultimately, once the pitch starts, you are, they're your audience, right? And it just is no different from someone who sits down in a darkened theater or does sit across the fire at camp and you walk them through it as if they're seeing it. You're trying to make them visualize it. 

[00:07:38] Matt Abrahams: That's right. And that again is such expert advice for anybody pitching anything, trying to persuade, is show, don't tell. Give people an experience of it. Don't just tell them and that connects with them on a much different level. You mentioned as part of your answer there that you have a writing partner. You've done a lot of work with Paul Wernick. I've always been fascinated by collaboration, but especially collaboration in a creative space, right? You have deadlines you have to hit. You have a big budget based on what you're doing. There's a lot of pressure in that, but at the same time, you wanna remain free and creative to do the work. Any guidance or insight you have from working so closely with somebody for so many years, how do you stay creative but also deliver on time and on budget? 

[00:08:20] Rhett Reese: We're like an old married couple. And we have very famously never fought, maybe unlike most married couples Things have gotten slightly testy maybe here and there, but largely our rule that we apply to keep things moving and to resolve conflicts or disputes and make decisions when we have two brains instead of one, is that whoever cares the most wins. That's the rule. We oftentimes see eye to eye, right? And we oftentimes someone says an idea and the other person says, "I love it. Great, let's do it." Other times we hit a sticking point, we don't necessarily see eye to eye or something, we just have a little bit different vision of what it is.

[00:08:57] The conversation will start to ramp up as we each pitch our version to the other, trying to convince the other. And if we don't get to a place where one of us convinces the other, like thoroughly convinces the other, it tends to come down to, "Look, I sense that you're more passionate about this and you care more about this than I do," so tie goes to that person, right? Like, so let's do it that way. You clearly start to care more. And it's a nice way of diffusing any potential conflict because one person realizes, "You know, this is starting to get, under his skin. It's clear he really, really likes this, and now I know it's time to back off and let him have that one.

[00:09:34] And then maybe the next time it'll be me who is, who's more convinced that I'm right and wants to get the idea across." So I think that policy is a pretty darn good one. We also have a strategy of not really criticizing or critiquing each other in front of each other. So what we do is we split up our scenes, we send them to each other, and we don't write together in the same room, nothing like that. We're completely in two different households. We write them separately. We email them to each other, and then we rewrite each other's work from the privacy and safety of our own computer, where we can just simply change everything we don't like.

[00:10:12] And then we bold the changes, and then we send the scenes back and forth, and we start to un-bold as we're both happy with something. But it's a very, very nice way to take a little bit of the emotion out of it and a little bit of the whatever could become testy or territorial and you just get the document back and some things have been changed, and some things haven't been changed, and now it's up to you to pivot off that and continue to move it forward.

[00:10:35] Matt Abrahams: So what's very impressive is that you've come up with a system that works for you. Did you guys consciously sit down and think about it, or did it evolve over time? 

[00:10:43] Rhett Reese: We did. We did. We kinda made those rules. I think the best thing about having a partner creatively is you have a first line of defense against doing something bad. I think the toughest thing as a creative person is that you don't often know if your material is good or bad. It's very hard to judge. You're very subjective. We have that first audience, right? That first person who can say, "That joke isn't funny," or, "That scene doesn't make sense," or whatever. So we've got a first line of defense against writing something poor, and that is incredibly, incredibly helpful. But we did need to sort of set these rules to make it safe to fail and to have it such that you felt okay when that document came back and was changed.

[00:11:23] There was something sort of private about it. Again, that you're seeing his reactions privately in a room, safe. our other rule was, if he makes a change, like, you don't have to necessarily go with the change. You can then change it a third time. But you're not really supposed to go back to what you had before, unless you've got a pretty compelling reason to go back. And the other person, if they made a change, they made it for a reason, and it probably wasn't good enough. And the minute you can set aside your ego and realize, "Okay, if he changed that line, it probably wasn't right. And I don't like his line, so I'll move off to a third line, but I'm not gonna go back to the first line." At least not in most cases. 

[00:11:56] Matt Abrahams: So the lesson I think from all of us is to be strategic about how you collaborate and to have that meta conversation about here's how we're gonna do it. And you found ways that worked. I really like this idea of the person who cares the most wins. It is so typical in a conversation that's leading to conflict to assume that the other person cares as much as you do. And so much so that my wife and I, we learned this tool, a technique from some friends. If we have something that might lead to conflict, we, on a scale of one to ten, declare our priority. So let's imagine she and I wanna go out to dinner and she wants Mexican food, I want Italian food. She might say it's an eight and I'm saying it's a four, then we don't have the conflict 

[00:12:33] Rhett Reese: There you go. That's a great example.

[00:12:35] Matt Abrahams: And I love the, I love this idea of how the other person cares, and then I like this idea of not having the confrontation immediately, giving yourself time to think about it, but knowing that if there is still ambiguity or debate, that you will come together and actually discuss it.

[00:12:48] Rhett Reese: There's a path. There's a path. 

[00:12:49] Matt Abrahams: Really interesting. I'd love to move into the world of AI. And I'm actually going to read some notes, because you have some quotes that you made that actually took a life of their own. So you have some opinions on AI and the impact on the type of work that you do. As a result of a viral video that went out that shows a fight scene between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt that never happened, it was all AI generated. You said, "It sent chills down my spine. For people who have devoted their careers and lives to the film industry, this is truly frightening. I can already see jobs disappearing." But in a separate situation or time, you said, "Hollywood has long been a gatekeeper that keeps young, poor people away from creative levers. When a young person with no capital sets out to impress Hollywood, they can use tools like these, and young Chris Nolans will be among them, and amazing stuff will result." Those two quotes seem almost, 

[00:13:45] Rhett Reese: They are. 

[00:13:45] Matt Abrahams: Schizophrenic in their different sides. So I'm curious, where are your thoughts? And it's okay to say it's ambiguous 'cause I feel the same way.

[00:13:50] Rhett Reese: Yeah, I mean, look, I think it is ambiguous. I think we're all in a place where we're being confronted with this new wave of technology, and we have to decide how we feel about it. And I think it's okay for there to be two answers to the same question. I would say, if I had to put a number on it, I'm about 85% terrified and about 15% really excited, right? Like, so the 85% isI'm set aside the existential issues of, is AI gonna blow us all up, or is it gonna fall into the wrong hands, and is someone going to nefariously use it to blow us all up? You know, set aside those questions and look at questions of joblessness and particular professions. There may only be a few now, but I think that's gonna be a growing number of professions where a computer ultimately can do a better job than a person.

[00:14:37] That is where my fear lies for Hollywood. AI is a big elephant, and I'm only touching one part of the elephant, so to speak, metaphorically, so I'm only seeing it through my own specific lens and my own specific career. But I can see when I watch that Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise video, that there are going to be the means in the hands of creators that provide crazy shortcuts to producing Hollywood quality material, to the point where, you know, a lot of people will likely lose their job over time as it becomes clear to the money spenders that there are cheaper ways to make a movie than to go out into the field with an army of people in some far-flung place and shoot for months.

[00:15:24] When those bells ring and those people decide, "Oh, there's a cheaper way to do this," they're going to take those cheaper ways. On the other side of the equation, I do think it is likely that within the next three years probably, someone is going to be able to sit at a keyboard and use various tools, probably provided by different companies, depending on the task that they're approaching at the time, to create a Hollywood quality movie, by themselves without ever going onto a set and without ever hiring an actor or maybe even a writer and create something that is digestible and entertaining and awesome. Now, will there be a lot of slop that results from processes like that? Absolutely.

[00:16:04] There's gonna be a lot of slop. But among those people are going to be people who Hollywood kept at arm's length for whatever reason, and they've decided, "You know what? I'm gonna go around Hollywood. I'm gonna do this on my own. I'm gonna create something amazing. I'm gonna show them what I'm capable of." And among those people are going to be the Chris Nolans and the Charlie Chaplins and the true auteurs, right? And when that happens, it is going to be a revolution. And I love the idea of somebody being able to scale the Hollywood walls, via another means and go directly to the people, you know, so to speak, and fight the man. I love that idea. I think it's really cool. That's the 15% of me. And the 85% of me is super nervous. 

[00:16:44] Matt Abrahams: Yeah, I hear the ambiguity in your voice, and I think it's not unreasonable to be very concerned for all the reasons that you've talked about. But there is this notion that people who have not had access, getting access, I think, is really interesting. So before we end, I ask three questions of everybody, one I make up just for you, and two I've been asking people for a long time. Are you up for that? 

[00:17:04] Rhett Reese: Yes, let's do it.

[00:17:05] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. You have been very successful, especially in a certain genre of film. How do you feel about being, I don't wanna say pigeonholed, but people come to you expecting a certain thing because you're very good at it. I can imagine somebody as talented as you might have other ideas for other things. And a lot of us in our roles and our jobs,you know, people see us as you're really good at that, and they keep coming to you back for that. Yes. And it in some ways can be constraining. How do you deal with that, the constraints from your success?

[00:17:33] Rhett Reese: Yes, a very interesting question. Hollywood's quick to pigeonhole, right? They're quick to typecast. Paul and I have done what we can to, as we take on subsequent jobs, to try to move half steps away from what we did before. Nothing too great of a leap, but like for instance, we wrote Zombieland first was our sort of our first feature, screenplay that we did together, and it was a horror comedy. And after that we got a lot of submissions for vampires, werewolves, that kind of thing. And we decided to take a half step away and do an action comedy, but not a horror action comedy, right? Like, so we did that. And then after that we did a straight action movie that was not comedy but had action in it. And then we did a romantic comedy. You know what I mean? So we were taking half steps away.

[00:18:23] Over time, what that allowed us to do was to create a resume that we could point to and say, "Look, we can do drama, we can do comedy, we can do science fiction, we can do superheroes, we can do horror." So we were careful about that, to try to slowly broaden the resume because you're right, people will immediately see you do something well and then want to keep you doing that thing forever. And so that was very, very intentional on our part. On the other hand, there are worse things than having a brand, right? Like, you know, having a brand that's saleable, that people can trust and that they feel like, "Hey, if we need this, then we need to hire them because this is what they do." And we have had success, and we have made a point of creating a brand . 

[00:19:06] Matt Abrahams: I think you clearly articulated that having a brand is important, but I like this idea of half step, of where's the boundary and can we push it just a little bit, and then that gives you a wider circumference, when you can say, "Here's, we can do these things." That's really important. Question number two, who's a communicator you admire and why? 

[00:19:26] Rhett Reese: My favorite communicator is Sam Harris. He went to Stanford. He is a sort of a philosopher, thinker, a writer on things like religion and politics and any number of topics. But what I love about him is that he has this almost supernatural ability to speak extemporaneously in complete, not only sentences, but paragraphs. And he doesn't use a lot of the annoying little utterances that we all have, like you know, and I mean, and like, and sort of, and kind of. And when you start to hear those things, you ignore them. Your brain ignores them. But on some level it's taking them in and it's making a speaker who's trying to be clear and trying to emphasize a point or make a point a little less adept at it because it just kind of drags the text down a little bit. But Sam speaks so eloquently with such great word choice. 

[00:20:22] Matt Abrahams: He is very articulate, and I really appreciate that part of what you like about him is not only that he's a good extemporaneous speaker, but that he's very good at being broad but also specific, and word choice is really important. 

[00:20:38] Rhett Reese: Very much so.

[00:20:38] Matt Abrahams: Final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? 

[00:20:44] Rhett Reese: I think the first is honesty. I mean, there's a, I forget the Dr. Seuss book, I Say What I Mean and I Mean What I Say. It might have been Horton Hears a Who or something like that. But I really do think that honesty is the most important bedrock of any bit of communication. When you lose faith in a speaker's honesty, right, you can take almost nothing from what they say. You know, most people don't lie all the time, but if you lie some of the time, or if you're selling something or putting a spin on something, and it's not true, either your audience is gonna take that communication and go into the world with it thinking that it was true and end up falling on their face, which is terrible, or they're going to hear a lie somewhere in there, and it's gonna destroy the credibility of what you're saying.

[00:21:25] In a world of fake news and AI slop and all this stuff where people are spinning things and trying to be partisan and trying to sneak, you know, untruths into to communication, I think almost the most important communication skill is just honesty, is just to really believe, like, if I'm selling something, I wanna really believe in that product, right? I wanna believe that when I say, "Hey, this is a good story. You're gonna like this, and you should buy this," that I mean it. I'm not faking it, right? I'm not being dishonest. 

[00:21:54] Matt Abrahams: So honesty. 

[00:21:55] Rhett Reese: Honesty. The second one I would choose would be just considering your audience, right? Like, every piece of communication, in theory, is delivered to somebody specific. Maybe you're talking to a crowd of millions like the president might or something like that, but most often in our lives, we're talking to a specific person, and I think so much of what we communicate to them needs to be tailored to them, right? Like, if I'm talking to my four-year-old, it's a very different me. I'm trying to make something that will appeal to him and he'll understand and he'll latch into.

[00:22:26] And if I'm talking to my dad, that's a whole different conversation. And I probably say If I had to pick a third, it would be a little bit of the brevity and the clarity and just trying to keep things as sparse and as simple as possible. We all have only so much time in this world and it is a drag to be around that person who talks in circles and repeats themselves and is redundant and goes on tangents. And it's nice to have to talk to someone who gets to the point and communicates what it is they're trying to communicate.

[00:22:55] Matt Abrahams: Honesty, understanding your audience, being concise and clear, very important. And you role model that in the work that you do, and it's been wonderful, Rhett. And your insights are really fascinating. And as somebody who has enjoyed and admired your work from afar, laughing and eating lots of popcorn it has been a lot of fun. Thank you. 

[00:23:14] Rhett Reese: Thank you so much. 

[00:23:15] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about communication in films, please listen to episode 167 with Jeff Small. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to our friends at Spotify Los Angeles and Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram, and check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider joining our Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning Community at fastersmarter.io/learning. You'll find video lessons, learning quests, discussion boards, an AI tool, and book club opportunities. Again, that's fastersmarter.io/learning.