by notesfromachair

The Art of Seduction

Pres. Obama took many of the members opposing him in the Republican Congress to dinner, lunch and then lunch again in the last 10 days. Meaning, he asked them out on a proper date, arranged a place to dine and – in a stroke of grand presidential largesse – picked up the tab. (Note: Presumably the President paid, not you or I in the form of an expense account write off. Though like all dates, we will probably pay in other ways).

No biggie, you might say. Long gone are the days when someone in any kind of position of power, meaning a person with their own expense account, could possibly be swayed by a dinner date with someone they don’t particularly like or agree with and, on the surface, are certainly not attracted to.

Uh, well – if you are indeed the you who is saying that, here’s the answer you sooo don’t want to hear — YOU ARE WRONG.

Most of the many members of Congress who went on these dates not only reported that they had a good time, but came away now impressed by a president who in the last five years they had grown to discount, dislike or disown. Some even went so far as to brag at how these meals represented a new beginning with a man they have finally gotten to know and enjoy – a man they only wished had come forward (or come on) to them sooner than the four plus years it took HIM to finally ask them out.

Well, upon hearing all this, all I could think of was – uh, welcome to our world, guys. We ALL want to date the most popular and desirable guy or gal on campus ESPECIALLY when we claim we have no interest or attraction. And now that you’ve had that first date — take it from someone who has been in your exact same position — you will not be able to rest until you AND HE do it again in an even more spectacular way. Well, that is if you can get him to approach you again – what do you think will do it a second time now that you’ve had a meal, or what will he have to do to get you to not only do it again but to take it to yet another level?

Flowers, candy, jewelry, a flat screen? Precisely what can he do for you (or to you) to, as they say, keep sealing the deal for a second, third, fourth (or life?) time?

Unless this is your Big Man on Campus…

Let’s face it – life is just one big date and at some point we are all reduced to being the guy or gal on the sidelines waiting for our dream prom king or queen to come down off their thrones and agree to go out on the town and then eventually back home with us forever. Okay – perhaps this isn’t entirely true since not everyone is attracted to power and popularity. But what is true is everyone is attracted to something. And with the right kind of seduction, any one of us can be had. Or to reverse the thought – HAVE.

Discussing seduction is sort of like talking too much about what makes something funny. Once you begin to analyze it, it ceases to be the very thing that intrigues you. It’s also akin to a fan of magic twisting the arm of the magician to reveal a trick that, once unmasked, you learn wasn’t very magical, or particularly difficult to begin with.

But seduction is about A LOT more than the lure of illicit sex cloaked in an undercurrent of danger and..well…sex, sexiness or…well…just plain sex.

Writing is a seduction. You use all the tools at your disposal to entice people into your story. In live encounters we tend to think of these tools solely in terms of looks, power or wealth (well, mostly looks). But in truth it’s much more diverse. We all use many things in our bag of tricks in order to “seduce” our prey. In real life, it’s humor, looks, strength, violence, intelligence, kindness, even feigned indifference (ever hear of playing “hard to get?”).

Getting your audience to crack up? (Too easy, couldn’t resist)

You can do all of this and more using the written word too. You can also provide structure on the page for your story in the same way you can provide it for a potential lover by building a routine or place for them to come to with a solid foundation – employing traits such as reliability and escape all in the form of a trip to a far away place you would never go to or even think to go to by yourself. Even if you did think of it (the trip), part of the allure could be the irresistible strange force you (or they) will meet that would change your life – something you could use in your work or, perhaps, you could find in either a lover or a good book, film or play written by someone else.

Students get REALLY uncomfortable when I discuss this kind of stuff. I mean, no younger person wants a middle-aged person to talk to them about anything vaguely having to do with what they see as, um, seduction (really, sex). Yet once I discuss this in the context of writing or any of the other arts…..I see their eyes begin to light up as they contemplate their particular plan of attack with their desired prey (the audience). What will they use and in how many parts each? Jokes, smarts, sex (again?!), action, athleticism, violence (only on the page of course), kindness or even anger and rage?

Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas and star Kristin Bell this week set a record with a Kickstarter campaign to raise $2 million to make a feature film of their now defunct TV series (they raised the money in 2 days instead of the allotted 30 days because they had already seduced audiences (and the network?) with what they did previously on the small screen). In fact, so enduring was the seduction, the audience still desired them 6 years after being cancelled and now desperately WANTED a film – and this time the seduction wouldn’t be as difficult as raising their Nielsen ratings a point or two – willing to donate up to $10,000 a piece for small rewards in record time, with others left bitterly disappointed that they too couldn’t open their wallets and be a part of things.

Get ready for your closeup, kid.

I’ve probably given to 20 kickstarters over the last few years and I’m hardly rich. But even as a generous donor for any number of creative project fundraisers, I’ve never come close to being a part of something like this. I mean, we’d all do best to forget trying to stop global warming and imagine something the world really wants – like a return of their favorite long-cancelled TV show.

Fox News will no doubt attack this as socialism or laud it as being free market enterprise – I’m never sure which these days. But if they’re smart, any movement or government or network worth its weight in quid pro quo lobbyists will try to seduce its audience on issues far more unsavory, just as every production company will figure out a way to seduce you by “any means necessary” in order to see John Carter, Hangover 3 or Die Hard 28. So doesn’t it makes sense to try it on something that on paper is not as big but can produce quite profitable if not potentially large results in direct relation to its seduction quotient (in the company’s case, cost of seduction = dollar cost)? And do it from the ground up instead of waiting until you’ve already spent $250 million (125 times that of the VM movie) on your production budget?

But the harsh fact of reality is the studios are going the way of the music industry – not waking up to the needs of their loyal and long term audiences and, for the most part, staying with formulaic programming. That is, until the formula changes (which it has already, except they don’t know it).

The free market has already recognized this and has prompted creative individuals to find original ways to seduce their new backers using the personal touch of a series of cameos (what they see as a group) in a film, individual screen credits, personal thank yous, set visits and limitless signed souvenirs. It’s a new, more direct method of post millennium involvement in the process of creation – in the ability to reach millions with the mere post of an offer on our public bulletin board of the web. Imagine notesfromachair as an international uber blog that somehow turned into the world’s most popular weekly must read and you can see the parallels for a journalistic start up (Note: I’ll leave it up to you to determine if that is the beginning of a seduction).

And when in doubt, just post a shirtless pic of Ryan Gosling.

See, the market has changed and young people don’t view illegally downloading films on bit torrents as stealing. They’re used to getting everything for free on the web – and they do it. In droves. Despite my explaining copyrights, gross and net points (ethics?). Why not a chance to become a virtual movie producer or be a part of the creative process in the same way they (or many of us) participate in their favorite video game?

As the creator of a property it can also be quite financially beneficial to involve (seduce?) your audience from the get go. Because, well, if you self-finance you don’t have to worry as much about terms like gross and net because you share gross from dollar one. Or if you don’t, you receive an upfront distribution fee payment (from a supplier desperate for content) or must decide to shell out an upfront payment for the favor of distribution from a studio like Warner Bros – which the VM producers did for their new film – either way you are still coming out ahead. People will have a guaranteed means of seeing your movie but you don’t have to pay for the 20% studio overhead. Or for your financier’s (nee studios’) other movies. On the latter, when I worked at several film studios in the 80s it was commonplace to charge things to not necessarily the movie you worked on but to other films where it wouldn’t be noticed. Each film had a number attached to it and though I didn’t have a particularly large expense account many, many others did and they charged many, many things to many, many movies that did not benefit from those expenses. Not charges in the league of houses and cars but a lot of smaller things that in the end did add up. And I have no reason to believe it is any different now.

Insert obvious “wink wink” here.

Government leaders have been doing all kinds of seduction for years, including both fear and promises for a better future. Some would argue, as Rachel Maddow does in her terrific MSNBC documentary Hubris, that the United States was seduced by fear of a possible nuclear attack into the second Iraq war by the Bush-Cheney regime – a war that didn’t have to happen but was carefully planned out for much more financial than national security reasons. You can also seduce people to support you into a particular course through aspirational “gifts” or programs for the poor while you’re stealing the country blind. That, of course, was also the subject of Evita, the megahit musical about the wife of Argentinean dictator Juan Peron. Not that I’m making any comparisons here.

In the pop culture zeitgeist, the nation gets seduced by the idea of being a billionaire like Donald Trump until Trump goes too far with his political views and suggests Pres. Obama was not born in the United States. The seduction stopped there because Trump’s modus operandi of seduction – i.e. apprenticeship riches guaranteeing a path to becoming even richer – was taken away and he had only his personality, belief system and expertise in political persuasion to rely on.

Seduction strategies were far more effectively used by companies pushing advertisements for cigarettes in the Mad Men era via the Marlboro Man or razor blades using naked models who urged young men shaving to “take it off, take it all off.” Of course, these days we do have the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue – which in some way will seduce males and perhaps a few gay women into buying a magazine in which the revealing suits are somehow connected to the idea of being an athlete. Or is it perhaps a reward for being the elite of your class?

If not that, then there’s the shirtless Diet Coke guy who needs to do nothing more than sip the soda half-naked in order to tempt a whole group of ladies into crossing over the line to purchase the bubbly treat which somehow promises them a more primal treat of their own. Seduction or just plain eye candy or both? You be the judge. Unless you’d rather look at Uber Swede Johan – the guy with the blonde Brad Pitt-like hair in the commercial for Gevalia Coffee – who explains to a group of ladies just how much he – meaning his coffee blend – will take care of them and care for them if they just drink it (him?) up. This is a caring unlike, say, the makers of Starbucks or Sanka – though he never mentions any of his competitors by name. Of course, he doesn’t have to with a stare like that and the locks to back it up. Plus, it’s wise for him not to because, lets face it, you don’t want either the spell or his aroma to be broken.

Television hyphenate Lena Dunham seduces audiences with an odd combination of wit and uneasiness; bad and often unattractive choices; and truth and humor in similar ways to that of her comic male counterpart, Louis CK. Neither one’s public persona is traditionally attractive and, in the view of some (not me, however), neither is attractive at all. Yet, in fact, they’ve both become sort of geekishly seductive because of what they do offer (decide what that is or isn’t on your own) rather than an absence of what they can’t offer. Which should be a lesson to all of us.

That come hither stare

All of this is not say to that the gals and I can’t be had by a Bradley Cooper/Jon Hamm sandwich or that Angie (Jolie) and Jen (Anniston) are still not respectively the ultra naughty and innocently tempting Veronica and Betty of the celebrity zeitgeist for the rest of you. But these are rare specimens who ironically are also smart enough, despite their looks, to both be developing other aspects of themselves. Angie, for example, is going to direct a big studio movie and is a mother to a gaggle of kids. Jen flips houses, is getting married, is the go-to Hollywood rom-com gal and seems to be generally having a better time on the beaches of life with a bigger choice of friends and partners than most of us. Plus – she smiles A LOT. Which can be, and often is, a seduction unto itself.

Creative types on that level are expert seducers not only with their looks and talent but because a. they’ve had A LOT of practice and have gotten really good at it AND b. they understand it’s all a big construct in order to achieve their higher goals. This can be seen or used as a positive or negative in an endless amount of ways but to deny it as fact is to avoid an essential component in what makes the world go round. Of course, what’s even worse is to believe that each of us, in our own particular way, can’t play the game as well as they do.

03.10.13

by notesfromachair

Deadlines

Like sands through the hourglass..

Students often don’t hand in assignments when they’re supposed to. Its seldom cavalier. It’s got to do with fear of being bad in the guise of being “blocked. “ Or being overwhelmed with other things that have a higher priority and forgetting. But it’s usually not done out of spite or as a tactical maneuver to get something else in return (usually). Those qualities are mostly learned in the outside world as we move into adulthood and are utilized even more as the years go on. This common recognition was a big reason for the current sequestration debacle we’re seeing in Washington, DC. Note: In case you don’t quite know what this timely term on the recent news means (I certainly wasn’t sure), it’s simply this – across the board arbitrary federal spending cuts that were mandated into law in 2011 by a bipartisan Congressional committee in the event that the White House and Congress could not agree on a plan to reduce the deficit. Think of it like your parents grounding you for a week if you don’t complete your chores, then for a month plus no TV if you continue to fail to do so, and then for another six months plus no TV, and no computer or video games if the behavior continues. In other words – escalating penalties for not meeting your mutually agreed upon responsibilities by a deadline.

A huge part of going to school or growing up is learning how to be a good kind of adult. Keeping to set goals and being responsible in the work place and in life, as well as navigating both. This means both a good work ethic and a capacity for human decency. Particularly in the case of school, I see this as a 50-50 split of learning through academics and experiences. Sometimes it goes to 80-20. Sometimes the best you can hope for with a student that semester is 20-80 but perhaps in that particular moment in the latter someone’s life experiential learning will be far more important than a mathematical equation or building a marketing plan or structuring out a sentence or first act of a piece of writing.

Anybody home?

The societal construct might see it otherwise but in my years as both a student and a teacher I can categorically state this: A lot of what you learn when you go to college (or any school, including the school of life) is not what’s in a book or article you read for class but what you learn by actually BEING in class. The interaction. And the observation.

From there, some make the leap that since you can “be” and “experience” this same thing in the outside world, college (or any kind of advanced schooling) has little value or is overvalued. Wrong. There are immeasurable benefits to learning in a learning environment where, if run properly, mistakes are assumed and even respected. (Note: The best families are like this too). This is the opposite of, for example, a workplace, where time is money and usually mistakes are to be avoided at all costs. You want the experience of missing a deadline or not doing your best work in college so that in real life you have learned that it is better to keep your promises and give it your all. Because once you’ve had the experience of the former with all the consequences (both long and short term), you realize that the latter is always the better option in the long run.

It is admittedly difficult to keep this straight in a world where sometimes cheating and not keeping commitments seems to work in the favor of some. One needs only to go back to the Washington DC example to see this. Sequestration. The debt ceiling. The GW Bush tax cuts enacted by default. Every month it feels like some deadline has been or will be broken with the threat of Armageddon occurring – an event that never happens, at least so far, unless what Armageddon will be is a slow unraveling of trust in our social and political systems. In that case, and given the undeniable rise in the Earth’s temperatures, Armageddon may be well under way. Time, as they say, will inevitably tell. Which brings us back to deadlines.

Jacob Bernstein – son of writer-director Nora Ephron and Watergate famed reporter Carl Bernstein – wrote a great piece about the last days of his witty and prolific mother for this week’s Sunday NY Times Magazine.

Lady Nora. Click here to read the full piece

In many ways it was about the ultimate and very personal deadline we all face – Death. To put it more bluntly, we all have our own expiration date – not unlike a carton of milk. But unfortunately, an extension of this deadline is not really possible unless one believes that modern medicine and sheer will creates an extension of what you see as your own predetermined end. I like to think of it as a deadline that is open but will occur whether you cooperate or not. Sure, perhaps some cooperation will change the work you’re doing and thus cause your higher power (nee boss) to extend your life deadline, but we all know (or should know) this – that deadline will come and you will expire. The same way a container of milk will go bad even if you extend its life a little by keeping it cold or boiling it within an inch of its life. Note: This kind of talk used to frighten me – for decades. It now is less scary and more of a free-floating anxiety of an assignment I know I will one day finish and also know I have the power to make really good if I just buckle down a little bit and not worry so much.

The glib Ms. Ephron chose not to so much make friends with death but rather to ignore the ominous tenor of it and live her life with a renewed practical edge towards professional and personal productivity. She directed a movie (Julia and Julia), wrote a play, created 200 blog essays, cooked, saw friends, traveled and did many other things in between medical treatments and who knows what else. Perhaps she would have done all of these had she not known she was ill, since she always seemed to be busy. But it is more likely, at least according to her son’s piece and her own writings (I Feel Bad About My Neck), that she recognized the impending deadline of her life, it influenced her and she wrote about it in ways of her own choosing – not letting it dictate the work she was doing but also using it as both material and motivating factor to complete, as much as possible, her ultimate project – herself.

To let a deadline freak you out or to totally ignore it is to deny the table, or framed photo or spot on the wall in front of you as you write this. What’s the old joke: “I took a philosophy class in college – now I can prove the chair across the room isn’t there?” (This is not unlike the Woody Allen joke in Annie Hall: “I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final…I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me”).

It is not good to deny reality too much in the same way it is not good to pretend that the amount of time you have to do something is infinite or endless (choose the world depending on your religious affiliation). Because eventually, the axe will fall and you will find that your time is not only being used unwisely but actually has been squandered on things that, in the end, don’t really have much meaning to you. No one really WANTS to live in this kind of fear but sometimes this fear just happens and it feels far beyond our control.

I only know this because I used to live this way on and off. Luckily, after years of self-examination and the inevitability of my own eventual deadline (hopefully many decades away) I realize that to deny that something is due – an assignment, a piece of writing I want to accomplish, a returned phone call, the book I’ve been meaning to read or the home office I have to get in order (2013 is the year, I promise!) or even my own deadline of my life (help! And to whom is it due – Satan? The Grim Reaper? The God Of Too Many Pizza Slices?) – is to drive myself further down into the abyss. Not to get all Zen, new-agey or 12 step-py, but the first task is to at least acknowledge your avoidance so you can see it out in the open and then begin to deal with it. The second step? Well, that depends on what you like. Here’s what I prefer:

1. Make lists (like this one!). Partly because I like to forget stuff I don’t want to remember. And because – I have no memory.

A good start

2. Break large assignments down – This helps A LOT. It’s too daunting to write a whole book, article, or explain everything to your spouse, friend or parent that you need to. What section of it do you deal with first? Second? How many parts are there to the whole? Take it in sections that are guaranteed to get you to the finish line because unlike human beings (yourself included), math doesn’t lie and you will one day be guaranteed to complete the task, or write/say “The End”

leave the 8 ball for last!

3. Reward yourself – also in increments. This includes small rewards and bigger rewards, especially when you finish. It’s the finishing of something (a section or the whole thing) to reward, by the way. Not how good or bad you think it turns out. The truth is – you don’t ever really and truly know the quality except that it feels good to you. We all want approval but the victory is in completion. Some of my best work has not been recognized and some of my only merely good work has. Some of the just okay or occasionally bad work – I’ve been told is good. Which was and was not true, depending on the work and who said it. If you try to separate any of this it’ll drive you crazy anyway. Even more reason to recognize the real reward in doing what you set out to do.BTW, tangible rewards can be – clothing, a cookie, a car, sex, alcohol, mindless television, a trip, sleeping all day, the beach, ignoring your overbearing family or friends for a few days, a spa treatment (real or emotional spa), or a walk in the park or more time than you had planned with your dog or cat or pet snake. It’s mostly about whatever floats your boat.

4. Make a schedule. With a script this helps immensely. How long will the outline take? How many pages a day to the first draft. I used to schedule this way: five days a week work – at least 3 pages per day, five days a week. That was a MINIMUM. Meaning, at the very, very, very least – I’d do 15 pages per week, 60 pages in a month and 120 in two months. Often, I’d go faster. Some days I’d go slower. But it NEVER took longer than that. Ever. Don’t set the deadlines too punitively or you’ll find a way out of it. Better to be disciplined but not school-marmish with yourself. You don’t get karmic points for the amount of self-deprivation that contributed to your accomplishment level

(Note on scheduling: I have been more ambitious on skeds when I had an inevitable deadline from the outside. I can remember sitting down to write the first draft of one script on a vacation from a full time job. A one-week vacation. I knew that technically I had only 9 days to write. I planned out for a month the amount of pages on those ten days, cancelled everything else and had a first draft in 10 days. Twelve pages a day – four hours in the afternoon, two to three at night. It’s intense but not that hard. Also, it helps to be single. Requirements include that you don’t engage with the outside world, including your television set and the web. Don’t worry. They will still be there. You’ll be missed too – but not that much or as much as you think. And Everyone will survive. Especially you)

It’s about Adult Beverage time..

5. Accept you can be brilliant, as well as bad, as well as limited, as well as unlimited. Not every day is great. Sometimes they just suck. But not every day will suck. Unless you determinedly decide they will. Some of my best days of accomplishment started out as my worst days of procrastination and self abuse (literally) until I got so disgusted with myself I just didn’t care and decided to dive in. Meaning – it helps sticking it out no matter how painful or a waste of time it might seem. Even if it’s just for a day or a few hours.

Sometimes you can wing it and get lucky and meet the deadline anyway. Or you can miss it and leave it to the fates to work it out and it does. In these cases, I think it’s because people have a vague plan but their experience, creativity and relaxation just allows them to do their best. That’s what I love about blog writing and generally working for yourself, especially when the financial wolf is not knocking at your door and you’re doing your project because you WANT to – not because you HAVE TO. I try to think of every paid project like this too – literally trick my mind into it, pretending it won’t count for anything really or the person I’m reporting to won’t pay much attention even though they say they will. You might be shocked at how easily I can trick my crazy little mind in that moment but we all can easily talk ourselves into all kinds of things. Just go over the myriad of lies you told yourself about one or several former boyfriends, girlfriends or spouses in your life that you convinced yourself were true at the time but turned out to be as false as Nixon’s initial denial of the Watergate break-in and you’ll get the idea.

Of course, there are the moments where you’re so anxious about what you have to do that it’s just a total freak out where your lack of preparation shines through and causes you to be basically – well, fucked.

Yet even then there is solution if you don’t look too hard or too far away. And that is to – own up and be 100% totally yourself. Yeah – just embrace your total lack of prep, your brain freeze, your lack of focus and irresponsibility. This is what happened recently to a young British journalist from BBC radio in the absolute best six and a half minutes I’ve seen in months. Interviewing Mila Kunis during a Disney press junket for Oz, The Great and Powerful, he was clearly unprepared and admitted to being hopelessly nervous. If you have ever seen Notting Hill, imagine the bumbling journalist played by Hugh Grant had a child with the huge movie star he was interviewing played by Julia Roberts and that their son is now in his twenties and interviewing another huge movie star much like his father had many years before. (In fact, the kid looks a bit like a young Hugh Grant). And this is what happened:

NO – This was not rehearsed. This is real. But if the kid is an operator and you can prove that – please don’t tell me. Spend that time meeting some other of the many deadlines you have looming.

Besides, right or wrong it won’t matter. Mila’s Oz made $80 million in 3 days despite what any one critic or audience member like you thinks of it, or its stars or the journalists covering its debut. Plus, this kid is a viral video sensation clearly destined for far bigger things than you and I.

Despite everything, this sometimes happens in life. So be prepared.

notes from a chair

Monthly Archives: March 2013

The Art of Seduction

Deadlines