Be Solicitous Of Input
In their twenties, with no real experience, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote and starred in the Oscar-winning movie Good Will Hunting. When asked how they did it, the two described the environment they tried to create on set—something they’ve carried into every project they’ve been part of in the thirty years since. “We’re always very – -,” Damon started, searching for the words. “Solicitous of input,” Affleck jumped in. “Yes,” Damon said, “Solicitous of input.” “We’re never,” Affleck explained, “coming from some place of like, ‘We’ve written this mighty prose—speak it exactly as it’s written.’” Instead, they want everyone involved—the actors, the producers, the camera operators, the production designers—to feel free to speak up, to contribute any and all ideas. Because given the chance, Affleck said, “everyone comes up with things we couldn’t have come up with ourselves. So we’re always like, ‘Please, be generous and give us your input.’”
Being solicitous of input—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
“Ok, That’s A Good Line. I’m Going To Think About That.”
At the 2024 Masters, for the first time in his professional golf career, Scottie Scheffler was at a tournament without his wife Meredith, who was back home, weeks away from having their first child. So that week, Scheffler rented an Airbnb with his good friend Sam Burns, who was also in the field. Burns missed the cut and went home Friday, while Scheffler still had two rounds to play. “I didn’t want to be in a house by myself all weekend,” Scheffler said. Four of his best friends from home were in town watching the tournament, staying at their own Airbnb. “I called them when I got done on Friday—I was like, ‘Hey, can y’all come stay with me?” Heading into the final round with a one-stroke lead, Scheffler woke up on Sunday feeling unusually nervous. Rather than keeping it to himself or pretending everything was fine, Scheffler solicited input from his friends. “They were hanging with me that morning,” Scheffler said, “and I was like, ‘Guys, I’m pretty anxious.’ I told them, ‘I wish that I didn’t want to win as badly as I do. I wish it didn’t matter this much to me. I really wish that I could just go out there and not really care about the result and just go play and have fun and enjoy it. But I really, really want to win this golf tournament.’” The five of them were around the kitchen table, “and my buddy sitting across from me—he looks at me and goes, ‘Well, your victory is secure on the cross. And that’s really all you need to know.’” A devout Christian, Scheffler took it to mean that no matter what happened out there on the course, “my identity and victory is secure.” “And I thought, ‘Ok, that’s a good line. I’m going to think about that.” And with that in mind, Scheffler went out and shot a 68 to secure the 2024 Masters title by a comfortable four strokes.
“How Did We Not Think Of That?”
The final line in Good Will Hunting is one of my all-time favorites. To me, it’s one of the great examples of a storytelling device known as “Plant and Payoff.” Earlier in the movie, Robin Williams’ character (Sean) tells the story of the night he met the woman he would later marry. He and a group of friends were at a bar, about to head to a Red Sox game, when he noticed her. It turned out to be one of the greatest games in Red Sox history, and when it’s revealed that Sean didn’t end up going, Matt Damon’s character (Will) is floored, baffled by Sean’s decision to skip a Sox game to have a few drinks with a woman he’d never met. Who were these friends of yours? They let you get away with that? What did you say to them? “I just slid my ticket across the table,” Sean says, “and I said, ‘Sorry guys, I gotta see about a girl.’” As the movie unfolds over the next hour or so, Will ultimately comes to a point where he has to choose between taking a job Sean helped line up, or leaving everything behind to go after the girl he let get away. In the final scene, Sean steps outside his apartment to find a note in his mailbox. As he looks at the note, Will’s voice comes in as a voiceover: “Sean—If the professor calls about that job, just tell him, ‘Sorry, I had to go see about a girl.’ — Will.” Sean looks up from the note, smiles, and as he turns back inside, he says, “Son of bitch, he stole my line.”
But this is how the scene was written:
That final line wasn’t in the original script. “We had scripted that Robin’s character just kind of takes in the moment and doesn’t say anything,” Damon said. As they were filming the scene, to get the voiceover timing right, Damon sat beside director Gus Van Sant behind the camera. When Williams walked out of the apartment, Damon read the note aloud. And as everyone on set had been invited to do, Williams contributed the improvised line: “Son of a bitch, he stole my line.” “I remember I grabbed Gus’s shoulders,” Damon said, “and I felt him tense up. We both knew—we were like, ‘Holy shit, what a line! How did we not think of that?’”
“Most People Don’t Get Those Experiences Because They Never Ask”
When he was in eighth grade in 1967, Steve Jobs was building an electronic frequency counter and needed parts he couldn’t afford. Someone suggested he call Bill Hewlett, who, along with Dave Packard, co-founded the electronics company Hewlett-Packard (HP) out of a garage in Palo Alto in 1939. Finding a William Hewlett listed in the Palo Alto phone book, the young Jobs called the number and asked, “Is this the Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard?” “Yes,” Hewlett said. “Hi, I’m Steve Jobs. I want to build a frequency counter, and I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have.” Hewlett spent several minutes on the phone with him, asking questions about what exactly he was trying to build. The next day, Jobs went to HP and picked up a bag full of parts from Hewlett himself, who also offered the twelve-year-old a summer job working on the HP assembly line, “putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters.” “I’ve always found something to be very true,” Jobs said, reflecting on what became a lifelong habit of picking up the phone and asking for help, “which is most people don’t get those experiences because they never ask. I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help…Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask.”
“My Entire Life Would Have Been Different”
Not long after writing an article about Stoicism for Tim Ferriss’ website in 2009, Ryan Holiday got an offer from a small publisher to write a book about Stoicism. “It was as if everything I had hoped for was coming together,” Ryan writes. At the time, Ryan was working for Robert Greene—before he accepted it, he asked Robert about the offer. Robert’s advice was to turn it down. He said that, since Ryan was still learning and gathering life experience, the book would be much better if he waited. “He was teaching me the art of patience,“ Ryan writes. “And he was right.” Ryan ultimately published a book about Stoicism, The Obstacle is the Way, five years later. “If I had taken the deal I had gotten offered in 2009,” if he hadn’t solicited input from Robert, “my entire life would have been different.”
Get To The Outside
Reflecting on his collaboration with Larry David on Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld said he couldn’t begin to count the number of times David caught something in an episode draft that, in hindsight, seemed so obvious he couldn’t believe he’d missed it. A clear joke opportunity. A gaping plot hole. A perfect closing line. From that experience, he said, now when he watches or reads things, he can immediately spot a writer who didn’t solicit input from anyone. “You just see things so clearly that they somehow missed,” he said. “And it’s because, you can’t see everything from the inside.” Or as one of my favorite lyrics from Hamilton goes, “If there’s a fire you’re trying to douse / You can’t put it out from inside the house.” You gotta get to the outside. You gotta solicit input from other people.