At The Altar of Intention and Obstacle
In every Aaron Sorkin interview I’ve read, watched, or listened to, he says some version of, “I worship at the altar of intention and obstacle.” Whether it’s a play, a movie, or a TV series, he says, “before I can write a single scene, I badly need to know the intentions and obstacles…That point of friction—somebody wants something, something stands in their way of getting it—that’s the drive shaft of drama. And then the tactics used to overcome that obstacle or series of obstacles standing in their way—that’s the clothesline that your character hangs on.” Some of the tactics used to overcome an obstacle or a series of obstacles standing in the way of somebody who wants something—that’s the clothesline this SIX at 6 hangs on…
Focus On What You’re Doing, Not What Everyone Else Is Doing
He wanted to be a starting quarterback. At Michigan, he wasn’t starting, and he was so low on the depth chart (fourth) that he only got 2 reps in practice. With three quarterbacks standing in his way of getting what he wanted, Brady decided to transfer. He met with his coach to express his frustration, “The other quarterbacks get all the reps.” His coach replied, “Brady, I want you to stop worrying about what all the other players on our team are doing. All you do is worry about what the starter is doing, what the second guy on the depth chart is doing, what everyone else is doing. You don’t worry about what you’re doing.” Coach reminded him, “You came here to be the best. If you’re going to be the best, you have to beat out the best.” And then he recommended that Brady start meeting with Greg Harden, a counselor who worked in Michigan’s athletic department. “There’s all of these guys ahead of me on the depth chart,” Brady told Harden. “I’m never going to get a chance here. They’re only giving me 2 reps.” Harden simply replied, “Just go out there and focus on doing the best you can with those 2 reps. Make them as perfect as you possibly can.” “So that’s what I did,” Brady said. “They’d put me in for those 2 reps, man, I’d sprint out there like it was Super Bowl 39. ‘Let’s go boys! Here we go! What play we got?’” “And I started to do really well with those 2 reps. Because I brought enthusiasm, I brought energy.” Using the Harden tactic, soon, the 2 reps went up to 4 reps. Then from 4 to 10, “and before you knew it,” Brady said, “with this new mindset that Greg instilled in me—to focus on what you can control, to focus on what you’re getting, not what anyone else is getting, to treat every rep like it’s the Super Bowl—eventually, I became the starter.”
It’s A Minefield
On the 27th straight day of filming Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks was tired and worried. During a scene on the famous park bench, Hanks stopped and said to director Bob Zemeckis, “Hey, Bob…is anybody going to care about this movie? I don’t think anybody’s going to care.” Bob replied, “It’s a minefield, Tom. You never know what’s good…It’s a minefield! It’s a goddamn minefield! We may be sowing the seeds of our own destruction. Any footstep we take can be a Bouncing Betty that’ll blow our nuts right off.” Tom Hanks told this story after he was asked, “When I ask for a memory from your career, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?” He said that what Zemeckis said was true of every movie he’s worked on: “There’s never any guarantee…You do not know if it is going to work out.” Whatever the doubts, uncertainties, landmines or obstacles standing in your way, Hanks said, “Learn the lines. Hit the marks. Tell the truth. That’s all you can do.” Doing the best you can with every rep you get—that’s all you can do.
Your Mindset After Something Bad Happens To You
Late in the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, Villanova blew a 10-point lead. With 4.7 seconds left, UNC hit a 3-pointer to tie the game. Villanova’s head coach, Jay Wright, called a timeout, and as his players walked to the huddle, they were all saying the same word: “Attitude.” “It’s the most important aspect of our program,” Coach Wright explains in his book, Attitude. “When we break a huddle, we say ‘1, 2, 3, Attitude.’” The test of Attitude, Wright taught his players, is: “Where is your mindset after something bad happens to you?” Where is your mindset after you blow a 10-point lead? Where is your mindset after your opponent hits a 3 to tie the game with 4.7 seconds left? Where is your mindset after something gets in the way of getting what you want? That’s the clothesline that attitude hangs on. “When I looked into the eyes of our players,” Wright writes, “I saw no anger or regret. No one bemoaned [the UNC player’s] ‘lucky shot,’ or that any of our guys had failed to stop him from grabbing the pass that led to that shot, or anything else.” Instead, “they were all saying, ‘Attitude. Attitude. This is what we do. Attitude. This is what we do.’” With this mindset, the players returned to the court. Villanova’s Kris Jenkins inbounded the ball to Ryan “Arch” Arcidiacono. Arch dribbled up the left side of the court, crossed half court, cut right towards the 3-point arc, where he underhanded a pass to Jenkins, who caught the ball with 1.3 seconds left, and, in perfect rhythm, jumped then released the ball with 0.6 seconds, and hit a buzzer-beater to win the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.
When Faced With A Challenge, Get Smarter
When Ed Catmull was 12 years old in 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1. As a response, the U.S. government recruited the country’s best minds and created something called ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency). The architects of ARPA responded to a serious threat by essentially saying, Catmull writes, “We’ll just have to get smarter.” A little over three decades later, in 1991, the company Catmull co-founded, Pixar struck a deal with Disney to make the first computer-animated movie. Catmull and most of his employees were computer scientists—lacking storytellers, the team attended a 3-day storytelling seminar. They attended the seminar because, Catmull writes, “The lesson of ARPA had lodged in my brain: When faced with a challenge, get smarter.” They left the seminar, one Pixar employee said, “as true believers [in something they learned at the seminar]…character emerges most realistically and compellingly from the choices that the protagonist makes in reaction to his problems…This became the law of the land at Pixar.” Using this tactic, the team wrote a story about a toy named Woody who wants to keep his position as a boy named Andy’s favorite toy. “Woody’s world is rocked,” Catmull writes in summing up the plot, “when a shiny new rival, a space ranger named Buzz Lightyear, arrives on the scene and becomes the apple of Andy’s eye.” That point of friction would be the drive shaft of Toy Story, which was released in 1995 and was a critical and commercial sensation. Following the success of Toy Story, Pixar returned repeatedly to the same tactic. “If you look at all of our movies,” the former Head of Pixar’s Creative Development team said, “there’s a protagonist who…goes on a journey and comes out the other end a better person . . . or rat . . . or fish.”
The Greater The Pressure, The Truer The Choice
Woody’s response to the Buzz problem, ARPA’s response to the Sputnik 1 problem, Catmull’s response to the storytelling problem, Brady’s response, Villanova’s, Hanks’—as the author and story consultant Robert McKee (who taught the seminar the Pixar team attended) likes to say, what’s true of fiction is true of life and vice versa: “True Character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure—the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.” The choices made and the tactics used to overcome an obstacle, when faced with a challenge, or after something bad happens to you—that’s the clothesline that your character hangs on.