Latest / 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project / Jeremy Sauter: Who Gets to Frame the Story? — Marketing, Attention & What We Believe
Transcript
- Paige Williams: Welcome to 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project. I'm your host, Paige Williams. Come along with me as I build the emerging field of narrative intelligence. I'm interviewing and learning from 100 thinkers, creators, researchers, people whose lives have been shaped by profound change. Together we're exploring a question at the center of how we become who we are. How malleable are the stories that we live by, and what does it take to change one? Across these conversations, we're examining the stories we inherit, the stories that become identity, and the human capacities that allow us to recognize, question, revise, and live beyond them. What I learned through this series is helping shape the field of narrative intelligence and the foundational book that I'm writing about it. This is 100 Stories. welcome to 100 stories. Today I'm thrilled to have my dear friend Jeremy Sauter with us. And Jeremy's a really humble guy, but he's responsible for Paramount Pictures billions of dollars in marketing, their motion pictures. Jeremy: Ha don't tell anyone I work with there. Paige Williams: has volunteered for the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival guest lectures at the University of Montana school of business out of the goodness of his heart and he's supported me for years and years and years in so many different ways. But what I'm always most grateful for with Jeremy is just the kindness and the generosity that he offers people and the curiosity that he has about people. So thanks for joining me today. Yeah, Jeremy: Thank you. That's very kind of you to say that. So thank you. Paige Williams: that's true. Will you tell me about the work that's most shaped how you see yourself in the world? Jeremy: my gosh. well, I think we tell ourselves that we're good at our jobs and that we're good at being parents and we're like passively okay at tennis and things like that. But for me, what really shaped how I see myself in the world is getting involved in things that weren't about me but were about other people. And so as you mentioned, I've had the good fortune to be involved in fundraising for higher education, after school programs, a little bit of teaching, things like that. And when I realized that taking myself out of the benefit side and putting other people in the benefit side, that was truly what made me understand not only my contribution I could make, but a little bit more about the world. So most of my business career has been Marketing movies. but movies are an escape from life. And when I got to working on things that were actual life, that's when I started to see how the world worked and how I fit into it and how we can make a difference. So yeah, it's not really a professional thing that I did that made me figure it out. It's the things I did in the off hours where I'm not getting paid, where the world started to make more sense. Paige Williams: what did you learn there in that world of sense making? Jeremy: Well, I I think one, I realized that I could I could use whatever those little things are in my brain that actually work and make a difference and are productive. But also I think when you get involved in things outside hanging around with people who do the same things you do, you meet the people who make you have a bigger view of the world. So like as you mentioned, what I I've spent some time in a classroom. Whenever I talk to students, I'm always inspired and energized and they make me laugh and they make me cry and their stories and their resilience. And that's the kind of stuff I crave. And so meeting those people I would never meet at my day job, that has been the big benefit. Paige Williams: Yeah, and and i in your work both in teaching marketing to students and really story and you taught me about the value proposition, Jeremy: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: as well as, you know, how do you get a ninety minute film down to thirty second trailer, right? How do you how do you bring it down and then make that Jeremy: That's right. Sure. I still don't know after many, many decades. No idea. Paige Williams: That's not true. Sell millions of dollars of tickets, right? Like so many tickets sold from this 30 seconds. So Jeremy: Let me just interject one thing. I spent most of the morning with people who make great salaries and they're super smart, and they spend all day long pulling their hair out trying to figure it out. There's no easy way to get to it. There's not some system where you go plug in the movie here and out comes the 30 second spot or the six seconds internet bumper or the poster, whatever. Like there's teams of people. working day and night, twenty four seven for all the studios, for Netflix, for Prime, for everyone trying to figure out like we've got this great movie we love, audiences love. How do we get people to come see it? And it's like if it were simple, it would just be five guys in a room somewhere and they get it done in a couple of days that have some pizza. But it's it's years. Like it just takes forever to figure out. So the the fun part is yeah, like a lot of people make great incomes doing this, but it's not it's not just because they're smart, it's because they're tenacious and because it is really, really, really hard and you just have to keep doing it day and night, day and night, over and over, until you've you know, through some magic, find that little here's here's how we explain it. Paige Williams: do you think that there's ever gonna be a time based on what you just said where you just throw the ninety minute film and AI creates a trailer that works? Jeremy: Yeah, it would be great in some ways and not so great in others. I'm sure there's lots of people trying to crack that problem with AI for all kinds of marketing and you know it put inputting on one side all the attributes of a product and and then having it sort of use its understanding of human nature to output something. But I I've actually been thinking about this a lot. I'm just sort of not into a world that's that AI algorithmically programmed to be perfect. I think the whimsy and the human nature, and if yeah, someday if computers can do that, may maybe it's fine. But like I I actually have been thinking about Spotify versus radio station, old school radio station, and how when I'm driving Yeah, I listen to my playlist that I've curated, and that's great. But then after all, I'm like, what about the stuff I've never heard of? What about the what about the song I thought I hated, but I don't have a choice to listen to it, and now I do. And there's something about having things that are like curated's an overused word, but like pick pick a basket of songs. a human is picked. versus a machine is picked and you might get something you weren't expecting and that maybe that's the good part. So yeah, maybe AI can do the job of taking a movie and turn it into a 30 second commercial. But like there's there's people I know, women and men, who do it and they just do things that are so freaking cool that like I don't want to lose that part. Paige Williams: Right. Jeremy: Yeah. Paige Williams: What did you learn about story growing up and narrative? Jeremy: Well, growing up, I come from a family of good storytellers. So my father was a journalist and he, you know, not only went to Vietnam and told s important stories there, he also rode elephants down the main street when the circus came to town and talked to the clowns and the performers. And so He he's still he's still around, knock on wood, as we're recording. He's an amazing guy. He's 91. And man, is he a storyteller? So as a as a journalist, he probably helped me get partway there as like taking a complicated story and synthesizing it down. And he never was one for like long-winded explanations. He was like cut to the chase. Tell me what matters here. And I think I probably learned a lot from that of like not going on and on and on as a kid trying to, you know, t give my excuse to my dad, just make my best case real quick and see if it works. So yeah, I my mother also was like sort of a rock contour. She was a she was a bit of a boozer, which to me seemed totally normal when I grew up with her and she loved telling jokes and stories and having parties and yeah. So I there was a lot of great storytelling in my family from those two different sides, two different modes. and and I'm sure you know we all think we're our own people, but we are the product of who we grew up with and the society and the mentors and the patois and whatever it is. So yeah, that was mine. That's my origin story is those two sides of storytelling. Paige Williams: Yeah. Pick one of the many transformational moments in your life that change your story and and tell me one of those. Jeremy: This is a story about who I am now as a older adult and something I learned later than I should have. And I think other people have learned quicker and it's probably helped them. I've had the privilege of living in a couple of different countries for long periods of time. And I I really didn't realize why I liked it so much. And part of it is I like the mental headspace of not knowing everything that's going on around me. I don't speak the languages always. I came home after a year being away, and I was at a gas pump in Missoula, Montana, and I was filling up my car, and there's one of those little screens blaring at me with an advertisement, and I couldn't escape it. I had to stand there and it drove me insane. And I realized that after a year of not understanding the billboards and the political stuff and the news broadcasts and everything, that now here I was with. Stuff that was invading my mind and telling me the subject and setting the terms of the dialogue. Where I'm away somewhere else, I kind of get to think about what I want to think about. And I get to have that space where I'm intentional about what I want to think about. So I have this kind of phrase that I use in for myself of like, how do I make my life more like that? How do I make my life more like a museum where I stroll at my own pace, I choose what deserves my attention, and I try to decide is this something I want to think about and look at? Like is it a piece of art I want to look at for one minute or for one hour? And I decide. I don't let something else intrude and tell me what that agenda is. So the transformational moment was, you know, it's obviously Silly like standing at a gas station pump with this blaring stupid ad, but it actually has helped this last it's been like 10 years. I really make space for writing, for consuming art, for reading a book, for talking to a friend, and I try to make sure I can exclude the distractions that creep in. and temper that with less interesting ideas that are enforced on me. I I wanna pick what I wanna think about. I don't want someone else to tell me what to think about. Paige Williams: that must have a greater sense of agency and freedom that comes with that. Jeremy: Yeah, if you're an art lover or you're a writer or you're someone in a relationship or you're s or it like no matter what it is, like you need to be protective of the moments that matter, whether you're creating something, consuming something, talking to someone you love, like you you're in a battle with this attention economy. Where all around us are billboards and radio and and frankly I hate to say it, like you go to a restaurant, there's just people out of the corner of your eye you're listening to, and they're not always generous, they're not always thoughtful. And I don't really like that. I don't really want to hear other people's nonsense. I wanna focus on the people I picked because they're awesome and I want to hear what they have to say. Paige Williams: after marketing hundreds of films, what did you learn about the difference between the story a filmmaker thinks they made and the story an audience needs to hear before they'll watch it? Jeremy: Yeah. That's the rub. filmmakers are the heroes. Let's just say say that from the beginning. they'll be the first to tell you that, but it's also true. They put in the years of blood and sweat and tears. They face financial ruin. The ones that do well, they're the exception. So many people struggle with these stories that are super amazing and they never get told. So I don't want to discount anything that a filmmaker does or sacrifices. but I will say a a lot of filmmakers they set out to make a particular story and they work really hard for a couple of years and they got they somehow get the money and the time and the crew and they go get it done. And then it goes in front of a a a screening, and what that audience perceives is not always what the filmmaker intends, right? So there's we're already dealing with two separate versions of that story, the intention and then the audience perception. And then we're introducing a third, which is what's the what's the third discrete version that actually is going to put butts in seats, right? It might not be the intended one. It might not be the perceived one. It's probably some variation. In a perfect world, those three would be in total alignment. But like we're never in the perfect world, right? So it ends up being how do we get as close to the first, how does marketing get as close to those first two perceptions as possible and still draw an audience? You don't, you don't want to leave people out. You won't and you definitely don't want to attract the wrong audience by being inauthentic for two reasons. One, you'll have bad buzz, the movie will die. People will feel betrayed. movie going is a habit. And if people have a bad experience, they show up to the wrong movies, they don't like it, then they're less likely to come back, right? So we wanna we want to, to your original question, how do we kind of figure out the the right version of the story to tell that's also true to the filmmaker's version of the story? We have to be authentic, we have to. sell the movie we have, but put it in the best light that is true to that audience experience. Not necessarily just to what the filmmaker was trying to make, but what the movie really is. So it can be a as my answer and the circles I've gone in will demonstrate, it's a very complicated process. And it does usually take a year, more than a year to kind of figure out. And sometimes you just never figure it out. Sometimes you're like, I want to get people to this movie. I really love it. and they just don't show up. So it is it is a process, a painful process. Paige Williams: have you ever realized that the story you were using to sell a film was changing how people understood the film itself? Jeremy: Yes. I'll give you a good example. I think about this sometimes. one of the early Jackass movies. That was a polarizing franchise when it first hit the movie screens. There were critics, politicians, preachers who denigrated it and treated it like it was something like undercutting the moral fiber of society because these guys were doing such weird, outrageous stuff. We took a trailer and it Cut the action of these amazing young, fun, talented, courageous, crazy kids doing all their stuff against quotes from all the people denigrating them. A crass takedown of our society, the a betrayal of everything movies should be, a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And putting that condemnation against the footage of guys dancing in speedos and getting kicked by horses, it just made it. S' that the detractors seem ridiculous. And we used the argument against the movie to undercut the people who were against the movie. And it ended up, I think, bringing a lot of fence sitters who'd heard weird things about Jackass into the fray because they wanted to be on the side of the kids who were having fun and not on the side of the adults who were saying this is not the right thing for. people to be seeing in a movie theater. Right. So we actually changed through marketing the way people understood like the context of movie going and what was acceptable and not acceptable. And it was super fun. I mean, the franchise has been super fun to work on. Like it used to talked about sometimes you know, I go in a classroom and talk to students about marketing. They always they say, like, what's your favorite movie to work on? And I'm like, you know, yeah, I've worked with Academy Award winners and they're great, but they're but like if you go to a meeting with the Jackass guys, like cover your junk because they'll punch you, right? That's like way more fun for me than hanging out with a someone who's like pontificating about the history of like, you know, film stock. Paige Williams: What have years of interviewing audiences, testing audiences taught you about the stories that the audience is already bringing into watching the trailer Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. I'm a huge fan of research. You know, there's quantitative where you kind of send something out and send out a trailer and they show it just you know separately to hundreds of people and you get a scoreback of interest and favorite scenes and whatever. But then there's also just like showing the work in a focus group to people you kind of drag in off the street. And I love that because like A great example of why that's special is say you have a comedy and you show a spot and at the end people say, that's really funny, super what great comedy. Doesn't that means it didn't work. Because if you show it to them and they're laughing so hard, they can't tell you that, then that then it's really a comedy, right? So it's like you get that from a focus group, from staring at someone's face more than from them filling in a box. If somebody fills in a box and says, this was very funny, that means little to me. Compared to you show it to them and they're laughing and they're all looking at each other like this is insane, right? So I've learned a lot from just hanging out with people and showing them the product and watching them react and listening to their first words they say and what, you know, like those unvarnished reactions. So I'll give you an anecdote. I used to work with this guy. And he was probably the most ambitious, hardworking guy I've ever worked with. And he had an office next to mine, and he would always be in there burning the midnight oil at 10 p.m. And he'd have a pizza ordered in. And he'd have all these people in his office, all his team and people on the on the TV who were connected digitally, who were editing different stuff for him. And the pizza guy would show up, he would, he would tell the guy to sit down and he'd give the guy 20 bucks and he'd say, I want you to watch some trailers. And he would show the guy that make the the agencies who were on the fiber line show the trailers. And if if the pizza guy didn't like it, my colleague would just have them start over and they would get so mad that like one pizza guy could could mean more than all these geniuses who were getting paid. And I was like, that's actually the right way to figure out what works, is the pizza guy. So the question to, you know, what have I learned about marketing or communication from all these all this research is like listen to the pizza guy for first and foremost. And you're not the audience for everything you sell. So do you we try to impose our own taste and aesthetics, but it's never really about that. It's like finding our job is really to figure out who the audience is and then figure out some great mechanism to figure out what version of the product distilled down. works for that group, not just for us. Like we have to we should probably love the TV spots we make and love the trailers we make, but we should never forget that it's not to convince us, it's to convince someone else. And it might be the pizza guy. Paige Williams: Have you ever worked on a movie that changed a cultural narrative? Jeremy: I guess I wish I have. I think there's great filmmakers who sometimes seem specially equipped to look ahead a couple of years and see where we're going. And they make a a perfect movie that's gonna land at that perfect moment. and sometimes we get to see it like I mean, I I I think that Barbie was a great example. I think the Social Network was a great example. there was this emerging anxiety about algorithms and social media, what it was doing to our brains, what it was doing to our society and our politics, and how that kind of greed of maximizing that had a cost in our society. I I think that that was like s a movie that took all this like undefined angst and and just gave it a face. And maybe it wasn't fair, maybe it was fair, I don't really know. It's not for me to decide. But I remember as a consumer, I pointed at the screen, I was like, yeah, that's it. That's what's happening. It's like this greed of creating something this powerful and this monolithic Has led us to a place where that comes before what's good for all of us. I I it's also happened in a different way. Like if you go back to I don't know, the the 70s, there was widespread and fair fear about a lot of our urban spaces. Cities were having trouble with public safety. And that's when we got movies like Dirty Harry. And Death Wish that were the bureaucracy can't solve our problems, so one guy with a gun is gonna go solve our problems, right? And that's not the answer, but the fact that people flocked to those meant that those films were understanding kind of like the cultural question better than the bureaucrats were, right? The politicians, maybe they were trying, but they weren't succeeding. And people went to the a sort of fictional version of the world where someone was solving the problems that they thought were not getting solved in real life. So yeah, movies, movies do, I don't, I don't know if they change the world, but sometimes they they they they get people to coalesce around an idea that then prompts change. I think when movies offer the solution that's preachy and people are like I call BS and Hollywood has their version and usually it's a liberal version, not always, but I don't think it's the job of movies to solve, but I do think movies can reflect back like a mirror in the sun, a really super hot version of like what's wrong and that. that bright light can draw attention to a a a problem and and maybe force the people who can to find a way forward. And it might be a social issue, it might be feminism with Barbie, it might be technology, it might be, you know, crime and fear. It's like whatever the issue, I think movies can give us whatever that first first draft is of like what's the synthesis of the problem and then we as a society can jump forward and try to solve. Paige Williams: think about the greatest success and the greatest failure that you worked on from a marketing strategy, what story was created? what did you learn from it? Both things. Jeremy: if anyone's ever watched the Star Trek franchises, there's this test they give to captains called the Kobayashi Maru. And and the whole the whole test is that there's no way to win. And it's really a test of your character, right? You're just put in this impossible situation. And your ship's gonna get blown up and you're gonna lose. And but what how do you do that? And like who are you afterwards? And what do you learn about yourself? And I guess, I mean, I'm not really a Star Trek guy, but I always thought that was kind of a cool if I were a big corporate, you know, HR guy, I would give that test. I'd put somebody on the deck of the Enterprise and test them with that before I do all the computer stuff that Google does to their engineers. I want to know who somebody is like. So to get back to your question, I've definitely worked on movies where they make a lot of money and I feel like I should get credit, but I realize that movie would have done so great if a baboon was the in charge of marketing it. Right. So it wasn't really me. Yeah, I I worked and I did the weekends and the late nights and whatever. And I got, you know, maybe I got a little bonus for it. But it's like that one, come on, that was a home run. Right? I'm thinking about like Kung Fu Panda. Like, that's like, come on, you just tell a kid there's a movie called Kung Fu Panda. They're like, what mommy, buy me a ticket or I hate you, right? So it's like hard to screw up. Did great. And then there's movies you get, and I'm not gonna mention the titles of these, but there's some that are like maybe the audience likes them, maybe they d the audience didn't like them, but there's just kind of no way to get people to get there. And sometimes that's gonna happen. And you get a whole studio with thousands of people, you get a great leader, you get a great filmmaker, everyone's tried everything. You spend tons and millions with these different agencies coming up with trailers and posters and different ideas and research and you're just like you get to a place where you're like, I I I just don't this is the Kobayashi Maru. Like people just aren't gonna come to this. And what do I learn? And so, One boss I had that was amazing early in my career, she always was, I thought, the best at getting everyone's voice heard, every idea tried, and then she would decide and she would push forward with the campaign and the movie as best they could. And at the end, if you would get the same call, whether it made a hundred million dollars in the weekend or zero, she would say, she would call and say, Honey, you did a great job. And That's that's what you end up learning in my mind, is that if you have a process where everyone's engaged, every every rock is turned over, every idea is pursued, and it doesn't work, like it's okay. It's like not every movie works, not every movie can work, not every relationship works, not every kid grows up to be a brain surgeon. It's like That doesn't mean it's the end of the world or anyone's a failure. It just means we move on to the next one. And I know that that's that that's not a good answer for a lot of very type A people, but at towards the end of my career, that is the answer I think is actually true. Paige Williams: Mm-hmm. Here, here. I was just talking to a guy who's been in narrative coaching for 30 years, kind of developed it, and it was like, you know, it's not really about stories changing us, it's about our relationship to the story changing. And I was thinking about your example of flipping the camera on the audience it wasn't about the movie, it was about the audience's response to the movie is how you decided to sell that movie. talk a little bit about that and how that what happened? Jeremy: Paranormal Activity, which now is like a billion dollar franchise, at the time was a test to see if They could make a more polished, more expensive version of that movie. And then s people started seeing this like sort of low budget version that had been purchased, and they were like, maybe we can actually do something. So that digital team was like, let's just go do screenings and film people in the screenings and use that as the marketing to then fill the next screening and the next screening and the next screening. And it was an absolutely unprecedented rollout of a movie. Which to your earlier question is I think the closest you can get to here's the movie and here's the marketing, and they're actually the same thing. because all we're really doing is showing the movie to sell the movie. And it it it's it it ha it it was like perfect. And I won I wasn't my project, but I will say I watched The first Paranormal movie and someone had told me it was kind of purchased so that it could then be remade in an expensive way. And I was sitting with my team in my office. We watched it like late on a Friday night, ordered in a pizza, and I was scared to death. I was like, please don't remake this. Just put this movie out. so it's like I was one of the people who was essentially a test subject and said, Please, please, please, I want more people to see this. And so that kind of became The DNA of that first early campaign, which was there was a technology at the time, I think it was called Demand It, where if you saw this trailer and you were like, F yeah, I want to see the movie, you could just put t type a button and enough enough people, they'd fill up a theater, they'd put it in your town. And so it's like very pure, very just like a perfect little system. It's not like scalable. It doesn't work if your movies cost 200 million dollars. But if you make something in your garage, Like let let's create that workflow too. I love that. It's just it's inspiring because it's like kind of artist driven and it's audience centric. it's not propaganda, it's not force feeding. It's like if you see it and you you want it, put up your money and we'll send it to you. It's kinda like Kickstarter for a movie. Yeah, we made it. Paige Williams: Right. Jeremy: If you want a slice, just pay. Paige Williams: Wouldn't millions of people may encounter a a a story through a trailer or a poster or a tagline or a campaign? What responsibility comes with deciding what gets amplified, what gets simplified, what gets left out? Jeremy: yeah. Well, I think it's a lot of responsibility, but I will say the good news is I don't want that responsibility. I I want to be part of a process that includes a lot of really smart people. And stakeholders that Re assures that we get it right because it's so easy to get things wrong. And it's so easy to make mistakes that can betray the movie, betray the audience, betray the filmmaker's vision. So the good news, I think, in Hollywood is it's a very stakeholder heavy system. A lot of people have a seat at the table. The filmmakers, the financiers, the You know, the production people, the marketing people, the research people, the audience, the ticket buyers. So it's like there's so many good voices that tell you what you can and can't do with a campaign. there's so many influencers who react to trailers. if there's like a really good system of keeping everybody honest. And I I like that system. I like those guardrails. I think I've been involved in a couple projects, not things I've Done personally, but that I've been, you know, aware of, where it's like, I really don't think the campaigns were fair representation of the movie. And people went and they were like, gosh darn it. And I I don't want to be a part of that because I love movies. I want to find movies I like. I think I think my my job is to get people into seats and to make money for the studio. But my my kind of my goal, I think the best way to think about like what your real mission is is to help people find movies they're really gonna love. And and if you go at it with that point of view and with a system that has good guardrails on what you put in and what you don't put in and how you treat every property fairly and treat the audience fairly, then then then you're in for a win-win situation. Cause it is a I actually do think it's a lot of responsibility. And I'll say Anecdotally, right now, there's a movie with Tom Cruise, which I have nothing to do with, called Digger, D-I-G-G-E-R. There's a conspiracy theory online that this movie is a musical and the trailers are hiding it. That is, I don't know who started it, I don't know who amplified it, but I do know it's not true because everyone involved in the movie and all these people who've seen the movie say it's not true. But that exists because people have done that with movies in the past. There have been musicals where s some company tested a trailer with and without music numbers in it, and the audience was like, yeah, I don't like musicals. You know, I'm not gonna go see it. But maybe they go see the movie, maybe they like it, maybe it's okay. But the this sort of this responsibility of showing movies kind of for what they are. I think is a real responsibility. And I think it's, you know, listen, the there's no getting around the fact that anytime you make a 30-second spot out of a movie, you are making huge editorial choices. And you're not representing the whole movie, and you're not showing the end, and you're not showing the dog dies, or Bambi's mom dies, or well, it's like there's things you leave out, and the audience is fine with that. But The next level is don't sell a movie for what it's not. That's just simple. Don't do it. It's not fair to the audience. It's not fair to the business because in the long run that hurts the business. and it's just like it's not a good thing as a person to like trick people. Paige Williams: Right. So as humans we're we're sense making machines, right? And we do that through storytelling. And then we go and we pay for a ticket to watch a movie in a theater or sit and watch a movie on Netflix to explore more narrative. So tell me kind of how you see storytelling in the world and how you see narrative and since you you sell narrative, but also it's just who we are as people. Jeremy: Yeah. Well, there's no denying that that's how we make sense of the world. And I think that's the beauty of it that we all just sort, you know, like you study it and you're an expert on it, and maybe I do it and it's like part of my job. But I actually don't think you or I probably know any more than anybody else because everybody from the time they were like in the crib and someone was reading a story to them. They started becoming experts on it too. yeah, you know, some people maybe aren't super articulate storytellers, but they somehow go out in the world and get the things they need and they make friends and they find lovers and they they sit around a campfire and they can, you know, turn a good ghost story. And they're not experts, but they're really great at it. So it's like, I love the fact that we all just do it, whether we study it, whether we get paid for it. I I think I think in answer to your question, I I think I'm just I've got the greatest scam going of anyone on earth because I get paid to watch movies and try to explain a way to get my friends to go see them. And and that's my job, and I've been doing it for decades. And the the sort of storytelling that goes on around us is great. I love having friends over who are great storytellers. My wife is a a novelist, she tells great stories. I love that it's all around us. It's just floating in the ether and it's just as a society, it's kind of something we're we're all just good at. And we all love to see. We all love to do. yeah, it's awesome. Paige Williams: Do you think we're as good at telling stories as we are of recognizing that we're living within our own story? Jeremy: No, I think most people, if you ask the story of their life, they'd have to sit back and they they wouldn't have really thought about it. If you ask them the story, the great arcs of history, they they'd kind of be stumped. I think I think we do it we do it naturally and we do it best when we don't probably even really think about it. You know, I think a a lot of us when we t if if if I said, you know, if I said You know, tell me your life story in a three-act structure, they'd be like, my God, I don't know how to do that. It'd be like a school assignment. But if I said, Where'd you grow up? Where where'd you become an adult and where are you now? That three-act structure, but without calling it that, they'd they'd probably tell me a great damn story. But it's like they don't know the terms, this the symbology, the whatever. But it's just like, I think that's the cool thing about it, it's like We start hearing fairy tales when we're in the crib and then we get Harry Potter when we're six, and then we get Superman when we're ten, and then we get, And it's like we get, you know, the archetype Star Wars or whatever it is. we're just immersed in it. And we it just is natural to us, like that's the way it works. I don't think we should even put a lot of thought. I mean, you're teaching and you're writing and you're the people watching this are trying to get better at it and understand it in an academic or a professional way. But for the rest of us, just like sit in a room with an old guy in a banjo who's telling a story and playing some notes, like it doesn't get better than that. I don't want to understand it. I want it to be magic. Paige Williams: Hmm. When you were talking about if you asked people their three act structure, they would be like, What? then I was like, Well, imagine if you asked them what their value prop was. Jeremy: I think that's funny. I was thinking about this the other day. It's like we're if you look at someone's LinkedIn or their Tinder page or their their Instagram, like they're telling a story, right? They're taking their however many years of life and their successes and failures and they're turning they're they're like selectively editing their Glo glossing up the good stuff and they're they're like storytelling, right? Like your your LinkedIn page is not you. Your LinkedIn page is the you you want someone hiring to see, right? That's that's like kind of marketing storytelling right there. Whether you admit it or realize it, it's fine. Yeah. Paige Williams: When you hear the words narrative intelligence, how would you define? Jeremy: You know, when you told me this this project you were doing about narrative intelligence, I I kind of had no idea what it was. And I started thinking, like, what do I think it was? And I think I came up with two. One is external, one is internal. External would be how narratives and stories penetrate society and shape public perception of an issue. And then the other one I thought of was internal. So internal narrative intelligence would be how you kind of take all these disparate pieces of information you get and turn it into one larger singular idea that like has a s story or flow. So it's like I maybe both those things are the same and they're just like the mirror image, but I think it's like to me the one I would pick. would be the internal one because I'm fascinated by that. I don't know how the brain works, I don't know how people work. I don't know anything. I've been alive so long and I don't understand any of it. But I'm so fascinated by how Over years, you accumulate little pieces of information and you turn that into a big idea. I think that's so fascinating that we can do that. I think that's like our I think our our storytelling superpower is that we can take little grains of sand and form them into a beautiful glass vase of an idea, and we just do that. automatically our brains just do it and it's probably muscle memory from all the like we talked about all this all the stories we hear we just like figure out how to do that but like that that ability is way underrated the fact that kids can do it grown ups can do it that old folks looking back over the course of their life can do it it's like everyone can do it is just Awesome to Paige Williams: Yeah. What do you think that Jeremy: Ha ha ha. Paige Williams: what do you think having that ability does us? Jeremy: Well, I think life can be hugely complicated, painful, confusing. and the way we get through it is by finding a path. And often that path is a story. the way we kind of get to a solution or a a place of contentment or safety is by taking all this information and somehow not having it confound us but have it support us and guide us. And that guidance that's where everyone's actually trying to get. I understand I'm privileged. I've done okay in my life. I've gotten to a place where I'm older and I'm safe and I'm healthy. I know not everyone has that. But if if you can just make sense of the world, it's a better place to be. If you can't make sense of the world, then everything seems dangerous. Everything seems like a risk. and it's just not as fun. So if you hang out with people that are having troubles, a lot of them they have troubles they can't, you know, maybe they're enforced on them and they don't have a choice. And that happens to a lot of people. But a lot of people make their own trouble because they just don't figure things out. Once you can figure things out, this storytelling superpower that like this narrative intelligence, this ability to make coherent version of the world of all these crazy things that are going on, like that gets you to safety. And whether you have a little money or a lot of money, whether you have a car that runs or not runs, like those things become a little less painful if it if you just can make sense of like what to do next. Paige Williams: Awesome. Jeremy, thank you for sharing your time, your experience, and your wisdom. Jeremy: Paige, thank you for for challenging me to think about what I do as more than just a series of tasks and actually something bigger and maybe not more important, but actually like a h higher level. thank you. I enjoyed watching the series of interviews you've done and I I hope this turns out as close to great as the ones that I saw. Paige Williams: Thanks, Jeremy. Jeremy: Nice going. Paige Williams: Before we close, here's what I'm taking from this conversation about narrative intelligence and movie making. Jeremy spent decades in a business built around a strange problem. A filmmaker makes one story, an audience experiences another, and then a marketing team has to decide which story or which version of that story to put out into the world. He described three different narratives operating at once: the story the filmmaker intended, the story the audience actually perceived. And the story marketing constructs to help people understand why they might care. And that feels important for Beyond Movies. Because as humans, we do this constantly. Something happens, we experience it, we interpret it, someone else experiences the exact same thing, the exact same story differently. And then somewhere along the way. One version becomes the story that gets repeated over and over, and then even that changes with time. Jeremy also reminded me that framing is power. A 30-second trailer cannot contain a two-hour movie. Choices have to be made about what gets amplified, what gets simplified, and what disappears. His ethical line was clear: don't ever sell a movie for what it's not. And maybe narrative intelligence asks us to bring that same awareness to the stories that we encounter about ourselves. Our other and about others every day. Who framed this? What was selected? What I leave out? What story did I bring with me before I even encountered this new story? And Jeremy gave me another piece I want to carry forward. He described narrative intelligence as our ability to take all of these disparate pieces of information and form them into something coherent enough to help us move through the world. And that capacity can help us and does help us make meaning. But it can also make a partial interpretation feel like the whole truth. So the question that I'm leaving with today is: how much of the story you believe came from what actually happened? And how much came from the way it was framed for you? And how much comes just from your memory of it? This is one hundred stories.