Thursday, August 30, 2018

I’m a storyteller, goddammit.

Look, you can take your Homer, your Melville, your Jane freakin Austen, and toss them in the nearest trash bin. If you want to talk about storytelling well, I can tell you a story. I can tell you a thousand stories.

As far as I’m concerned, stories about a white whale, or a struggle against the gods, or even the class and culture dynamics of the gentry in Victorian England, shit, that’s easy. I can tell those stories in my sleep.

Because I'm a storyteller, goddammit.

But I'd like to see those so-called storytellers write a compelling, I-can’t-stop-watching story in just 30 seconds—23, if you take out the product demo, about the utterly astounding absorbent power of a Bounty paper towel.

Now, that takes storytelling, my friend.
And thank goodness, I'm a storyteller, goddammit.

A young man, home in his chic city apartment. Evening. The woman of his dreams is coming over for dinner. He’s trying to impress her with his cooking skill. But get this…he doesn’t know how to cook. And just as he’s about to flambe the duck a la orange, he spills the cabernet! A giant spill and then, the doorbell rings! He’s got to get rid of the spill before the woman arrives. Bounty to the rescue! They embrace! Exeunt.

That’s how it’s done, ladies and germs.

That’s storytelling.

Here’s another one. A young family is new in town and it’s little Jimmy’s first day in school. He sits alone in the lunchroom and unwraps a beautiful sandwich that looks crisp and succulent because his loving Mom has wrapped it carefully and lovingly and cling-freeingly in Saran Wrap. Little Jill, all pigtails and freckles sits next to Jimmy. She admires his sandwich. Jimmy gives her half. They become friends!

That’s how you do it, Herman fucking Melville.

You can take your high-falutin' literature and art. You can take the seminal stories that helped shape the essence of the Western mind. You can toss all those on the ash-heap of history.

They’re old, tired. I’d go so far as to say they're insipid.

I do modern storytelling. Driven by data. Experiential and engaging. Then driven by more data. 

That's how I curate stories around essential human truths. Stories about how to change a refrigerator filter. Human dramas about bratwurst. 30-second epics on buying life insurance for your teenager. Even talking heads on an ugly blue gradated cyc.

That’s storytelling, my friend.

And I am a storyteller, goddammit.

And I gotta go.


I have stories to tell.


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