The Films That Sold Me This Summer
This is Part 2 of 3 of my summer reflection series, as a member of The Cansbridge Fellowship’s 2020 cohort. Pandemic circumstances have foiled our original programming, so I’ve taken up the exciting opportunity to participate in a fellow-run remote startup incubator. If you’re interested, Part 1 is available as a stream of consciousness about the first half of my summer, and Part 3 comes out later in August.
One of the learnings that will stay with me after this Cansbridge summer is that you are always selling something, whether that something is yourself in a job interview, or a startup idea, or the trust that you’d be a good friend. Another thing I’ve learned is that you can never be too good at it. Selling is a skill that must be honed over years of practice, developed with a recipe that demands confidence, artistry, empathy, and a universe full of perseverance. I admit: I’m not there yet. Throughout most of my life, the media I consumed far too often portrayed sales as inauthentic, self-serving, and aggressive. It was a gig reserved for male — possibly sexist — extroverts who would take advantage of sleazy tactics to get ahead (see: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) or Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross). It became easy to denounce all of that, and I was convinced I would never participate in such behaviour as to try to manipulate someone into giving you their hard-earned money — particularly not for a product I didn’t whole-heartedly believe was the right solution to a problem. In later watching good salesmen (see: my father or Avkash Mukhi), I eventually realised that selling can be so much more. It can even be intimate. A good salesperson talks with you instead of talking at you. They understand your needs, rather than trying to convince you of needs you don’t have. Filling an absence takes labour, and labour has value.
When it comes to making a convincing sale, I can hardly think of a better example than filmmaking. Some stories can sell an idea so strong it changes someone’s life forever, or intimidate contemporary leaders enough to get banned. Battleship Potemkin (1925) deftly illustrated the power of a grassroots uprising against abusive authorities, and was subsequently banned in the UK until 1954 for fear it would spark a communist revolution. Yet, overseas, Stalin also banned the film to prevent riots against his regime¹. Almost 100 years later, it is free to watch in the public domain and considered the 11th greatest film of all time, according to the British Film Institute². More recently, Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) was banned for religious satire in Ireland, Norway, and numerous British areas. In the US, catholic groups failed to incite a full on ban, but wanted to deem attendance at its screenings a sin³’⁴. There’s something remarkable about the idea that a silly, fictional movie about a man mistaken for Jesus Christ, was once perceived as capable of undermining the authority of thousand-year-old religious institutions. Indeed, it’s special to see it so widely available on Netflix today (more on cinema politics and censorship in another article, perhaps).
Subversive themes are some of the stronger examples of films selling ideas, but it happens everywhere. Taking up to 3000 people to create a Hollywood blockbuster⁵, filmmaking is a deliberate craft that culminates in a sell for a reaction from you. Each eyebrow raise, each soundtrack, and each costume is a move to tango with your mind to elicit an emotional response. And sometimes, it works. We buy it. Ahead of schedule in completing my 100-movie goal this year, I wanted to share a few of the most memorable films I watched this summer.
1. Tampopo (1985)
IMDb // Availability: Streaming on Kanopy (if you’re a McGill student), and The Criterion Channel. Can be rented or purchased on Apple iTunes, Youtube, and Google Play.
This is a hilarious film about food that actually left me full afterwards. It’s quirky, shameless, sexy, and heart-warming, anchored by the story of a woman’s pursuit of making good food for good customers. Naturally, it offers one of the most stylistic tutorials in the world on how to eat ramen like a pro. Tampopo is a success story about starting from the bottom and grinding away with resilience, but more importantly, it’s a story that sold me on the need to enlist the help of others. As someone just starting to find my way around entrepreneurship, I know that little could have happened this summer without my mentors (Zach and many others), CFI program directors (Ash, Nicole ❤), and other older fellow volunteers, and my sponsors, and my team. I received a salient reminder that I am here much less because of me, and more because of everyone else I’ve met along the way. Though they all eventually move on to their own quests, I will gratefully march on, ready for my cue.
2. A Bug’s Life (1998)
IMDb // Availability: Streaming on Disney Plus. Can be rented or purchased on Apple iTunes, Youtube, Google Play, Cineplex, and Microsoft Store.
As Pixar’s cute and inspiring family animation about an ant colony freeing itself from the tyrannical rule of grasshoppers, A Bug’s Life was an understandable staple of many childhoods. A breakdown-induced cartoon binge in July brought me to instant sympathy for Flik, the protagonist and social outcast. In a last ditch effort, Flik uses his unique creativity and determination to show that his once outrageous and ill-received ideas can eventually save the entire colony. Aside from giving us unexpected but brilliant leadership lessons (“first rule of leadership: everything is your fault”), this film also warns of the dangers of blindly following tradition, and the value of pushing the boundaries of what we already know to work. I quickly thought of one of our CFI weekly assignments — a Reid Hoffman lecture from YC’s Startup School, where he spoke of great founders often having contrarian ideas. This movie’s one-shot happy ending is unlikely to happen in real life. However, I appreciated the way it encouraged thinking critically about any idea as well as its criticisms, and then, if still compelled, taking a chance on something wild that just might work.
3. Tokyo Story (1953)
IMDb // Availability: Streaming on Kanopy (if you’re a McGill student), and The Criterion Channel. Can be rented or purchased on Apple iTunes, Youtube, and Google Play.
Never have I wanted to be home with my family more than I have after seeing this movie. This was a heart-breaking, sadly realistic story about an elderly couple taking a visit to Tokyo, which interferes with the busy adult lives of their sons and daughters. Although the parents never blame their children for growing up and taking their own path, there is a lingering air of grief that runs through this film. I was stuck in Montréal as I navigated CFI and the pandemic, making it difficult for me to keep in contact with my parents at a time when I would have been able to be with them most. Tokyo Story sealed in the idea that startup life in neglect of putting in the work to maintain healthy and important relationships, was a life I did not want. I miss you, Mum & Dad.
If you give any one of these movies a try — even if you decide to walk out (or click away, if isolating at home) during it — I’d love to hear what you think.
To end, I’d like to share a sales story of my own, a small victory that I’ve not talked about, but am rather fond of. It was some way through my degree that my attitude towards sales shifted, soon before I started a significant initiative that was not included in my part-time job description. It took me trying to quantify the positive impact that my initiative would make to finally (viscerally) understand that there was nothing manipulative about trying to feed myself for doing honest and much-needed work. With full transparency and respect, and faced with initial pushback but eventual understanding from my employer, I successfully negotiated compensation for the effort it’d take for me to complete the project. This time, I wasn’t requesting for donations to my charity’s cause, or trying to convince someone to hire me instead of someone else in the waitressing or research position that needed to be filled anyway. It was for me. In creating myself a job out of nothing, I finally claimed the idea that I, myself, had the capacity to create value. This was the first sale I made that I was proud of.
References and Further Reading
- Roger Ebert — The Battleship Potemkin Review (1925)
- BFI Sight and Sound — The 100 Greatest Films of All Time
- Nicholas Barber — BBC Culture — Life of Brian: The Most Blasphemous Film Ever?
- George Perry — Criterion Essays — Monty Python’s Life of Brian
- Stephen Follows — How many people work on a Hollywood film?
