What "Rocky" Teaches Us About Communication | Larry Wilson's How to Talk to Humans Podcast

What can the classic movie and book "Rocky" teach us about communication, relationships, and personal growth? In this episode of the How to Talk to Humans podcast, communication expert Larry Wilson explores the timeless lessons found in Rocky's journey from underdog to champion. Using stories, examples, and insights from the beloved film, Larry demonstrates how perseverance, authenticity, listening, empathy, and human connection can improve the way we communicate in business, public speaking, sales, leadership, and everyday life. Discover why the principles that made Rocky a champion can also help you become a more effective communicator and build stronger relationships with the people around you.

Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method

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Transcript

Larry Wilson 0:02

Hi, this is Larry Wilson and this is How to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires and zombies, extraterrestrials, this is not the joke. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned for 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world. And their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success. I wanted to talk with you today specifically about writing. And I know this is terrifying to many of you. Your first reaction, I think some of you, is oh, I'll get AI to write it. Whatever it is you have to write. And there's certainly nothing wrong with that. But I think AI should be used as a um as a template or uh guideline of some kind. Because it's never going to match what you can do because you're human. AI will never ever accomplish that. But it can give you a good structure as a starting place. If you give it your ideas or the premise of what you have to do, uh the more information, of course, you can give AI, uh, the better job it can do of putting something together like this. And uh I know that as terrifying as it is, I want to share with you a really interesting story today. Actually, there's a couple different things. I just hope we'll be able to fit it all in. Um, but one story I wanted to fit with you today is about a book. A woman named Carolyn Bix, that's B-I-C-K-S, has written a book. I think I think it's been released. It's called Monsters in the Archives, My Year of Fear with Stephen King. Now, let me begin by saying this, and I realize some people may think it's heresy for me to say this, but I I don't think King is a great writer. Um I know some people do. I think he's a great storyteller. But boy, oh boy, does Stephen King know how to make you want to know what happens next? What happens next? Boy, in fiction writing, that may be the greatest achievement. So the people, I mean you've you've all, whether you've had this experience yourself, it doesn't have to just be with Stephen King. It's with any great book that you've really enjoyed, where you stayed up much later than you intended to, because you couldn't put it down. That's that's great storytelling. Now, I say King isn't a great writer because I sometimes I think his characters are a little um uh sometimes I think they're a cookie cutter or cliche a little bit. And I think he thinks that too. I I've read him or heard him in interviews sometimes accuse himself of that. Um and sometimes the way he weaves relationships uh between men and women, and uh I just I think he's a good writer. I just don't think he's on the order of someone like Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut or something. When you read them, it's like reading music. It they're the way they put the words together and the way they sound and the way they echo in your I mean they're just incredible. Now, having said all that, I'm I'm not as big a fan of King anymore. I used to be a big fan of his, but I noticed a trend in his work, and I can't blame him because I'm not a best-selling author. I don't know what it feels like. But it seemed like when he became so famous, and his books were everywhere. I mean, they were so ubiquitous. If you flew on an airplane, before you got to the gate, you passed some store that had books people would buy to read on the airplane. And King was always there prominently displayed. Sometimes more than one of his books prominently displayed. Hardback, soft cover. I mean, kind of a perfect to read on an airplane because, you know, it's a fast read, and it's like I say, you can't put it down. So uh, but I just I I I felt at some point in his journey he stopped adhering to some of the things I think are so important in storytelling, and that I talk about with you here in the VIP training more than once, about how a story has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It may seem so obvious to you, but in the beginning, we want to meet whoever the main character is, and we want to learn whatever it is their need is. Now, you could be talking about yourself when you're crafting a story. Or, or as I'm talking right now, you could adapt this to thinking about crafting your own story to tell people. This is how I came to be where I am now, doing whatever it is I do. And it could be directly related to your business, to selling real estate, to working in finance, to uh creating uh some kind of manufacturing business. It doesn't have to be. I mean, this uh I think is an important lesson you can learn from Stephen King. That in his books, characters are very ordinary people, but sometimes they fall into extraordinary circumstances. So that could easily be you. And even if you may not think they're extraordinary, because it's your life and it may be the only one you've ever lived, so it seems perfectly normal. But sometimes if you step back, if you're able to distance yourself, you may look and go, oh, I guess this is kind of unusual. Most people do not have these experiences I've had. Now, once you start telling us about stuff that we don't have familiarity with, it's very compelling. We always want to learn about new stuff. Whether it's about fly fishing, whether it's about stamp collecting, whether it's uh what it's like to be a prison guard, whether it's about moving to a strange country where you don't speak the language, could be anything. But when you start telling us the specific things, when you tell us maybe you're telling us about someone who's a makeup artist for movies and television, and you start to explain about the kit that they put together and where they get the different things and what the different things do, and and the challenges they're faced with when they come into the makeup room, all that stuff becomes fascinating to us. We're always interested in that. Um, but so I I urge you, as I'm speaking here, to consider your own story. It must have a beginning. If the story is about you, it's where we are introduced to you, learn who you are. Maybe this involves where you live or how old you are, or what your training is, or what you expected your life to be, or something like that. And then we want to know what that main character's need is. And it may be as simple as my need was I wanted to be able to support a family. That's perfectly respectable need. Or your need may be that you wanted to be a billionaire. I'm not making value judgments on any of this. That's not my job. It's up to you to tell your story, whatever it may be. But I can tell you this if you do this exercise, as I'm describing it now, if you apply yourself, you're going to be armed with a powerful instrument that you can whip out any time and lay it on people and really capture their imagination and connect with them in a way that you may have never thought was possible. But believe me, this storytelling is foundational. It is in our DNA. We like these stories because they're a way of making sense out of this crazy life, you know, and I don't mean that you have to figure everything out about life, or that you have to have the raison d'etre, or or the unique that excites it's just your point of view. You may be able to share something that for someone who wonders, why can't I get ahead in business? Or why does it seem like the people who are dishonest are more successful than the people who are on up? Whatever your point of view may be that you present. It to the listener, it really a story that's really satisfying. I'll tell you this, I've said it before. Uh, you know, Hollywood is filled with young screenwriters who think I'm gonna blow everyone's mind, I'm gonna have an unhappy ending to this story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Young writers have been doing this, I would imagine, since Hollywood began. Sometimes you can do that and have a successful film if it's powerful acting and directing and cinematography and it's clearly uh artistic work. But in general, we all like happy endings better. Why do you think we do? Have you ever considered this? Well, because if we identify with the characters in the story, we want them to have a happy resolution like we wish for ourselves. It's as simple as that. And sometimes it may be more difficult. You may have created a now. I'm jumping back and forth. I could be talking about you crafting your own personal story, it's fine, but I could also be talking about you writing something, maybe it's a work of fiction, maybe it's a biography of someone, maybe it's uh a long dissertation about a particular product or service, either that you provide or would like to provide, or you grew up training, it could be anything. But when I say these things, I hope that you'll take everything with a grain of salt. Um there are no rules here, there are no writing police who will bust your door down and arrest you. You're free to experiment. And this, of course, is kind of what's really great about writing. As I've told you so many times, you're sick of hearing that writing is rewriting. That great writing is not the first draft. And anyone who tries to present that to you is a liar. I don't care who it is, I don't care who it is. You know, the one thing I point out time and again uh Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which is an incredibly powerful piece of writing, is only 277 words. That's that's pretty short. And all these people at one time or another have tried to present say he just sat down and wrote it on the back of an envelope. Oh my god, not true. There are too many copies that have eventually come to light by historians that show Lincoln wrote many drafts of the Gettysburg Address, and they were longer. So he rewrote and rewrote, and that's part of the reason that's so powerful, is that there's no fat in it at all. It's an extraordinary piece of writing, it's so succinct. It's you know what? I'll include a link on this uh uh rerun on the replay of this training. I'll include a link to a copy of Gettysburg Address because it's unbelievable. But perhaps in a more modern taste, this book I mentioned that this woman, Caroline Bix, wrote, Monsters in the Archives, My Year of Fear with Stephen King, will uh be uh much more uh it will tell you everything you need to know. Uh the the uh I'm jumping around here again. I I don't want to drop the ball here. I was saying before your first act, we meet the main character, we learn what their need is, what their desire is. The second act, which is longer than the first act, uh, we see them attempting to achieve whatever they want. If it's fiction we're working on, then we want to create obstacles. It's not very interesting if they wanted to do this thing and then they did. The end. If we see the obstacles and hurdles and barriers and challenges they had to face and overcome, it's enormously satisfying to us when in the third act we see the resolution. Now, in fairness, resolutions not always have to be happy, doesn't mean they get what they want. Um, an example I've mentioned before, and I frequently will cite film because you can stream it, you can take a look immediately. But also, if you spend five minutes on the internet, you can find screenplays, the written screenplay of all these films that I mentioned here. You can see what's on the page, which is incredible education. I wish I had had that growing up. I mean, it's an incredible resource. But I mentioned here uh the screenplay to Rocky, Sylvester Stallone's breakout film, his first screenplay, first time we see what's not actually the first time he was ever in film, he had little bit parts and stuff, but it's the one he's famous for, of course, that took the world by storm. This unknown guy writes this script, becomes an international superstar overnight, really and truly is what happened. And there's a very important thing in Rocky. I mean, how this guy wrote such an incredible screenplay, I don't know. But I will tell you this. I've read a couple of screenplays of his that did not get produced. They were early in his career after Rocky, and they were great. There was a sort of a biography, not a biography, but a story about Edgar Allan Poe that he wrote that I thought was incredible. Don't know why it never got made. Wow, it was great writing. So this I don't know. I don't know enough about him or his story, but in Rocky, we meet Rocky in the beginning. He's sort of a he's a dumpy, low, very low-level club fighter. He's nobody. And there's all these things about him, but he's really winning. We, I mean, personally, we come to love him so quickly. We can see he has a heart of gold, he's honest, he's loyal, he's courageous, but he's just sort of a loser, and through a series of crazy circumstances, but very believable, because obviously Stallone either lived in this world or researched and knew about this world. Uh, through and it's a little far-fetched, but in the film and in the script, we completely believe it. It seemed by a series of weird circumstances, the heavyweight champion of the world, Apollo Creed, was going to fight somebody who was like an up-and-comer who was supposed to be a challenger. And that person for some reason is either hurt or sick, or something happens where they have to withdraw and aren't able to do it. And all the publicity and everything else has been set up. And uh the promoters say, we've got to find a replacement, got to find a replacement. And through a strange series of circumstances, this kind of low-level nobody, Rocky, gets chosen for this exhibition fight. Now, it's not, you know, that's part of what makes it so great and so real. Not like he gets a chance at the heavyweight champion of the world title match. No, it's that's never gonna happen. But he's gonna fight in an exhibition fight with the heavyweight champion of the world. And this is someone who Rocky admires and is looked up to. And you know, it's all a big deal. And many famous memes that you've seen. Rocky in training, you know, he gets a coach, a trainer to train him in training harder than he's ever trained, and how difficult it is. And the famous scene of him in Philadelphia running up the steps of the Capitol building when he's really starting, his training is starting to pay off, and he's getting in shape, and he's starting to feel like he could really do this, and the music is playing, and you know, even if you've never seen the film, I bet you've seen those clips, you know. So it's very powerful. Now, in films, at the midpoint, which is exactly the middle of the script, once the film is made, anything can happen. Anyone can do anything. But in the writing, the first act is usually about 30 pages. The last, the third act is about 30 pages. That's where we find out whether he wins or loses, whether whatever the hero, whatever the main character wants, whether they get it or don't get it. The second act, which is the middle act, is twice as long as either the first or third act. It's usually about 60 pages. And halfway through that act is the midpoint. And some writers treat it as no different than anything else. But in blockbuster movies, whether it's by intention or Or by accident, whether it's by design or default, I can't really say. So I know there's some writers who clearly have talked about, oh no, no, I did this absolutely intentionally. I have to believe Stallone did this intentionally in Rocky. His trainer, Mickey, has him watching films of Apollo Creed to try and learn what his weaknesses are and how Rocky's gonna strategize fighting him and what he's gonna do. And as he's watching these films, this dead center, it's page 60 in the screenplay, the exact center of a 120-page screenplay. He has what some screenwriters call a visit with death. And it's sometimes where uh main character confronts what he's most afraid of or his fallibility or his mortality that could be. In this case, Rocky's watching films of Apollo Creed Rocky's need that is established in act one is he wants to be the heavyweight champion of the world. Now we can see he's not gonna be, but that's what he wants. In the second act, he has this opportunity to fight the heavyweight champion of the world. I mean, this something crazy could happen here, right? But as he's watching these films of Apollo Creed, he has a realization that oh, I I can't beat this guy. This guy's the heavyweight champion of the world. He didn't get that title because people voted for him, he didn't get it because he paid for it or he went to some school he's the heavyweight champion of the world because he's better boxer than anyone in the world. And Rocky realizes I I can't beat him. And then the writer Stallone does an incredible thing. His main character changes his need. He decides if I could go the distance, if I could go 15 rounds, no matter how many times I get knocked down, if I could get back up before the bell rings, get back in the ring, if I could last 15 rounds with Apollo Creed, that would be the same as me becoming the champion of the world. Now I'm not gonna tell you what happens if you haven't seen this movie. It's incredible riding. It's incredible writing. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com. There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Human.