Stories aren't the icing on the cake; they are the cake!
Interpretation
Stories are fundamental and essential, not just an addition to something else.
In this quote, Peter Guber emphasizes the importance of storytelling as a core element of communication and experience. Rather than viewing stories as mere embellishments, he argues that they are the foundational substance that gives meaning and depth to our lives and interactions, much like the cake itself, as opposed to just being the decorative icing on top.
In practice
Using this quote at a workshop on storytelling techniques.
Beside every great success are the seeds of enormous failure. In every failure, there's the opportunity seeds of great success. They're not miles apart. So if they're that close together, and if you're really working, you're always gonna have that likelihood that something's not going to work.
In any situation that calls for you to persuade, convince or manage someone or a group of people to do something, the ability to tell a purposeful story will be your secret sauce. Telling to win through purposeful stories is situation, industry, gender, demographic, and psychographic-agnostic. It's an all-purpose, everyone wins tool.
Today everyone, whether they know it or not, is in the emotional transportation business. More and more, success is won by creating compelling stories that have the power to move people to action. Simply put, if you can’t tell it, you can’t sell it.
The minute you start the process of deciding to make a film and you're communicating that vision to anyone, you're in the process of selling. If you don't understand that, you're not in show business. You're just not.
Telling purposeful stories is interactive. It's not a monolog. Ultimately, purposeful tellers must surrender control of their stories, creating a gap for the listener(s) to willingly cross in order to take ownership. Only when the listener(s) own the tellers' story and make it theirs, will they virally market it.
Miss the audience's heart as a filmmaker, and the only wallet that gets hit will be your own. That's because the heart is always the first target in story telling.
I used to be more involved with every aspect of everything onstage. I'm way more relaxed now. It feels like anything can happen.
Architecture is the thoughtful making of space
This is the theory… that anything that is art… is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it’s no good having one without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it’s irritating.
So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.
I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know.
A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.
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