r/interesting • u/Separate_Finance_183 • 8h ago
ART & CULTURE Bro studied himself š
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u/BokeTsukkomi 8h ago
I thought my impostor's syndrome was bad, but buying a book to learn how to write a script after winning two screenplay Oscars is on another level.
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u/Gunch_ 8h ago
My dad had this awful habit of always having to look something up before he said it. It would literally take a 10 minute conversation and easily triple that duration.
One day he was explaining a piezoelectric system to me and he needed the exact phrase to describe a certain behaviour. Pulls up his phone, finds an article and reads from it. I shit you not one of the sources for the article was a paper he'd written 30 years ago
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u/LukeMayeshothand 8h ago
Iām not as smart as your dad but Iāll want to cite something in an argument or discussion but many times I wonāt because Iām only 99% sure Iām right.
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u/blackkettle 6h ago
the closest I've ever come to this is googling programming debugging questions in the days of yore only to have the first result in google be a question I posted to Stackoverflow years before and then answered myself a week later after getting no replies.
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u/Dreams-of-Cthulhu 4h ago
Did you follow the tradition of writing a thank you post and then deleting the post with the answer? It's always fun to find a 15 year old thread with your exact problem and one deleted answer that hundreds of people thanked for solving it.
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u/Dr_Jabroski 3h ago
No you mark it as a duplicate of a completely unrelated problem and close it.
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u/AmmoTuff182 1h ago
This frequently happens with coding and it was described to me as because you are essentially forgetting something faster than you are learning it and because itās always changing
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u/Modredastal 3h ago
I habitually add disclaimers to my statements if I'm not certain they're accurate, even if I'm certain the other person doesn't care whether it's true. I can't bear to share false information if I can help it.
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u/Lou_C_Fer 2h ago
Same. Though another tool I use is being overly conservative to be sure that I'm not overstating my position.
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u/Arcangel4774 2h ago
If you do this in any proffesional capacity, I recomened you get in the habit of quantifying your certainty.Ā
To cut a long explination short, if you do it regulalry you get more accurate and people will use your information better.
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u/K_Linkmaster 6h ago
And proving it makes a 10 minute convo a 30 minute convo. This shits infuriating, dad should be a teacher.
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u/bodychecks 6h ago
I have the problem of just saying it, then realizing, in horror, that I was wrong! Then looking it up and realizing I was completely right. Bonus points if it was verbatim.
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u/Tier0001 5h ago
I regularly check the definition of words I know just to make sure I'm using them correctly.
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u/nightauthor 4h ago
Iāll just say: āblah blah blahā¦. Iām likeā¦. 95% sure thatās right, you might wanna look it up thoughā
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u/_PaddyMAC 7h ago
That sounds like the kind if tic you pick up in academia tbh.
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u/nightauthor 4h ago
Every conversation needs an intro, lit review, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion, and references.
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u/chipfrisch 7h ago
Reverse dunning kruger effect
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u/Bhaaluu 7h ago
Nah it's just the effect itself:).
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u/Nice-Cat3727 3h ago
Yep. The smarter you are, the dumber you realize you are as you can spot all the little spots of things you don't know
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u/General-Win4976 6h ago
It's actually a sliding scale with imposter syndrome beng a result of high knowledge level
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u/AzureDreamer 7h ago
God but cant you just admire the hell out of a man so commited to accuracy especially today I find that really charming.
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u/Loko8765 7h ago
Sometimes itās just forgetfulness.
I present as proof one of my very first posts on Reddit, nine years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/s/9Pkom7ZxTZ
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u/sayabulegila 4h ago
That is likely a learn behavior from his field. Engineers and sciencist can be raging pendants, and likely more than once he has been dismissed by a colleague because he did not get the phrasing exactly correct. You learn to watch your words very carefully in the environment.
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u/Resident_Table6694 5h ago
I do this too at work but thankfully I work remotely and itās over Teams chat most of the time. Iāll start rattling off reasoning for something and it comes out of my head a little too easily. So I think, āsurely thatās not right or Iām using a word wrongā. So a quick follow up turns into 20 minutes of me fact checking myself and searching the meaning of words. Itās maddening. Itās also probably why Iām a pretty quiet person. Canāt be wrong if you donāt say much.
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u/4daughters 5h ago
awful habit of always having to look something up before he said it.
I can understand that being annoying but I'll bet you never had to question once if what he was saying was true or not.
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u/2_short_Plancks 31m ago
While not remotely as cool or impressive as your dad, I did once look up a weird rule interaction for a boardgame I hadn't played for a while; and find that the "correct" answer was a post I'd made about seven years before.
Tbf that just made me feel dumb, and my friends mocked me relentlessly about it.
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u/Brashdinho 8h ago
Thereās nothing wrong with always looking to improve yourself though
Wouldāve been worse if he was like āI made the godfather, I donāt need tipsā
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u/DontAskAboutMyButt 3h ago
Wouldāve been worse if he was like āI made the godfather, I donāt need tipsā
This is how the Star Wars prequels happened
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u/VegaJuniper 6h ago
Stephen Spielberg went to film school but didn't graduate. Years later he decided to finally check that off his list. He simply submitted Schindler's List as his final thesis.
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u/Thtguy1289_NY 3h ago
Lol is this true? Thats hilarious if so
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u/dondeEstaLaVerdad 1h ago
Not a thesis, but as his submission for the final project for an advanced filmmaking class:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-may-31-me-graduate31-story.html
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u/nitid_name 5h ago
Neil Gaiman, before the whole creep stuff came to light, used to tell a story about feeling like an imposter. He was at some event full of highly accomplished people, chatting with an elderly gentleman who shared his name, when the other Neil said he felt like he didn't belong with so many accomplished people.
"But Neil, you were the first man to walk on the moon."
Apparently a lot of people suffer from it.
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u/AndreLeGeant88 4h ago
Armstrong was the type to think he contributed the least because he was just along for the rideĀ
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u/StoppableHulk 5h ago
And then unfortunately Neil Gaiman lured Neil Armstrong to his hot tub and the rest is sordid history.
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u/nitid_name 4h ago
It's such a bummer Gaiman is a terrible person. I used to really enjoy his writing.
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u/StoppableHulk 4h ago
Honestly what creeps me out most about Gaiman is how hard he clearly worked to cement his image as not a creep.
Just years of online activity curating his persona amongst his fans and the general public. I think his parents were in PR for scientology, and it really shows just how many lessons he absorbed from it at a very young age.
There's definitely a lot of potential for artists, writers, etc. to be creeps, and you see stories all the time of them getting fame and turning to abusing it
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u/Percinho 4h ago
I did too, but then a friend pointed out thay American Gods really gave her the ick, and when I read it again I saw her point. That was the first thing thay started to change my view a bit, and then the allegations all came to light.
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u/StoppableHulk 4h ago
What specifically gave the ick? The only thing I could see is maybe some parts of the storyline with the younger girl, Crow or something, forget her name, but nothing really happens there.
I think Sandman has a lot more ick, once you know what you're looking for, but none of it is really out-of-the-ordinary for comic books of that generation, really.
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u/DrugChemistry 5h ago
Neil Gaiman never walked on the moon tho?Ā
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u/BFfF3 5h ago
Correct but the other Neil did.
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u/Interesting-Quit8017 3h ago
Neil Armstrong was a Jazz player, he never walked on the moon
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u/FemtoKitten 5h ago
In my time in paris art circles I came across a guy who won several animation and art awards and he thought his stuff was trash and shouldn't be shown at all. It was like a shy middle schooler not wanting to show his sketches on his margins and he wasn't worth being in the space with the others, when he literally was award winning.
That experience definitely was where I realised I needed to get a better hold on my own feelings or worries because it clearly won't go away on its own when life or evidence piles.
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u/micellepp 5h ago
Iām just very mildly accomplished, but people tell me Iām far too humble when they compliment my achievements, even though I make an effort to say thank you and not appear shy or dismissive of my past works. I donāt understand how some people can bask in the limelight so easily.Ā
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 2h ago
Because playing the Humble Game is exhausting.
If someone wants to praise me I let them. Because I hate it when I compliment somebody and they won't accept it.
I view it all as some type of game. Sometimes I'll even lean into it. Thank them for their astute observations.
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u/Grollicus2 5h ago
Or maybe he just wanted to learn more about film theory so he could keep up with the industry jargon, making it easier to communicate his vision to his peers?
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u/Kaleidoscope-360 5h ago
I mean, I get it. When I first start writing or making music, the ideas flow and I'm passionate about each part. But if you don't know basic story structure or music theory or whatever, you have nothing to fall back on.
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u/SafetySad5244 42m ago
Thatās not even imposter syndrome anymore, thatās time-traveling self-doubt
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u/DelissioPepperoni 8h ago
What I love about Mario Puzo screenwriting career is that he wrote Godfather 1 & 2, then went on to do Superman 1 & 2 (how did he end up doing that???), came back for Godfather 3 and ended this illustrious sequence with the other Christopher Columbus movie (not the Ridley Scott one).
I doubt he was cited in any other screenwriting book.
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u/CosmicEveStardust 7h ago
He wrote a couple ok pulp novels and lucked out with having Coppola being the one directing.
It's like Gone Girl, if you have a director come in and direct well structured trash like it's gold, it'll be gold.
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u/Flacid_noodles 7h ago
Go read Forrest Gump.
Itās un-fucking-real how far the novel is from the movie.
Like, IIRC Forrest gets shot to the moon on a rocket with a talking chimp, to later crash land in an ocean and end up on an island of cannibals lead by an Oxford educated āpeople eatingā chief.
I understand subtext. But that book is terrible.
Also, Iāve read all of Puzos work. It is the pure definition of āif you liked the movie, youāll love the book.ā
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u/luxxeexxul 6h ago
Lol agreed for Forrest Gump. I was like "how did someone get their hands on this and decide this would be a great movie" AND THEN PULL IT OFF.
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u/batrushaha 5h ago
Life is like a box of chocolatesāyou never know what you're gonna get. š¤·š»āāļø
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u/SuperSaiyanKaren 5h ago
there's also supposed to be a sequel to Forrest Gump, and after the success of the first movie the producers went back to the author for the rights of Forrest Gump 2
they had fucked the author on money for Forrest Gump 1, hollywood acounting, film the movie through a shell company then bankrupt the shell company on purpose, all of his backend money was based on the shell company so he only got paid for the initial sale of the script
the author was quoted something like "why would they want to make a sequel to a movie that made no money," he was pissed they fucked him on money for the first one, so he refused to sell the rights for a sequel to spite them
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u/kaztrator 5h ago
If thatās the full story thatās pretty dumb of him. Everyone knows the first production isnāt that lucrative. Sequels (or renewals in TV) are always where the original cast and crew can leverage more money. Imagine if RDJ stopped at Iron Man 1, and just quit out of spite because he made less than Terence Howard. The author here couldāve surely put a higher price tag on the sequel equal to the profits he missed out on, plus the correct backend rights on the sequel itself and wouldāve made it right.
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u/bucolucas 4h ago
So the reason we have all the terrible sequels we do is so the author can be paid, and all we sacrifice is any goodwill the audience had for the first movie?
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u/Tight-Strain-3283 4h ago
Forrest gump made 10x it's budget back. it wasn't a misunderstanding, it's a long running scam in hollywood.
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u/ScipioCoriolanus 4h ago
Funny you mentioned Terrence Howard because if I remember correctly, that's exactly what happened with him, so he got replaced by Don Cheadle.
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u/ArtoDelToya 5h ago
Same with Jaws. Book is a terrible love triangle story. Movie is exponentially better.
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u/Middle-Accountant-49 7m ago
I havenāt read everything but I read the godfather and the Sicilian. Godfather 1 and 2 are WAY better than the book. Like the movies are art and the book is a page turner. It also has a whole subplot about a woman having a large vagina which was thankfully cut from the movie.
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u/Paper__ 6h ago
Gone Girl was a great book so not a good example.
This works really well for Heated Rivalry. I saw the series and was just blown away. Then I read the book. I get that Rachel Reid created this world and these characters and there is so much skill in that. But the actually writingā¦š³. Heated Rivalry the show is almost entirely Jacob Tieranyās genius.
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u/thenameofapet 7h ago
Bad example. All of Gillian Flynnās books were a great read.
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u/Real_Toe_4460 8h ago
Is this factual? If yes, this is just hilarious.
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u/KaurnaGojira 7h ago
Yup, it is. Mario ended up throwing that book out. That is because he knew enough that he needed improvents. And wasnt going to trust a book where he knew that reffrence a screen play that he knew was written by someone that has no idea what they are doing.
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u/tanne_sita_jallua 5h ago
Self awareness? Humility? Imposter Syndrome? Reminds me of the movie quote by Groucho Marx "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."
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u/ImmaLiveIllegal 5h ago
well kinda
he absolutely knew how to write novels. he studied writing at Columbia University and other schools, and had written at least two other books before the original Godfather
what is true is he didn't know shit about screenplays, and that's why Coppola wrote that for him
it is also true (according to lore) that he got a book on writing screenplays, and it referenced Coppola's work on the Godfather Pt 1
this meme is kind of accurate, and 100% disingenuous
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u/WormsDelicious286 6h ago
Sometimes someone that hasn't formally studied the field and doesn't really know what they're doing can make creative breakthroughs.Ā If everyone works in the "correct" way it begins to stagnate and you need that person to shake it up and innovate.Ā Or, have a good laugh if they fail.
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u/saturnfcb 8h ago
Is that Frank Reynolds ?
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u/hotpietptwp 8h ago
I thought he looked like Danny Divito.
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u/anally_ExpressUrself 7h ago
Boy are you going to be surprised when you Google what Frank Reynolds looks like.
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u/WIZZZARDOFFREESTYLE 8h ago
Reminds me of what my teacher used to tell us WHEN YOU MASTERBATE BE READY TO EJECULATEĀ
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u/SlickDillywick 8h ago
Public school, manā¦ my gym teacher used to say that all the time. He was usually behind a camera
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u/DiggThatFunk 1h ago
Why the fuck does this remind you of that and why the fuck was any teacher saying that to students in the first place? Lmao
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u/Latter-Vacation-4392 7h ago
I'm thinking having Francis Coppola there helping you as you write said screenplay probably smoothed the learning curve a little bit.
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u/Full-Mulberry1571 8h ago
They should have found a much smugger photograph of him
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u/FieldOfScreamQueens 8h ago
Interesting how things can be perceived differently. I just see a picture of someone in mid conversation.
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u/PseudoRussky 6h ago
I believe somehwat similar happened to James Cameron: he tried to figure out the exposition at the beginning of Way of Water, bought a book on script writing which pointed at one of his earlier films (Terminator or Aliens)
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u/OddRobotics 8h ago
Great show called "The Offer" goes into deep detail
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u/Wanderer150 7h ago
Great series ā didnāt get nearly enough buzz. And as that points out, Coppola was there every step of the way in the drafting process.
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u/GuildensternLives 4h ago
This is a bit misleading. He didn't know how to write in screenplay format, not that he didn't know how to write a narrative. The book he bought was about writing narratives, not about formatting.
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u/WellBeyonder 6h ago edited 6h ago
He probably adapted some real life stories he heard. If you ever lived close to that life you will have so many stories
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u/Middle-Accountant-49 6h ago
Itās not a very realistic mob movie. It doesnāt really portray what their lives were like.
Like goodfellas is much more realistic even though obviously Henry hill is glamorized as a person and most people are somewhat softened. Some of that though was maybe protraying Henryās perception of things.
However, their day to day life was much more realistic than the godfather.
In saying that they are still amazing movies.
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u/PB0351 5h ago
It wasn't him, it was Francis Ford Coppola who did this I'm pretty sure. Mario wrote the books, Coppola was the director and screenwriter of the movies.
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u/RunDNA 4h ago
Coppola and Puzo co-wrote the Godfather screenplays together. The behind-the-scenes accounts and the film credits confirm it.
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u/dprophet34 2h ago
I highly recommend The Offer a TV show that dramatises the making of The Godfather.
As with all TV it tells a story rather than 100% the truth but its broadly correct and very enjoyable
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u/TheClassics 6h ago
The godfather is such a bloated movie with unnecessary people movement
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u/SwingJugend 6h ago
Whaddaya mean, unnecessary people movement? You think they move around more than they have to? You'd prefer if they'd be standing still more? That's a bizarre complaint.
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u/DifficultyFit1895 5h ago
Ideally the entire film would take place in a conference room with the actors remaining seated for the duration.
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u/PenaltyAny3207 5h ago
The last hour is just Fredo and Connie asking Michael if they can take a bathroom break before the next slide deck is finished.
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u/HauntingStar08 3h ago
I need to rewatch Twelve Angry Men
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u/SwingJugend 2h ago
It was okay but it'd've been better if they all stayed seated during the whole movie. Those unnecessary trips to the water fountain drag the score down.
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u/johnc380 3h ago
We could reduce the cast to maybe 12 key figures. They might be a little angry about this change, of course.Ā
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u/MrJTeera 3h ago
Like an entire two and a half hour of mob sit-down, while a gang war is raging offscreen.
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u/Loughnashade 6h ago
ā6/10 wouldnāt watch againā
Typical Reddit comment lol
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u/dumquestions 6h ago
With all of them insisting upon themselves
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u/TheMcMcMcMcMc 6h ago
What does that even mean?
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u/heftybagman 5h ago
Right when you go to turn it off a character happens to raise their hands up and go āno wait stopā. Puzio was a master of pacing.
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u/Facial_Frederick 4h ago
Name a film you enjoy more and then give a detailed comparison of why it means more to you. I have all day.
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u/crouton-- 46m ago
Bum Fights. It's good because the bums in it fight each other. Godfather has a lot of expositions but hardly any bum fighting.
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u/Designer_Emu_6518 7h ago
Most movies back then were just a way for the mob to wash money. We really donāt study the mob enough probs bc the gov and corps use a of the tactics and ātaking the downā was just a war to cease their assets
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u/Healthy-Training-923 7h ago
Copala always talks about how he didnāt use the script while filming the godfather- he used an annotated copy of the book he made
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u/LakeM0bius_hunter 6h ago
Imagine winning two Oscars and then buying a tutorial just to discover you're the tutorial
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u/OwlRevolutionary7115 6h ago
Pretty sure that Coppola rewrote the script for Godfather and Richard Donner fixed the Superman scripts.
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u/Fair-Big-9400 5h ago
Goodfellas is the best introduction to mob movies, The Godfather may put you to sleep
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u/legit-posts_1 5h ago
I imagine this lack of screenwriting experience was made up for by the fact that his co screenwriter was Francis For Coppola
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u/Dublinyeshere 5h ago
Coppola did a lot of the writing/scene construction and character development.
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u/GrowlingPict 5h ago
well you cant break new ground if you follow what's already convention and written in all the guide books
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u/midtrailertrash 4h ago
Wild because The Godfather is a bad movie. Downvote away but I find them both Godfathers to be extremely overrated.
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u/InflationionFuntain2 4h ago
i watched a tv series about making godfather, it had great insight into his mind
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u/Unreadable-News 4h ago
The book for Godfather is full of slightly ludicrous side stories...
Like the Woman with the abnormallyĀ large vagina who thought she was destined to never be satisfied,until she met Sonny!
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u/flchic2000 4h ago
I recommend the series The Offer. Its about getting Godfather Part 1 made. Excellent!
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u/asleepyguard 4h ago
He wrote the novels, though, so he understood the structure of stories and how to craft them. That helps
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u/Competitive-Dot181 3h ago
An interesting story about Puzo is that he worked on the porno mags that were published by the company that Marvel comics was part of early on. Marvel was really just Stan Lee in a tiny office and Puzo and other porno mag guys bullied the hell of him.
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u/Winter_Illustrator58 3h ago
No, but really he studied an expert telling him what about his work was great. Obviously the guy has great storytelling instincts and a lot of writing talent, but there is a difference between making something great and knowing what makes that thing great ad being able to replicate it.
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u/ThousandEclipse 3h ago
The funny thing is, this could actually be helpful. If you feel like you stumbled into success, having someone tell you what it was that you did right, what you did wrong, and how to continue doing that in the future is extremely important.
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u/IllusionaryHobo 3h ago
Turns out the secret to amazing writing is writing something amazing.
The rest is just details.
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u/Awkward-Ad-6706 3h ago
Sure but he cowrote the screenplay of Godfather with Francis Ford Copolla who had already won an Oscar for writing Patton
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u/-runs-with-scissors- 3h ago
To be fair, he did co-write with Francis Ford Coppola. One was thw right hand and one was the left.
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u/TheBlockChainVillage 3h ago
The opening set piece of the godfather is my fav section of cinema. The wedding scene. Establishing all the characters.
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