403: Hollywood Secrets for Effective Business Storytelling with Matthew Luhn

By February 20, 2019Podcasts

 

 

Matthew Luhn says: "The people who have mastered storytelling in business are the ones who lead their industries."

Movie story consultant Matthew Luhn shares the key principles and approaches for making compelling, emotionally-resonant stories–even if you’ve got a “boring” work topic.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Two story elements that keep an audience hooked
  2. The three key flavors of emotion
  3. The universal six story themes

About Matthew

Matthew Luhn is a writer, story branding consultant, and keynote speaker with over 25 years’ experience at Pixar Animation Studios, with story credits including the Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. franchises, Finding Nemo, UP, Cars, and Ratatouille. Alongside his work in Hollywood, Luhn trains CEOs, marketing teams, directors, and professionals on how to craft stories for Fortune 500 companies, Academy Award-winning movies, and corporate brands grossing billions of dollars worldwide, advice he’s packed into his new book, The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond. To learn more, visit matthewluhnstory.com.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Matthew Luhn Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Matthew, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Matthew Luhn
My pleasure. I’m always happy to help people be awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we were having an awesome preamble conversation about you were an animator on Toy Story and I mentioned I had saw it all the way through for the first time just recently. That was fun. But toys are a part of your life, not just that you played with them as a youngster, but that you were in toy catalogues and your family had a toy business. Can you orient us to the early part of the Matthew story?

Matthew Luhn
Yes. Everybody I guess when you start off when you’re a kid you think my life is pretty normal. My parents are teachers or dentists or whatever. But my family, yeah, everybody in my family from my grandparents to my great-grandparents to uncles and aunts and mom and dad, they all owned toy stores. We had the largest family-owned chain of toy stores, Jeffrey’s Toys in San Francisco.

Actually, the only guy who didn’t get sucked into the toy stores was the guy that the toy stores were named after, Jeffrey, my uncle. He ended up becoming a photographer, but even though he was a photographer, he didn’t get far away from toys because he ended up being one of those guys responsible during the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s of taking the photos for all those toy catalogues.

Whenever he needed some cheap child labor, he’d say, “Matthew, come on in with your friend. We’ll give you the toy and we just want you to play with these A-Team toys or this Inspector Gadget toy.” Lo and behold, by the time I’m in high school, I go, “Wait a minute, what were those photos ever used for?” And yeah. You can always find them online. But my life has really had a lot to do with toys.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well this is a rich backdrop because I think we are going to have a lot of fun in a toy play kind of a way. That’s a forced segue. That’s a signature part of the show.

Matthew Luhn
Sounds good.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to hear, you worked as a story supervisor and you have described that job as your responsibility is to make people cry, which I think is pretty succinct way to point to it in terms of having people feel things. I’d love to get your take on when you are supervising stories, what kinds of adjustments do you find yourself making again and again that most of our stories could use improvements in these kind of key ways that show up repeatedly?

Matthew Luhn
Sure. First off, yes, my job is to make people cry, but I also want to put it out there that also to keep them sitting on the edge of their seats during action scenes and then make them laugh and at the end make them really think and be inspired.

It’s funny that no matter how many movies I’ve worked on, and you think to yourself, “Oh, we’ve got it figured out this time. No problem. This one’s going to be easy. It’s Toy Story 3. We’ve done the first and the second.” It’s never easy. There’s always a new set of problems. It’s funny how it always goes back to two things over and over again. It makes no difference if it’s a film, a TV show, a play, a book, whatever.

It always goes back to who is the hero and what do they want. I know it sounds so simple. It sounds like duh, but so many times people put together a story and you really can’t tell who is the main character or what their vision is, their goal in the story. It constantly goes back to that.

Sometimes people when they’re crafting a story, they’ll have a hero, main character, but the main character will have multiple goals. Then we as the audience just get distracted. We don’t know what to root for them for. Or they have no goals and we lose interest. Or the story just lacks a central character. It’s so silly, but it happens to the best of us. That’s the thing that keeps showing up again and again.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fascinating. I’m trying to think, I guess maybe we don’t want to name names in terms of here’s a story that sucked.

Matthew Luhn
Oh yeah, yeah. I know.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t want to put you on the spot there.

Matthew Luhn
Sure, sure.

Pete Mockaitis
But I think sometimes I guess I find that maybe we’ve got a clear leading hero and maybe it’s clear what they want, but I just don’t care about them and what they want. I guess I think that that goal’s kind of dumb or not worthwhile.

Matthew Luhn
Yeah. I think one of the things – it’s a tricky thing because when you are creating a story, there’s really three things that motivate you as a creative person, as a writer, a storyteller. One is deadlines. The other one is usually desperation. Then the other one that really inspires you to come up with some ideas is daydreaming.

When we daydream we think about moments from our own lives that would make good stories or something we heard or saw or experienced. The tricky thing is sometimes those ideas may be too abstract. They may only connect with a few people.

But really, if you want to be able to create a story that connects with as many people as possible, you need to come up with universal themes that have been showing up in everybody’s life, no matter what age or gender or culture, like the desire to be in love. It’s universal. The desire for safety and security for yourself and people you love. Or not to be abandoned, to feel belonged. These are all universal themes.

Whenever you’re watching a story and you’re like, “Eh, I can’t really get behind this character,” that’s probably the first reason is that their goal is not universal. The next thing is that even if you have a character that is so dastardly, like Walter White from Breaking Bad

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, my favorite.

Matthew Luhn
Or Anakin. Even if the character is really not a nice person, you still need to make sure that the audience either has empathy for them or there’s something likeable about them. You’ll see time and again that even with the most dastardly characters, they’ll always have somebody they care about, like Walter White, he still cares about his kids and his wife. Then there’s empathy because you know the situation he’s in.

There are steps to be able to make your character likeable and to make sure that the goal that they have is universal. That’s what you need to do to make sure that the audience isn’t like, “Eh, I could care less. I’m going to switch the channel.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. We’re talking about some of the components that make a story great and your book is called The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond. Let’s talk about leveraging it in a business or professional context.

Most of us will not be in the position of writing a TV or movie or a novel. Some have, which is awesome. Thanks listeners for sending me your novels. But if we want to do some storytelling in business, how do we do that? It might seem like tales of product innovation or profit and loss are not maybe as compelling as, Walter White could die.

Matthew Luhn
Yeah, you’re putting me to sleep right now talking about that stuff. Well, really when we go back to really one of the first people, first person who talked about the story, it was Aristotle in his Poetics books. One of the things he pointed out was that the person who is able to really master the metaphor is a very powerful person.

A metaphor is basically when you can take something that’s dry and analytical like profit and loss, but you can share a story that maybe is not business related. Maybe it’s something that happened to you when you were ten years old, but the takeaway message at the end communicates the feeling of the message of teamwork or the power of innovation.

There’s a couple of different ways you can use storytelling in business. Really, yes, telling the story around your company, the founder, that’s kind of like a no-brainer. Telling the story around your products through the eyes of the consumer, the customer, the guest through endorsements and testimonials, that’s a good one.

But the next one is how you use those metaphors to be able to enlighten people, to be able to help kind of complicated or dry information be more memorable and impactful internally or externally at your company or beyond.

Then also the most important way you can use storytelling is to be able to paint a picture for the listener, for that potential client of what their story could be like, what their company could be like, what their life could be like if they engaged with you or used your product or service. Really, we’ve seen from Steve Jobs to Walt Disney that the people who have mastered story telling in business are the ones who lead their industries. It happens over and over again.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So telling the story of what your life would be like if you used the product. I think you had a really nice example in your TEDx talk. There was a Mercedes commercial about a teenage boy, maybe 13, 14, 15, on his first. I guess the story was just that, hey, this Mercedes is reliable in snow, but we had a whole lot of drama behind it because he’s going to the movies. We’ll link to that in the show notes.

Matthew Luhn
Yeah, he’s going on his first date and is she going to show up because it’s completely snowed out. Instead of watching another boring car commercial where the narrator is talking about the performance in bad weather, we actually see the car weather the storm, get him to the movie theatre and I won’t blow it because you should watch it because there’s elements of tension in there, but it goes back to that universal theme of wanting to be in love.

Everybody can connect with that. Everybody has been at some point – when you’re born, you want to be loved. They were able to use that universal theme to be able to show – and showing is always better than telling – how effective their product, their service is. We have a main character with a goal. There’s a tool that helps them reach their goal. That’s what it’s all about in business.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Then I’d love to hear then, it sounds like you’ve already gotten a lot of components here, but maybe just to make sure we’re being thorough, are there any other key components that make the best story, which wins, in fact the best?

Matthew Luhn
Sure. I think the next thing that I try to encourage people about is that when you watch a movie, the movies that truly impact you and you love, the top movies that are out there, books, plays, everything, they’re not ones where everything is happy from beginning to end or everything is sad from beginning to end. We love stories that go back and forth between happy and sad.

When we end up using storytelling for business, there’s this tendency where we want everybody to think our company is perfect, we are perfect, our products are perfect. We have never made any mistakes at our company. We are the number one dot, dot, dot in our industry. First off, it’s not real. Second off, it’s really boring. What people love in a story is obstacles.

We love a hero that has a goal. You could be your company that has a goal. Your consumer or customer that has a goal. But the obstacles is what – I guess you would say in the business world is like the research and development. What went into making that product? Share with us when it blew up, share with us when the company almost went bankrupt because it keeps you sitting on the edge of your seat because you want to know what happened.

We love a hero with a goal, with a set of obstacles. Then the most important thing is a transformation, how this product/service has transformed people’s lives, how a pair of shoes or a computer or a car can make people healthier or happier or wealthier, have more time with their family and friends. This transformation is really it’s the climax. It’s the grand finale of what you want to succeed at.

You can tell a great story in business, but if it doesn’t drive anyone to action, it was pointless. That’s the transformation part.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Boy, this is awesome because as you’re speaking it’s just really catching all sorts of things. My favorite movie is Life Is Beautiful with Roberto Benigni.

Matthew Luhn
Oh right, right.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, we’ve got some happiness and some sadness in there.

Matthew Luhn
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m tearing it up just thinking about it. Then that connects for me – it’s about me for a moment, Matthew. If you’ll-

Matthew Luhn
Sure, sure. It’s always about us.

Pete Mockaitis
If you’ll indulge me.

Matthew Luhn
The funny thing is, I’ll tell you right now, the reason why we love heroes in stories and that we always have a hero in a story is because we all see our human psyche as that we are heroes on a journey.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Matthew Luhn
That’s why we do that. Also, I just want to point out that the reason why you do cry in a movie or you have tears of joy is because when you juxtapose a happy moment and a sad moment successfully in a film or in anything, the release from dopamine to oxytocin – dopamine is kind of the happy chemical, oxytocin is more of the somber chemical – when you put those right next to each other, the chemicals change so quickly, so you could be laughing one moment and then you discover something sad and it will tear you apart.

There’s kind of a science to storytelling that these chemicals get released from dopamine, oxytocin and then endorphins to make you laugh.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s kind of what you’re going for in a great story is that you’re going to share some things that trigger the happy, trigger the sad, and trigger the laugh.

Matthew Luhn
Absolutely. The way I always see it is, it’s kind of like these three choices that you can get of different ice cream. It’s like the funny moments, the emotional moments, or kind of this anticipation/action moments. Really when you think about it, that breaks down all the movies. It’s either funny, emotional – kind of like heartfelt – or action. When you can make a film that kind of blends all of those, like Toy Story did, you really put together a compelling piece of storytelling.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, yeah. I’m also thinking about even just a gum commercial. They played a song that we played at our wedding, which was the Haley Reinhart version of I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You with this gum. It showed this guy drew doodles on the gum wrappers. We’ll link to it in the show notes.

Matthew Luhn
Okay, cool. I was hoping you weren’t going to say you played the Double Mint song …, but this is better.

Pete Mockaitis
It was so touching at our wedding.

Matthew Luhn
Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
There we have it. It’s like the product that he’s doodling on these gum wrappers is sort of having a transformation in their life because we kind of see the relationship unfolding.

Similarly to, I’m thinking about the Google – I’m linking to all of these – the Google commercials that’s really emotionally powerful where it starts with how to impress a French or Italian girl, how to speak Italian or French. Then it goes all the way – geez, I’m a crybaby today – it goes all the way to – I don’t want to spoil it, but their relationship also develops in a touching way.

Linking to the show notes all of these things. You’re really connecting the dots for me in terms of why is this effective. It’s like, I don’t know. I guess I’m a softy.

Matthew Luhn
This is the thing. This is what people listening to this should think about. Just like you’re recalling all of these commercials or movies, you’re recalling them because you remembered them. Storytelling does make things more memorable.

The truth is that when you just share information, people only retain a very small amount. They say ten minutes later, you only retain five percent of the information. But if you can wrap a story around it, even a piece of gum or a car, people are going to retain so much more. They’re going to remember it and it’s going to make them feel something. It’s going to impact them. Then the last thing, it’s going to be personal. All of the sudden, you’re playing a gum commercial at your wedding.

This is what great marketers, great salespeople, great branding teams do. They’re the ones who see that storytelling is not just for entertainment.

I always knew I wanted to write a book on storytelling, but there’s so many books on storytelling out there that I almost felt like I just don’t want to waste my time or the audience’s time writing a book that they can already get.

One of the things that I saw that the world needed was a book that shared actually the Pixar storytelling techniques that could be used for business. A lot of those business books out there on storytelling are not written by people who are necessarily film writers. The actual techniques and tools that I have in the book are ones that we would use at work. But instead of you inserting a car or a bug or a rat, you can insert your product or your founder or you can better yet, that customer.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Well, you had a couple teaser fascination bullets in your book that I can’t resist. Let’s touch on a couple of them.

Matthew Luhn
Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s see. You shared with us a few universal story themes, but you mentioned six. Did we tick off all six?

Matthew Luhn
Oh gosh, I’m not sure if I did. Let’s see. There’s love. There’s safety and security. There is wanting to be free and be spontaneous. Just think about in the movie Brave, she’s been set up to get married and become the queen. She just wants to be like an adventurer.

Then the next three are ones that are kind of based on fear. Those first are like desires. The next ones are fears, like the fear of not belonging, the fear of abandonment. You guys are going to have to read the book. I’m getting stumped on the sixth one right now. It’ll come to me in a second. But these are – they really, they just keep showing up again and again.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, I’d love to get your take in terms of at the very beginning, how do we hook attention well?

Matthew Luhn
Well, this is not anything new. It just seems like it’s even harder today, which is how to be able to hook someone’s attention. I think we know that when you – say you want to do a pitch for a product or a movie or you’re just trying to start up a conversation with somebody, people have very limited attention spans. They’re about eight seconds I think is the human attention span.

How do you engage people to want to continue listening about your company or what your product or service does? When I am putting together a hook on a movie poster or a trailer or I’m going to do the pitch for a film, I’ve got to make sure that first off, it’s not too long. It needs to be clear and concise. I really try to make sure that my pitch is not longer than eight seconds.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding.

Matthew Luhn
Really.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re going to have to give me a few examples. Wow, eight seconds. Is that even a sentence?

Matthew Luhn
Here. You’ll count it out in your head. What about, “What if superheroes were banned from saving people?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Matthew Luhn
You’re kind of intrigued because you’re like, “I know superheroes save people, so why would they be banned from saving people?” That’s The Incredibles. Or could you have one that is “What if a rat wanted to be a French chef?”

Now those are films, so you could say to yourself, “Well, Matthew, those are films, so you’re cheating.” “What if you could put a thousand songs in your pocket?” That was the pitch Steve made for the iPod. “What if you could put a thousand songs in your pocket?”

What’s going on here is that when you have a hook, you have really four options. You can either come up with something unusual that takes the ordinary world and shares how it could be different, that superheroes that are not allowed to save people. You’re not going to have to use a Walkman with 14 songs on a cassette tape. You can actually put a thousand songs in your pocket.

Or the second one is something unexpected, the shock value. “What if a rat was a French chef?” Then the other two is landing people in an action or conflict, like when you’re clicking through channels on TV and you see the good guys chasing the bad guys. You want to know if they’re going to get the bad guys, so you keep watching. Or landing people into a conflict, like seeing two people in a kind of very intense conversation. You can’t stop watching.

These types of things are great ways to create hooks. I always suggest keep it within eight seconds. It’s always helpful to start with a ‘what if’. Don’t make it too abstract that people don’t know what it’s about, but the same time don’t get too wordy and start repeating yourself too much because people are going to get bored. That’s what I do for a hook.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, with those ‘what if’s,’ do all of your pitches start with ‘what if’s’ or are there any other formats that they occur?

Matthew Luhn
When I’m creating and I start with a ‘what if,’ but then, I start to use whatever words feel most natural. But there’s something about starting with a question that pulls people in. It entices people to want to know what’s the answer. That’s probably why.

Maybe you don’t have to start with a ‘what.’ You can start with a ‘why.’ Why is that if you want to get from Point A to Point B, you have to get in a stinky taxi that charges too much and they’re rude to you? What if there was another option? That could be Uber or Lyft.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, got you.

Matthew Luhn
That’s what I think about when I’m creating a hook.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Could you maybe give us an example of bringing some of this to life with regard to a client? It’s like, all right, they’ve got a proposal for a product or a business or a service or a process or a story to share with the investors, the customers, their employees about something that might seem boring in the realm of business, but suddenly just came to life with a thrilling story?

Matthew Luhn
You think about – I would say data and analytics. That’s sounds pretty wordy, a little dry. I think a lot of companies, they know that collecting data and having good information on people, it’s beneficial because you’re going to be able to help people be able to get what they need more effectively.

When I come into companies to be able to help them tell stories that are connected to data and analytics, I have them go back to what is the takeaway for your service or product. The whole takeaway is the more you know about people, the better you’re going to be able to help them.

Then you can think about moments in your life where somebody got you a birthday gift or it’s your birthday at work and they get you the cake. You’re allergic to dairy. You can’t eat gluten. They got you a big chocolate cake. Obviously, if they would have really taken the time to know you as a person, they wouldn’t have been giving you something that you didn’t want or couldn’t even eat.

That’s really I think the way it’s like in our world of advertising. We get bombarded with so many ads that have nothing to do with us. It’s like recently, I have no idea why, I’m getting all these dental implant ads that are being sent my way. I have perfect teeth. It’s kind of making me mad.

If somebody actually did their data and really knew what was important to me, they wouldn’t be wasting my time and getting me angry at them. They would be sending me products and services that actually would make my life better. I always think about what is the end takeaway for that product or service. Then I try to think about stories that will fit and have a similar takeaway. It’s like a metaphor.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Thank you.

Matthew Luhn
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell me Matthew, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Matthew Luhn
I’m okay. I’m ready to shift gears.

Pete Mockaitis
All right then. Could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Matthew Luhn
Oh my gosh. Okay. Do I have to quote it correctly?

Pete Mockaitis
Roughly correctly. There’s some leeway.

Matthew Luhn
All right. I always loved this quote that Alfred Hitchcock has. I think he was asked “What makes a great story?” He said, “Great stories are based on life, but with the boring parts removed.” That always sticks in my head because so many times we think that I’m going to create this story about this thing that happened to me in my life. You know what? People probably don’t want to hear all the details, just get to the good stuff. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Thank you.

Matthew Luhn
My pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Matthew Luhn
Oh my. Well, you know what I would say is that one of the bonuses of working on a movie, especially a Pixar movie, is that they will actually pay for you to research on the movie. You’re working on Finding Nemo, so you go to Great Barrier Reef in Australia or you go on Route 66 on Cars.

Actually, that was probably the most memorable one for me because I didn’t want to go on Route 66. It was for two weeks. It was going to be the middle of the summer. This is before having a smartphone. It turned out to be the best experience. The people we actually met on Route 66 were the characters that we put in the movie, like Mater and Sally and Doc. Those were based off of people we actually met through just getting to know the people on Route 66.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Thank you.

Matthew Luhn
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite book?

Matthew Luhn
Oh gosh, that’s a hard question, man. I think I would have to go and ask myself which book have I read over the most again and again. I don’t know man. I’ve read Watership Down a lot. I do love that book. Then also I would have to say I am a John Steinbeck fan, so I have read Great Expectations a couple times.

I’m just also a really big Roald Dahl fan. I think if I could come back as a writer, it would be Roald Dahl. I would say that I have probably read his books to my kids so many times from The Twits to James and the Giant Peach to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, all those. I know that’s a lot of answers there.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh no, I appreciate it.

Matthew Luhn
The audience can pick and choose which ones they like.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Matthew Luhn
Oh, a favorite tool. I would say that the tool is not necessarily a pencil or a computer. I think the tool is actually improv, if that counts.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh sure.

Matthew Luhn
Because when I get stuck coming up with a story, the thing that helps me get out of that rut is kind of chilling out, try not to think too much and kind of letting your subconscious take over for a little bit. Improv is the best way of doing it because you’re kind of given a location, a subject, who you are, go with it and you just start making it up as you go along.

It’s a great way for me to just kind of get out of that analyzing things too much. I think that’s probably one of the enemies of art is thinking too much. I know it sounds so silly, but whenever you’re able to just kind of go into the basement of your mind or our soul and really start finding the truth and the things that scare you to use in your stories. They’re honest. A lot of times we don’t want to go down in the basement to find those things, but improv helps me to be able to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. How about a favorite habit?

Matthew Luhn
A favorite habit? I would say that one of my favorite habits is probably riding my bike. I was also going to say dancing, but once you start to have a certain number of kids, it’s hard to go out dancing with your wife anymore. But those were nice habits. We used to do those, go out at least once a month. We’ve got to start doing that again sometime, but yeah. Those habits always have something to do with kind of getting the heart beating, moving around, having fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.

Matthew Luhn
Get the endorphins up.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite nugget, something you share that really seems to connect and resonate with readers and clients?

Matthew Luhn
I think one thing I share with people especially when I’m working with a group of people or business who are thinking to themselves, “Okay, great. This guy has shared a lot of great stuff about storytelling. He’s worked in the movies, sure. But I’m not a storyteller. I’m not a screenwriter.” They just kind of already shut down.

The thing I always share with them is that when you have a chicken who’s only lived in a cage their entire life, they know nothing but living in that cage. Actually, if you open up that cage door and you let them run out for the first time, they’ll run around, they’ll peck at things, and eventually they’re just going to go back into the cage. Even though the door is open, they’re just going to stay in there.

The only way that you can actually inspire that chicken to stay out permanently is you put out little morsels of food, a couple inches apart, leading them out of the cage to be able to get them used to not being in that cage anymore. It’s baby steps. Really it takes practicing telling those short stories around your life that could be personal or professional and reminding yourself that we were all storytellers once. It just takes a little bit of practice to get you back into that place again.

Pete Mockaitis
If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Matthew Luhn
Well, I’d love to share some fun story tidbits on Twitter. You can always find me there.

I would say that one of the guys that I love to go back to time and time again is Joseph Campbell. He wrote a book called The Hero with A Thousand Faces. He also did this interview called The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth interviews are actually on Netflix. You could always pick up one of his books.

He was one of the original guys who really started thinking about how storytelling connects all of us on this planet no matter what culture, gender, age. It’s a very inspiring guy. I would say that would be some good things to go check out.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Matthew, this has been a ton of fun. I wish you lots of luck and inspiration as you do your thing.

Matthew Luhn
Hey, my pleasure. I want to also to encourage you now that you’ve watched Toy Story, there’s two more, just in case.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Matthew Luhn
There’s Toy Story 2 and 3 because you’ve got to get them watched before Toy Story 4 is coming out, man.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t think I was aware that was happening.

Matthew Luhn
It is. You have until June. Okay?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Straight from the horse’s mouth.

Matthew Luhn
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
Did you work on Toy Story 4?

Matthew Luhn
I did work on that in the very beginning.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool.

Matthew Luhn
I would say also for Toy Story 2 and 3, definitely bring some tissues. Okay?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Matthew Luhn
You’re going to need it.

Pete Mockaitis
Appreciate it.

Matthew Luhn
Okay.

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