Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis. Pitch Like Hollywood. McGraw-Hill, 2022.

Pitch Like Hollywood comes out of a match made in heaven. One co-author (Desberg) is a clinical psychologist and author of numerous books. The other (Davis) is an experienced Hollywood writer and producer. Each works from his own area of experience and expertise to give their readers some real direction.

This book is written specifically for business professionals, whether in or out of the entertainment industry, who have to make pitches. These can be sales pitches, promotions, pitches for a screenplay, or many other kinds of pitches. Frankly, most of the information in this book provides great direction for job interviews and other situations where you may be selling a product, and idea, or, in some manner, selling yourself.

Much of what Pitch Like Hollywood shares would be useful for other types of persuasion especially persuasive writing. Why do people accept some things and reject others? What can you do to show empathy with an audience? This is often a matter of psychology. Ultimately, whether trying to sell something, present a project, and share an idea, people have to change their minds.

Pitch Like Hollywood is eminently practical. There are numerous stories and illustrations from both successful and unsuccessful film pitches. There are also many examples from psychological experiments which illustrate how people actually do react in certain situations. There are, for example, at least four experiments which showed how different perspectives affect how students do on standardized tests. We are going to highlight those in a separate entry since we occasionally write about entrance exams and Advanced Placement tests.

The psychology involves both how an audience reacts as well as how presenters react. For example, in preparing for a pitch or presentation of any kind, ask yourself two questions: How well do I think I will do? What will happen if they reject my idea? These two questions often hinder us if we think about them too much.

There is an interesting discussion of perfectionism. I never thought about this before, but professional musicians in a classical music group or orchestra expect to be perfect. Many people in the audience already know what the composition sounds like. They will notice if there are any mistakes. Over half of the musicians in symphony orchestras surveyed take beta blockers—drugs that lower blood pressure and have a calming effect—before a performance. If stage actors miss or muff a line, they can at least stay in character and keep on going. Classical musicians have to keep on going, too, if they goof up, but they are more likely to be criticized for it.

Actors often say, and from experience I believe it to be true, that some nervousness before a performance is essential. Nerves provide energy. Positive excitement can be contagious. There is no sense of “phoning it in” in such a circumstance.

Besides the psychology of a presentation, you have to consider its content. Will what you are presenting really help your audience? In the case of Hollywood, of course, that means will the proposal succeed and make money? Does the plot have a problem to be solved? Will your presentation solve a problem?

Writers are often told that publishers are looking for something new and different. They do not want something that has already been done, but if it is too different, they reject it as well. Desberg and Davis explain it this way:

Everybody wants to be in on the next new thing, but be wary because too much originality scares some investors. Words like “revolutinary,” “unique,” “unprecedented,” “breaking new ground,” and “completely original” are sometimes code for “So far, projects like this have never been successful.” (227)

Behold, the Catch-22 of publishing.

One negative example that stood out in this book was about a startup company that was looking for an aerospace contract from Boeing. (Yes, Pitch Like Hollywood is not just about Hollywood.) The Boeing officer had a difficult time seeing how they could benefit from the proposal. In fact, he could not see that the engineering would even work. He asked them what their goal was. He was told that if Boeing could guarantee 50 million dollars, they could probably get 500 million from the U. S. government. Their proposal was not so much an engineering innovation as an attempt to boondoggle the government.

Practice also helps. Often people you are presenting to will get distracted: someone may enter the room with an announcement, a cell phone may buzz with an urgent message, some people may arrive distracted. If you have a good idea of the outline of your presentation, you are more likely to stay on target and not get distracted yourself.

Staying on target means finding a balance. You have to present clearly and directly. At the same time, especially when speaking, you do not want to get bogged down in details. As Thoreau would say, don’t let yourself get distracted by every little fly wing.

Know what your audience already knows or can relate to. One interesting psychology test presented a chessboard with the chess pieces placed on the board in certain spots. The subjects of the test were chess novices and chess masters. Like Kim’s game, each subject was given a certain amount of time to look at the chess board. The board was taken away, and they had to then tell from their memory where the pieces had been placed.

The novices and masters both scored about the same in memorizing the positions when the pieces were placed randomly on the board. But when the pieces were placed in a position from an actual chess game, the masters’ memories were much higher than the novices. There was recognition there. In some cases they might have recognized the actual game, but even in other cases when the positions were realistic, they could relate to how the game would be played more than the novices.

Think about that when planning a presentation to a certain audience.

A good presentation, like a good film, has three acts: the introduction, the problem, and the solution. First impressions and empathy are critical. Chapters are devoted to both. If you can relate directly to your audience because of your similar age or experience, that helps. But often that is not the case. Pitch Like Hollywood suggests things you can do relate better. It might be a simple as bringing along a colleague who is the same age or who has a similar background as those you are pitching to. How do you deal with stereotyping anyway, especially if you are the one being stereotyped?

Pitch Like Hollywood is an eye-opening book. While it is especially written for sales and artistic pitches, it has a lot for anyone who speaks publicly or anyone who speaks or writes persuasively. Your cause may not have millions of dollars in the balance—it may be something as simple as a good grade on a piece of schoolwork—but this book can help show you the way.

P.S. As noted above, we are going to be using some examples from Pitch Like Hollywood in our next posting because it has significant examples of how people taking standardized tests can improve their scores and how simple psychological tricks can make a difference.