Wolfgang Hammer's storytelling method requires three layers: what the company does, the founder's emotional why, and a philosophical layer.
He argues originality is overrated, citing Raymond Loewy's 80/20 rule: about 20% new and 80% familiar.
Hammer is building a new film studio with Mitch Lasky as chairman and a16z as investor.
How to build a story people see themselves in
Storytelling is a craft a founder can learn, and Hammer teaches it the way he learned it in film. A story works when a character's fixed, flawed view of the world collides with what they fear and what they dream of becoming. Founders face the same machinery, since a company's philosophy and the founder's private reason for building it carry as much weight as the product.
Takeaways
Stories work on three layers at once. Every story needs the external mechanics of what the company does, a subjective layer that for a founder is often why they are doing it, and a philosophical layer. Making that understanding conscious and communicating it metaphorically is what Hammer finds inspiring.
Steelman the world, then refute it. On the philosophical layer Hammer says you steelman how people believe the world works, since most believe they are doing the right thing, then juxtapose your own philosophy against it, ideally as four or five points on a direct refutational basis.
Characters begin with a flawed, fixed worldview. A character starts with a concept of the world they believe is fixed, and the flaw traces to a lack of self-knowledge. A character is invested in their fear while part of them dreams of greatness, and the story works out that conflict.
Originality is overrated, so aim for 20% new. Hammer cites designer Raymond Loewy's 80/20 rule, the most tolerable amount of new before the mind rejects it as incomprehensible. He argues the new is the obvious uncovered through systematic trial and error. Patrick O'Shaughnessy recalls being taught 20% new and 80% familiar.
Every scene runs on a power differential. Status is a sense of accepted superiority over another person, and Hammer says everything is about status, which is what we find relentlessly fascinating. Suspense builds from tiny increments of new information, because people keep filing each piece into a puzzle.
All stories are about death and resilience. Hammer cites Tolkien's claim that all stories are about death, since death is the ultimate stake everyone lives with. Robert Towne told him stories are either desires fulfilled or anxieties purged, and the character keeps going without enough knowledge or power.
CEOs can learn from how filmmakers take risk. Filmmakers take ultimate responsibility and run big temporary startups, risking total failure each time. Hammer says CEOs can learn the willingness to espouse a specific worldview that stands in some tension with the dominant one, and to own it anyway.
Hammer's new studio
Hammer is building a film studio from scratch, with Mitch Lasky as chairman and a16z as investor. Lasky is a former Benchmark partner from the video game world, and Marc Andreessen is a great lover of cinema.
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On this episode 2
Show 1
The studio aims at movies that aspire to some kind of epiphany or transcendental insight, alongside two technical components.
From Lasky and Andreessen he learned risk tolerance, and he argues people do not take enough risk. America tolerates failure while Europe attaches shame to it.