Jeffrey Davis, Writer/Professor: The minute you act like you’re doing somebody a favor, I personally think you’re dead in the water.
Film Courage: How is pitching in Hollywood different from pitching in Silicon Valley?
Peter Desberg, Writer/Professor/Psychologist: That’s a really good question and my view is I wouldn’t structure it as How are they different, I’d see them as two points on a continuum because there’s a lot of overlap in any good kind of pitch but clearly you’re talking about one very specific type of product in Hollywood versus an infinite set of things that you can pitch. The basic ideas are always going to be the same that there are a number of factors, again I keep wanting to move us into persuasion because I love talking about persuasion, the psychology of persuasion is an incredible area and we know a lot now about how people make decisions that we didn’t know a while ago. One of the interesting things for example have you heard of a book called Thinking, Fast and Slow, [author] Daniel Kahneman?
Film Courage: I haven’t read it, but I’ve seen it.
Peter: Please, for your sake read it, it’s the best book I’ve read in decades. The man is so smart it will scare you. One of the major theses of the book is that when we solve problems there are two ways we can go. We can think about it very very deeply or we can use our intuition. A good part of the…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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BIO:
Peter Desberg is professor emeritus at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award and Outstanding Professor Award. He is also a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in the area of stage fright and performance anxiety. The author of 23 books, he has been quoted by such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today and The New York Times, and has consulted for companies including Apple, Boeing and Toyota in the areas of pitching and persuasion, corporate presentations, and using storytelling and humor in business presentations.
Jeffrey Davis is a professor of screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and served from 2009–2019 as the department chair. Davis has also written and produced trade shows for Dick Clark Productions and counted among his advertising clients Dell Computers, Toyota of America and Honda. His has more than 30 credits to his name, including Night Court, Remington Steele, and documentaries for A&E, Discovery, and The History Channel. As a consultant, his areas have also included writing, pitching, and employing storytelling and humor in business presentations.
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