Joseph Kosinski flew to Paris to pitch Tom Cruise on another Top Gun movie.

Cruise was shooting Mission: Impossible at the time. Kosinski got a thirty-minute break in the schedule, which feels like a completely reasonable amount of time to resurrect a franchise that had been sitting untouched since 1986.

He brought four big ideas. He had visuals, videos, a poster and a title. The dude was prepped.

Then he talked about the little boy in the cowboy hat.

In the first Top Gun, Goose's son sits on a piano while Maverick and Goose sing “Great Balls of Fire.” Kosinski wanted to bring that boy back as a grown naval aviator. Maverick would have to train him, face what happened to his father and possibly send him into combat.

Kosinski later said this was the part Tom Cruise latched onto emotionally. By the end of the meeting, Cruise picked up the phone, called the studio and told them they were making another Top Gun.

The movie went on to make $1.5 billion worldwide.

That is a pretty productive half hour.

I pulled the current list of the thirty highest-grossing movies of all time and started marking up the stories.

There are blue aliens, dinosaurs, superheroes, a plastic doll and enough destroyed property to keep the construction industry booked until the Second Coming.

I found the hero's journey stuff I expected: a fall, a comeback, a giant final choice.

Then, I found another pattern.

Maverick and Rooster.

Rose and Jack.

Anna and Elsa.

Mario and Luigi.

Even movies that threaten half the universe eventually make that threat personal. Tony Stark gets the life he wanted with his daughter, Morgan. Saving everyone else will take him away from her.

Thirty out of thirty sounds impressive until you remember that most stories have relationships in them. The useful pattern was where those relationships showed up.

At the decision.

❄️ Anna can keep moving toward Kristoff and save herself, or turn around when she sees Elsa about to die.

🚢 Rose is being lowered toward safety in a lifeboat, then jumps back onto the sinking ship.

🛩️ Maverick takes the hit meant for Rooster. Rooster disobeys orders and comes back for him.

The giant problem eventually traps two people inside one painful choice.

That's what the spectacle has been building toward. The audience can understand “save the world” in about three seconds. What we wait to discover is who this person will become when saving the world costs somebody they love.

Most stories I read for businesses and ministries already have plenty at risk. The organization could close. The neighborhood needs help. The new product has to work. The problem is real, and it's usually explained well.

Then every person affected by it disappears into words like community, customers, our team, the next generation, ICP, and the rest of the jargon jabber.

Those words can hold thousands of people and still leave the reader with nobody to care about.

Example: In 2019, the company hit a cash-flow crisis, and Mark decided to keep everyone on payroll.

AI can write that sentence in lickety-split time. It's clean, it's accurate, and really really really boring. So boring, you’ve likely ALREADY forgotten.

What a machine can't do is sit across from Mark and hear about the other person in that room. So the next time you interview someone for a story, ask one question:

"When you had to make that call, whose face did you picture?"

Then let them answer.

Better Example: In 2019, Mark had to tell Denise, his first hire, that her paycheck would be three days late. Her son was starting daycare that month. He kept everyone on payroll, and he says hers was the face he kept picturing.

That's the stuff machines don't have yet: empathy, devotion, serendipity, and the kind of creativity that comes from one person trying to say something only they could say. It shows up between two people, and your job is to find the second person.

People aren't emotional garnish. They are where good stories exist.

John knew it. His Gospel slips in a tiny detail: Peter denies Jesus while warming himself beside a charcoal fire. After the resurrection, Jesus cooks breakfast for Peter beside another charcoal fire.

John has the resurrection of Jesus Christ to write about, and he brings us back to a smell Peter would have remembered.

Then Jesus asks him three times, "Do you love me?"

The story has reached all the way through death and come back to two friends with unfinished business.

Until next time,

—Payton ✌️