Did I ever tell you about my best Jean Claude Van Damme (JCVD) impression? No? Well this one is a beauty.
Obviously there is something I’m implying here without actually saying it. You’re thinking I’m harboring some undisclosed martial arts skills. Like that episode of Quantum Leap where we learned randomly that Dr Sam Beckett was a skilled kickboxer. Something that then showed up as a regular inclusion throughout the show after that, whenever the plot needed it.
But, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll tell you about my occasional JCVD based skills further down this post. And it is by design that I’m not elaborating right now. Realise it or not, by doing so, I am using the JCVD method on you right now.
So, let’s rein this in. The point of this quick blog post is to get into the power of ‘saying less than necessary’.
Reading Robert Greene’s 1998 book ’48 Laws Of Power’ and in particular, Law #4: Always Say Less Than Necessary reminded me of a few stories that I tell people along this theme. One of which being my aforementioned JCVD moment. Basically Greene covers the power of not saying too much. Not ‘too much’ as in ‘letting our mouth get your ass into trouble’. We all know how that works as a basic theme.
And not necessarily ‘lying by omission’ either, Greene is referring to the power of giving tactically limited pieces of information and allowing the listener to add their own interpretation, implication, imagination etc. He cites an example as below. A quote pulled from The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes by Clifton Faidman:
Down on his luck, [the screenwriter] Michael Arlen went to New York in 1944. To drown his sorrows he paid a visit to the famous restaurant “21”. In the lobby, he ran into Sam Goldwyn, who offered the somewhat impractical advice that he should buy racehorses.
At the bar Arlen met Louis B. Mayer, an old acquaintance, who asked him what were his plans for the future. “I was just talking to Sam Goldwyn…” began Arlen. “How much did he offer you?” Mayer interrupted. “Not enough,”
Arlen replied evasively. “Would you take fifteen thousand for thirty weeks?” asked Mayer. Without hesitation this time, Arlen replied “Yes, of course”.
(THE LITTLE BROWN BOOK OF ANECDOTES, CLIFTON FADIMAN, ED.. 1985)
So you see what Michael Arlen did in that story there, he was playing it discreet perhaps and holding back the details of his conversation with big time film Producer Sam Goldwyn. In doing so, Arlen caused a stir in Louis B. Mayer – in a vague ambiguous way that could be defended as as a witty/jokey response to a question misinterpreted (if needs be).
The stir came by implying that Goldwyn had offered him money, but that the amount was not enough. Mayer then felt that he had to not only offer him some work, but pay him a fair amount to keep him for himself. Possibly having been in competition with Goldwyn. (n.b. for context, the big Hollywood studio MGM is Metro Goldwyn Mayer – i.e the same people).
This is just one quick and easy example of saying less being a powerful tool. It can work in a debate, a negotiation, making a first impression, an interrogation… or a job interview. I’ll come back to that last one.
But anyway, Robert Greenes book 48 Laws of Power and Law #4 gets into this in greater detail, so I’d just direct you there. He covers other examples and angles to take. Easy to digest and relate to. For example, not saying too much can reduce the chances of saying something foolish. An obvious one, but often forgotten.
Anyhow. The JCVD moment. Well let’s get into that now.
So. Back in the mid-80’s, Van Damme was a relatively unknown actor/stuntman. His only major credit was as the Russian villain in the 1986 martial arts film No Retreat, No Surrender. But he was determined to land it big. He was then cast in the movie Predator, a box office hit of 1987 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger – a huge name in Hollywood at that stage. But ultimately Van Damme was an expendable unknown and subsequently cut from the picture, for reasons I wont get into.
It is a fascinating story and has many different accounts of what happened. Without getting into the details of why/if he was fired, basically, we was supposed to play the actual Predator (a role which later when to Kevin Peter Hall). Van Damme was in effect the stunt man, the guy in the suit, as pictured in the top image of my blog post here. But things didn’t work out for him and he left the project.
But the story isn’t a sad ending, by any stretch of the imagination. I recall an interview some time later where Van Damme spoke to Arsenio Hall about this and how he had cleverly used the fact that he had been collaborating with another film studio on the latest Schwarzenegger flick to impress some other producers. This was to get one of his own cinematic projects green-lit and turned into a picture that he would star in and also be heavily involved in behind the camera also.
And he indeed did. That film was the 1988 film Bloodsport, a huge hit for Van Damme, launching his amazing career. Good film too!
But truth be told, well according to that version of his story, a major initial selling point to the Producers for his credibility, his ‘bankability’ and celebrity status justifying his movie getting the green-light was predicated on the detail that he was in a big role opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom was at the top of the Hollywood box office rankings. The rest of the Predator role story was a bit of a liability to him I guess. But if they didn’t ask, I guess he didn’t tell.
And it worked. And paid off big time. Much respect, assuming this account is accurate.
So let’s talk about my own JCVD skills. Am I a kickboxer?. Well no, not really. Did I say that I was? Well no, not at all. You assumed that… and I let you assume that. My employment of JCVD’s skill is not kickboxing related (sorry) and is a little less epic, but still along the same theme to the fair hustle he allegedly used.
Late 90’s I started college. I did an Information Technology course that lasted two years. I learned a lot in practice, but on paper I had sweet bugger all to show for it. I don’t even know if anyone in my class did. We treated it as one big excuse to lay about and use the free internet access. It was a huge waste of two years otherwise, as much as I had fun in other ways. I even heard that someone lost their job over the lack of input towards the teaching and assessing.
I had worked part time during some of this, but after the course was ending I was turning 18 and I really had to sort things out. I was working at an awful road side restaurant. My mental wellness started spiraling down the drain at this time. I needed out. I needed a full time job and something with potential to up-skill myself.
An office job for a local insurance broker came up. But what did I know about insurance? Bugger all! I applied and stated that I had just finished two years of an I.T. course with a pending qualification to be confirmed (which from memory was still true at the time).
I got an interview and noticed that they were very keen on getting someone young in that could use computers. You see the office was staffed by about a dozen people and none of the brokers were below the age of 50. The time was October 1999 and computers were a lot more technical back then to the user. And the staff there, including the Managing Director had a dilemma. The computer systems that they used were possibly about to die off due to something called ‘The Millennium Bug‘. An over-hyped fear that computers would think that the turn of the year 2000 was actually 1900, causing these to crash and die. It was a big thing back in the late 90s, look it up.
Anyway, the company needed an overhaul of their computer systems. They didn’t need me to come in and help set these up as such, they just wanted someone that could assist and maybe help the staff with learning to use these and be there if they got stuck. Which did happen.
Now I was definitely up to the challenge and could do the job as advertised. And I did. I worked there for a few years after that and did a grand job, beyond just the computer work. But at application/interview stage back in October 1999, did I tell them about the past two years of larking about at college? I could have. Quite easily, I could have just blurted it out:
“Oh yes, I have spent two years doing I.T. but the tutors were useless and barely showed up, but it’s fine as it kept me out of trouble and I got free internet access! Please hire me”.
All they saw was that I was I.T. trained (true), enthusiastic (true), attentive (true). Who was I to argue? And it worked. Just as it did for Michael Arlen and Jean Claude Van Damme before me. Nobody lied or went out of their way to mislead or misrepresent here, or get anything not due to them. Maybe this was a bit of a hustle, but, well that’s life.
So, be careful not to say too much. As author Robert Greene says “Power is in many ways a game of appearances, and when you say less than necessary, you inevitably appear greater and more powerful than you are”.
Joseph – 22 February 2021