Real. Smart. Now.

On Saturday I met this guy – Mark Zupan.

He’s the star of a documentary called Murderball about wheelchair rugby or, more officially, Quad Rugby. Quad Rugby is a mean, angry, dangerous testosterone-y sport played by quadraplegics using specially adapted Mad Max style wheelchairs.

Murderball was a documentary made in 2004 about the sport following the USA team to the Athens Olympics. Mark has just come back from the Paralympics in Beijing (that’s the athletic kind, as opposed to the Special Olympics) with a Gold Medal (I got to hold it – inlaid with white jade, doncha know).  NYU Tisch screened the documentary, and then Mark took questions.

Mark’s a cool guy. I learned some things from watching the documentary and then from listening to him talk, including how to be a more interesting person, and how to encourage questions.

Here’s what I learned (see, I even spend my Saturday nights learning things for you. The dedication…)

What I learned from watching the documentary: the importance of story (again)

The documentary follows the formula of a Hollywood movie. By selecting certain events in the lives of the players, there are the goodies, the baddie, romance, sex, the last second tie-breaker games… Quad Rugby is an interesting subject on its own, but getting to know people on a personal level and then being caught up in a story is what makes us tick. Nothing to do with wheelchairs, everything to do with ‘What happens next?’.

In fact, I didn’t ask any questions as all I wanted to ask were ‘story’ questions. Really prying things like: “The movie showed a reconciliation between you and your best friend whose truck you were (unwittingly) thrown from. How are things between you?”

Someone else asked anyway.

What I learned from listening to Mark talk: how to be interesting

Mark is a really interesting guy. Me being me I couldn’t just leave it at that; I started to analyse what makes him interesting. Here’s what I came up with.

Make yourself someone we care about

(I’ve written about this before). Mark took a Q and A session after the screening. He spoke fluently and conversationallly for about 45 minutes, responding to questions naturally. A smart guy with a warm voice, he is able to keep our attention by being someone we feel that, if only we had more time together, we would be friends.

How might you do the same?

• Be honest
• Be a little revealing
• Talk like a normal person

Get us involved in your story

Obviously the documentary did this in a little more detail than you would ordinarily have the time to do but letting us in on your story makes us more involved.

Something that has:

• a setup
• some conflicts/obstacles
• a curiosity-building ending

It’s the only way. Enough bland corporate tofu. More spicy, personal, be-yourself-ness.

You can quote me on that.

What I learned from the Q and A: people need help coming up with questions

Mark cleverly told the audience of film students that they could ask anything they wanted about the process of putting the documentary together. And they did – questions about how the film-makers stopped the process from being intrusive, were some of the reaction shots actually reactions to that event, what was it like being filmed as the subject… I think this is a good thing – setting up the parameters for what people might ask questions about is a good idea. It takes a bit of effort sometimes to come up with something to ask, or to narrow down what you might want to ask. Making it clear what’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out’ can help, I think.

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Related posts:

~ Making people care about what you’re saying

~ Learning storytelling from movies

~ Telling stories

~ 3 reasons why you should plan conversations, not presentations