“You can’t cold plunge, sauna, or run your way out of a weekend filled with booze, late nights, and greasy food”

“You’re tested the most right before it all changes.

Greatness is reserved for those who pass the test. Most never get to try. Fewer get through.

But there is a select group of savages who- when things feel impossible- start to get excited. Their back against the wall only helps them get over it. And having all the odds against them, is the only motivation they need.”

“The film Rolling Thunder made me a champion of its director John Flynn so much so that I sought him out at 19 years old for an interview. I looked up every John Flynn in the phone book, called them up, and asked-

“is this John Flynn?”

If they said yes, I then would ask-

“the John Flynn who directed Rolling Thunder?”  

Till eventually one said yes. I couldn’t believe it. It's fucking him! I had never spoken to a movie director before, no less the director of one of my favorite movies. So I introduced myself and told him I was writing a book on film directors. I asked if I could interview him about his career. He agreed.

We sat down in his living room to conduct the interview. I began asking my questions and testing my theories about Rolling Thunder. I was so inexperienced at what I was doing that I brought my tape recorder with me, but I only brought one cassette. I could not imagine him giving me more than an hour. Once both sides of the tape were done, I didn't want to look like an idiot, so I just kept flipping it over and re-recording over what I had just recorded, so all the stuff on his early career was lost forever.”

Magnus Carlson dominated chess when he was younger. Aside from winning in the actual game, he was also undefeated in chess trivia. It is not a coincidence that the world's number one player has also studied the most about chess history.

You could say the exact same thing about Tarantino. A decade before he’d write his first successful screenplay, he saw the movie Rolling Thunder with his mother and her boyfriend, Marco, in 1977. His reaction to the movie was that- “it blew my fucking mind…”

“…I loved Rolling Thunder so much that, for a period of 10 years, I followed it all over Los Angeles whenever and wherever it played. Before I was even old enough to drive I would travel by bus hours away from my home to some really sketchy neighborhoods just to rewatch Rolling Thunder in theatres.”

Tarantino didn’t just watch a movie once, he’d watch a single movie 6, 12, sometimes even 15 times so that he could study them as if they were textbooks. Tarantino was a maniac for repetition. It would be almost impossible to approach whatever you're working on like Tarantino approached his work and not come out successful.

Many heavy hitter have this same exact approach within their own niche. Napoleon says it best-

“The campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Frederick the Great, make them your role models. Study them. Dream of them. This is the only way to become the best general in the world and master the art of war.”

Do you watch a movie just one time?

Do you listen to a podcast just one time?

Do you read a book just one time?

Good. Then you’re going to get dusted by the people who repeat, repeat, repeat and continue to put the reps in over and over again.

“The goal is for everyone to agree with you later”

“As my father was dying, he had finally chosen to follow his dream of becoming an actor. But his move to change careers came too late. Seeing him thwarted by death in that way, having done something else that he didn’t want to do for so long, made me determined that that should never happen to me. I would not be dragged into something I didn't want to do. Think about it- you can still fail at what you don't want to do, so you might as well take a chance at doing what you love.”