This One Line From A 70’s Movie Helps Me Every Day

It stops me getting fooled

Two things I love — 1970’s films and not being taken for a fool.

50 years ago, everything was different — the cars driving around, the manner in which people talked to each other, the look of our cities. On film it all seems intriguing and stylish.

Out of all the 1970's films I’ve watched, there is one line from one movie that has stuck with me. It pops into my head regularly and it helps me navigate life because it keeps my eyes wide open.

The quote is just 3 words long. It’s an instruction and an insight. A drawing back of the curtain. Once you hear it, you’ll never forget it. But to understand it fully, it’s important to get the context…

Exposing Wrongdoing

‘All The President’s Men’ is a film about two journalists trying to get to the bottom of the Watergate scandal, which eventually brought down the then US President, Richard Nixon.

Newspaper dramas are often great to watch because, as an audience member, you almost feel “part of the team” as the reporters dig around, exposing various fragments of what is really going on.

You piece together the story at the same time as they do, and this makes for a very engaging and involved viewing experience.

There’s a famous scene in ‘All The President’s Men’ where one of the two journalists working the Watergate story — Bob Woodward played by Robert Redford — meets a government informer in a parking lot.

The informer won’t directly give Woodward new information but he is willing to confirm that Bob and Carl are heading in the right direction.

It’s during this exchange that he says this line to Woodward. And this is the line that has stuck with me ever since:

“Follow the money.”

People do things for reasons. And often one of those reasons is money. So, by following the money, you can trace back a trail of people, transactions, behaviour, actions and, crucially, motivation.

It leads you to another question: “Are people doing something for the reason they say they are… or do they just want your money?”

In the 1980s, when I was a kid, door-to-door selling was still a big thing, since the internet hadn’t happened.

Financial products were big business. Unfortunately, it was especially easy to target these products at a group who often had a lot of money and were prepared to trust “nice people” — the elderly.

Unscrupulous companies and their salespeople would knock on doors in quiet neighbourhoods, have a cup of tea (or share some coffee time) with an older person, seem very nice, give them a “free gift” (like a “gold” pen) and get them to sign up to financial products at exorbitant interest rates.

Follow the money, find the motivation. These salespeople didn’t want to “help” these old folks after a “nice chat” — they wanted to make money out of them.

Where Does The Trail Lead?

The Watergate scandal is complex, but is essentially boils down to this: A Republican President (Nixon) was desperate to hold on to power.

He thought he could game the system (in this case the electoral system of the USA) by gathering some intelligence on his main opponents, the Democratic party.

So, bugging their offices (in the Watergate office building, which gives the scandal its name) with covert listening devices seemed like a good idea, and it duly took place.

When the listening devices needed repair, a fake “burglary” was planned as a cover to get in and do the work. When this break-in was interrupted by security guards, the first of many cover-ups was instigated to keep the President’s hands clean.

It was these cover-ups which were later exposed, partly due to the work of Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (whose story is told in ‘All The President’s Men’).

Eventually the whole affair was revealed and President Nixon resigned fearing that he was about to be impeached and removed from office.

One of the key elements in exposing the cover-ups was the fact that the Washington Post journalists (and then law enforcement officers) were able to trace the origin of cash found on the fake Watergate burglars back in the direction of Nixon.

They followed the money and they ended up finding the motivation. In this case the ultimate motivation for Nixon wasn’t money, it was power, and his desire to hold onto it.

The Good Will Out

If you try to game the system, you’ll fool a lot of people for a lot of the time, but you always run the risk that some people will be able to see what you’re actually doing.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in, people, organisations and companies are trying to take us for fools the whole time. They say they are doing one thing, but actually they are doing another.

For example, the fossil fuel industry is full of companies at pains to tell you how much they are doing to address climate change. But of course what they actually want to do is to stay in business and keep making money by extracting and selling fossil fuels.

Did you know that the 500 lobbyists sent to COP26 by the fossil fuel industry represented a bigger delegation than any single country?

It makes you think, doesn’t it?

And if you want to be made to think more like this, and discover a whole load of excellent writing about climate change, I suggest you check out the brilliant work of J.R. Flaherty🌱.

Back to following the money, and finding the motivation.

Does a celebrity really think a product is great? Or are they just being paid to say so?

Will an article really reveal one writing trick that will enable you to make $5k in a month? Or does the writer just want you (and thousands of others) to read that article for the full 6 minutes so they can make a few cents from you?

All those cents add up, after all.

Let’s Meet For A Coffee

Early in my career in the media, when I was at a high profile national music radio station, people kept inviting me for coffee and I thought… “This is nice — I like coffee and I like meeting new people”.

I quickly realised that there was always an ask at the end.

Can you do this for me? Can you ask this famous DJ you work with what they think about this new artist I represent? Can you introduce me to x, or explain to me why y is happening?

Follow the coffee, I guess.

When I joined this platform, I got invited to write for a publication almost immediately. I couldn’t believe my luck.

I submitted an article, and it got published. Even better, I was thrilled to see my name mentioned, alongside hundreds of others in a long “welcome to new writers” post, which I duly read all the way to the end.

I felt so “welcomed” by this publication that I used to go back to it regularly to read more articles as I tried to improve my writing.

The founder had a lot of stories on the front page — pretty much all of them in fact — so I read all of them, and followed the founder so I wouldn’t miss anything they wrote in the future.

The publication seemed so keen to welcome new writers just starting out, and I could see, from reading more and more articles from the founder, what the vision was. A growing structure, where new writers supported each other, grew, and in turn, encouraged new writers below them.

It was almost as if they were building a huge pyramid, and one where everyone benefitted.

Once I wrote more, researched more, and started to understand how earnings really worked on Medium, and how they are entirely linked to members’ read time, it slowly dawned on me what was really going on.

I chose not to write for that publication again.

Follow the money.

Final Thoughts

If you haven’t watched any 1970’s films for a while (or ever) then I recommend you search some out, and there’s no better place to start than ‘All The President’s Men’.

Enjoy being transported back to a different era and lose yourself in the tension and intrigue as smart people who just want the truth eventually uncover it.

And watch out for the scene in the car park. Once you’ve seen it you’ll always remember this line, and it will always help you:

“Follow the money”.