The art of the pitch. One lesson at a time.

You don’t just play your first game, or even your first season, and know everything that you’ll eventually know.

Hey batter batter batter.

photo credit: Life of Sport

This is something Doc and I are learning. It’s actually a fantastic feeling, this building up of experience and laying of a foundation. We’ve now had 5 pitch meetings. Each different, each a learning opportunity. Today we had a meeting at a fairly big production company, and I personally felt like we pitched our best so far. I think we’ve built up a “muscle memory,” where we can feel the conversation better and hit the parts that need to be hit, without even needing to think about it too much.

We also had our first bit of “constructive criticism” come our way, through our agents, via one of the producers we pitched last week. This producer loved us, thought we were very smart, but felt like we were still “feeling our way” through the story, and hadn’t quite arrived on a perspective that we were committed to through and through.

Hmmm.... this was... puzzling.

photo credit: Cara Photography

We were originally a little puzzled by this feedback – we had thought that meeting had gone very well. And we had additionally thought that by accepting that the story could go in a couple different directions, that we were showing that we could be collaborative.

(And, in actuality, that meeting had gone very well – this producer just wanted to help us out by letting us know what small piece had given him pause – precisely because he liked us and wanted us to succeed.)

So even though we were originally confused by this note, we decided to try our best to apply it. And so today, we purposely were very confident in our choices, and wanted to portray that we were committed to them and passionate about them. For instance, there had been a standing question in our meetings whether our show would be hopping geographically all over the place based on the mission, or would have more of a set location. We’d been talking previously that “we could take that in a number of ways,” and then discussed the merits of each. We realized that this approach was probably what the producer was talking about.

This time, when the question was posed, we literally said, “We love the idea of having each season set in a different ‘hot spot’ location; so one season could be in El Paso, and then the next would be in Atlanta. We’re excited about the kind of stories we could tell using that structure.”

And the producer caught wind of that excitement and literally said, “Oh, yes, I like that a lot.” No longer are we going to be saying things like “or, you know, we could hop all over the country, if that’s the best way to tell the story.” We realized that that does make it sound like we haven’t made a decision yet. In the same way, we’re no longer saying that it could be a network show, or shaded to become a paid cable show. We’ll present a united, confident front full of decisions and opinions and passion (because really – they know things can change if they have to anyway!)

I do think that this was a lesson Doc and I had to learn because of the difference between collaboration and pitching. We’re much more used to the first, where saying things like, “What if we tried it this way…?” or “You know what might be cool, if we did this instead…” is generally better for the creative process than absolutes and decrees. Because the creative collaborative process is like sketching and molding, especially early on, where you don’t want to get rid of all the raw material right away.

But pitching is different. You’ve got to paint a complex picture in a short amount of time, and really have to fix a compelling world and cast of characters in peoples’ minds – so they can see the conflict, the stories, and the show. You really don’t have a lot of time for “What if’s” and “And we could try’s” and “Wouldn’t it be cool if’s” in this arena. All these theoreticals really just muddy the waters and become unwieldy. You’re lucky if you can paint one world – why try to paint many of them?

Lesson learned! And our pitch was much stronger for it.

The producer today even said, in the context of what their production company does with the writers that they work with, that they help their writers practice and refine their pitch. But then she stopped herself and said, “But your pitch was great, it doesn’t need any refinement or practice.”

And I’ll owe it all to the Nic-o-boli

For the second straight meeting, I’ve managed to find some common ground with the producers we were pitching because of… Delaware.

Specifically, Rebohoth Beach.

Even more specifically. Nicola’s Pizza, and their delicious calzone, the Nic-co-bolis.

What are the chances?

I mean, really?

But here I am, with two straight execs who’d grown up in DC, and Washingtonians generally summer in Rehoboth. And then there’s me, visiting every year with my family since i was knee high. And so, an instant bond is made.

A curious, unexpected one. But one I’ll certainly take.

Another excellent meeting today. And we got to have the meeting in Walden Media’s offices. I’m a huge fan of their work, and I got to walk past a huge prop from their upcoming Narnia movie to get to our meeting spot. And I just want to savor that this is part of my job at this point. It’s excellent.

We certainly felt like we made a connection with the exec we met with today, and would love to work with her at some point.

All in all, a very good day. I actually was fortunate enough to be a part of 3 good meetings today. One, with Doc and my feature agent at UTA, to get that part of our career moving along. One, with a woman I’ve been working with on the online consulting side, so the bills can be paid while I continue to lay the foundation on our writing career. And then the meeting with the exec.

Good times.

Hertz Car Rentals wins the award…

For one of the stupidest threats ever. Because, this past week, I had rented a really beat up, dented and scratched Kia from their office in Santa Monica. I had rented it until today, Monday. But we bought a new (used) car on Saturday. And since Darby and I were both already out and about with two cars, and actually in Santa Monica on Saturday – I thought I’d save another two car trip by parking that rental car in Hertz’s lot so I could go alone and return it on Sunday. (By this point, the office was closed.)

It’s not a locked up lot or anything. In fact, it shares space with a gas station. And it had tons of spaces.

On Sunday, I returned to finish the transaction. When I entered the office, the attendant was visibly annoyed with me. I played oblivious, as I often do when people try to non-verbally communicate with me. (I think people should say what’s bothering them if it’s so important.)

Finally, he said, “So, this is the car that was in the lot overnight, huh?” And I said, “Yes, I didn’t want to make my wife drive me out today.”

And then he laid down the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.

“Well, you’re lucky you’re here now. Another 10 minutes and I was going to call a tow truck to get it out of here.”

“It” being their car, and “here” being their parking lot.

“You can’t just go dropping off cars after hours, you know.”

Well, don’t worry, Hertz. I won’t be picking up or dropping off cars from you for a very long time.

This is the way to drive in California.

When the Prius battery died, it seemed like a bit of a tragedy. Or at the very least, an annoyance.

And this past week, I have to admit it’s been kind of stressful trying to find the right car. Having to figure out whether we’d go with a car loan for something a little more expensive, or try to swing paying for it with cash using what we got from the sale of the Prius plus some more that we’d recently gotten from a tax return. It seemed like a bunch of balls in the air, and I wasn’t sure which one to catch first.

Plus, we had a ticking clock, where we had rented a replacement car for a week, and I didn’t want to spend any more cash for any more time.

I watched as car after car that I thought was the one fell away. One was in terrible condition. One was sold out from under me. Another was just sold before I was able to get in touch with the person.

But then, the perfect car showed up. It’s a Saab 93 Turbo convertible.

And I still can’t believe I’m driving it – because it seems like far too nice a car for how much we spent. I mean, seriously, we’ve ended up spending 2k less than we would have if we’d repaired the Prius battery, and we have a really nice convertible with 30K less miles.

Driving down PCH in a convertible is nothing short of exhilaring. It’s a really zippy car, just such great control and pickup. I feel like I’m on the Autobahn or something. Lyric agrees.

Lyric agrees it's a ton of fun!

We were somehow able to find it for nearly $2500 less than it should be, according to it’s Blue Book value, and it’s in beautiful condition.

And now, in the course of a week, we’ve stumbled across both a beautiful living upgrade, and a fantastic car upgrade. And we are definitely thankful.

We bought it in Silverlake, up near Pasadena, and I immediately had the chance to test it out on the freeway. Because of absolutely zero blind spots and the pep of the acceleration, it made driving so much fun.

And then we all dropped off our rental car. (Goodbye Kia!) And headed up into Malibu. I don’t know exactly why it is, but all four of us love driving in a convertible. Add in the Pacific on your left, and mountains on your right, and you’ve got a recipe for a very fun day.

Now I’m wondering why exactly I haven’t been driving like this for the past 3 years.

Shocking News! We’re Moving.

File this one under: “Huh, I didn’t expect this.”

We’re moving.

We’ll still be in Topanga, and we’re not really moving all that far. In fact, we’ll be closer to PCH, which is a real plus.

But it all started yesterday, when Darby kind of got fed up with the… smell. We had begrudgingly dealt with the methane/natural gas/dead rat cocktail that at times would waft through the air. The dead, still air that couldn’t be moved because our main windows don’t open. But as we’ve experienced something of a heat wave this past weak, that smell was growing unbearable.

And then Darby smelled something new, a different, pungent, addition to the smell palette. And that was enough.

She declared that was going to start packing just so “we’d be ready to go when the time comes.” Not looking forward to a house filled with towers of boxes, I asked her to please hold off a little bit.

And then I checked craigslist, more symbolically than anything. Because I’d been checking lately, and found nothing.

And I found this:

This charming 2 bedroom house has a high-end kitchen with caesarstone countertops and stainless steel appliances, a spacious bathroom with frameless glass shower and granite countertops, vaulted ceilings, hardwood floors, surround sound stereo, sky lights, gas fire place, covered patio, large outdoor decks, water fountains, washer/dryer, 1.5 car garage, and new hot tub. Water, trash, electric, Fios internet and digital TV package included. Please tell me a little bit about yourself and your housing needs.

I replied, and reached Ted, a very friendly fellow screenwriter. Darby, myself, and Lyric and Ollie stopped by and checked it out. And we loved it.

So much stone and wood and trees, it reminds us of our home back in Maryland. And no smell. That’s a big plus.

And Ted really liked us, and was willing to knock $100 off the rent and give us a 6 month lease. (Ted also loves playing basketball, and has a friend who has a court in Topanga. I’m excited about this.) There you have it. We’re moving in 9/1.

Crazy, I know.

So we are bidding a sad farewell to Lorettaville very soon.

PS. The pitch went very well today too. It’s a lot of fun connecting with people on a creative level. I truly hope one of these connections actually bites and buys, but even if they don’t, I know we’re laying the groundwork we need. And the good news is that both Doc and I are finding that we really really genuinely enjoy these meetings.

PPS. Darby, Lyric, Ollie and I drove 90 minutes to buy a car today, and then when we got there (there being Chino, California) the thing was a piece of junk, unfortunately. Pictures on the internet can lie, apparently. Going to try a different one tomorrow. We’ve decided to forego any car loan and thus give up the idea of Mini. We’re going back to our roots, staying on the less expensive side, and getting another VW Cabrio.

PPPS. Really hoping the heat wave breaks tomorrow, but one nice thing about a heat wave here – we can drive 10 minutes and the temperature will drop 25 degrees. Literally 98 degrees in the canyon and 73 degrees on the beach. As you can imagine, we’re spending about 10 hours a day on the beach these days.

Round Two. Adjust and refine.

Walking out of the Warner Brothers pitch on Tuesday, Doc and I had this conversation.

Me: “I thought that went really well.”

Doc: “Me too. It was great.”

Me: “I don’t think they’re going to buy the pitch, though.”

Doc: “Oh God, no.”

First of all, I think we could have been David Chase pitching the Sopranos and that particular exec wouldn’t have bought the pitch. He didn’t feel like he was in a buying mode. Doc and I had a theory, actually, that some of these earlier meetings are truly warm-ups. Pre-season. People who want to meet us because they like the writing, but aren’t ready to really develop a TV show. And our manager kind of confirmed that today, in so many words.

Which was good, actually. Because we really learned some things from that first pitch meeting that we were able to figure out and apply today. The show we’re pitching is set in an extremely serious world that needs to be rooted in realism. Yet on Tuesday some of our choices in pitching made our characters seem overly quirky and light-hearted. And on Tuesday, the exec even said, “One thing I’m concerned about, there seems to be a disconnect between how gritty the world is, and how you describe your team.”

Specifically, what we had done in the pitch to create this impression was we had referred to The A-Team and Mission Impossible (the movies more than the TV show). And we had said our main character was an ex-supermodel. These may seem like small pieces, but what these choices had done was plant a hint of “campiness” in the execs brain. Even though we had referred to A-Team in the sense of “outside the law, and all alone with no backup” and Mission Impossible in the sense of “espionage, disguise, and blacks ops – not just gunfights and explosions.” But they hadn’t done what we wanted them to do, they had in fact had a distracting affect.

And then, by not highlighting our main character enough and almost treating all team members equally in presentation, we had also inadvertently raised an image of these team based movies lately like “The Losers” and “The Expendables” – which again, wasn’t sitting well with the exec on Tuesday.

I give this long winded backstory to highlight that Doc and I worked hard to figure out what didn’t work so well on Tuesday, and what did. Again, it was a preseason game. And fortunately, we had an exec who told us (without telling us) what didn’t work. He mentioned that the A Team had him worried, that he wasn’t interested in doing something like the Losers.

So today, we had the following game plan. No more mention of the A Team or Mission Impossible.

Sorry guys. It's just not working out.

We would concentrate on 24, Sleeper Cell, the Unit, and the Shield as touchpoints – all of which are grittier shows grounded in more realism. (Where people can actually be shot and die when bullets are flying.) We also took out any mention of our main character being a former supermodel, and really highlighted that “the emotional engine of the entire series” was our main character and her personal quest. When we discussed the secondary characters, we talked about them being in support of the main character – and in fact added a riff where our main character was the person responsible for choosing and assembling the team members in the first place. She was the common thread.

And these relatively smaller changes made our pitch about three times better. It went really well. The exec – the head of television for a production company that’s a major player in features and looking to muscle its way more and more into television – was completely engaged in the idea, asked great questions, and seemed overall both impressed and intrigued. In the end he was even telling us we need to meet with the feature side of his company too because he thinks we’d be a really good match with them. (Yes please!!!) And he raised the prospect of transmedia opportunities with us – graphic novels, features, television, and video games which all rise from the same source story or idea.

We really liked him. He really liked us. And the grittier 24 angle really seemed to work wonders. In fact, he was even wondering aloud whether we could get it on a premium cable channel, and see what we could do with it there.

So anyway, we’ll find out more tomorrow, but it seems we’ve made ourselves another fan. Which is, again, for me, what this round of pitches needs to be all about. But at the same time, we left their offices and this was our conversation.

Me: Wow. That went really well. Much better than yesterday.

Doc: I know. I mean, we just kind of got out of our own ways and really pitched the story.

Me: I mean, I think they might even buy it.

Doc: Yeah.  I could see it happening.

But whether or not this meeting results in a sale, for me what I’m most pleased with was our ability to pinpoint what needed improvement, and then act on those strategy changes. And it was great to see results.

We’re no longer rookies

Well, technically I guess we are. But at least we’ve gotten the first big step under our belt.

And, short of selling something in the room – which of course would have been nice – it went as well as I could imagine it going.

We were comfortable, we told our story with enthusiasm, we seemed prepared. We took questions, were engaged with what the others in the room had to say, and responded.

We left after a 40 minute meeting feeling good. And these producers – we’d like to work with them at some point. Smart, insightful… just generally cool people, in my opinion.

But, we still had to wait for the “meeting about the meeting”  - where our reps talk to the people we met with – with us not around – and find out how the meeting really went.

And we got that at the end of the day. The verdict was very good indeed.

We’ve made fans of these particular producers. They liked us, our enthusiasm, how we worked together, and how we were in the room. And at this point in our career, making fans is a huge priority. Our agents were quite happy with the result of the meeting. And while we’re technically waiting to hear from them on whether they want to go forward with this show or pass, we do  think they’re going to pass. (This producer is mostly feature based.)  But, because they are fans, the door is always open to pitch anything we have now.

So we broke through the barrier, and now we’re ready for more.

Like tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that…

Quick hits on the eve of my first pitch meeting.

First things first, I have to prioritize the most important of all announcements. The Digital Rot Scourge is FINALLY defeated! Both CDs have been completely recovered. I copied them with the program “Toast,” which “repaired them” in the process.

It only took like…2 full weeks for the latest CD to be copied. But the good news? I have all my old files back. Ahhhhhh.

Second: I have a strange foot dilemma. If I wear flip flops during the day, my feet are cool most of the day and then strangely hot throughout the night. As in, melt ice on them hot and still they don’t cool down. But, on the other hand, (or should I say foot?), if I wear normal shoes and socks during the day, they are fine throughout the night, but feel like little cauldrons of lava during the day.

What to do? They are each their own kind of hell. It’s a problem.

Third: I think there should be “Stink Consultants” who come into your house and tell you why certain parts of it stink and help you fix that. Ah yes, the joys of living in Topanga again.

And lastly: tomorrow’s the first pitch. On the Warner Brother’s lot, in Burbank. At 10 am. Which means I’ll probably be leaving the house at around 7.45 am just in case. It’s all worth it. I mean, I’m pitching on the Warner Brothers lot, people! And the meeting got moved up so the president of the production company we’re pitching could attend. So we’re not complaining about the earlier start time.

Wish us luck.

And again, I think Doc and I are fairly loose about all this. Here’s a great quote he dug up, which I am digging. (Who brought the shovel!?)

The quote is from Thomas J. Watson (I believe) founder of IBM. It is:

“If you want to succeed faster, double your rate of failure.”

Looking forward to it

This is a big week. We have actual real pitch meetings. We’re moving from the on-deck circle and into the batter’s box. We’re putting down the clipboard and picking up a helmet.

This is certainly a big week.

Now I could be nervous, I suppose. But no, I want to savor and enjoy this time. 5 years ago I was toiling away on marketing campaigns for credit cards, thousands of physical and tens of thousands of metaphorical miles away from being on the Warner Brothers lot pitching a television series one day then going to Beverly Hills the next day and pitching to the production company responsible for a little show called the Sopranos. And that’s only half the week!

So I have to enjoy this. Because I’ve covered a lot of distance and I need to be thankful for that. And really, there are only two outcomes here – and they’re both great.

Success, as in selling a pitch or making a longterm connection that could blossom into something tangible down the line.

Or failure, which would certainly constitute failing on a bigger stage, which would actually be its own kind of success.

Just a couple of months ago, I nearly tried to stubbornly push forward with what our reps were telling Doc and I was a bad option deal specifically because I was really rearing to get in the game, and have these pitch meetings, and get out and do stuff. And now, even though we finally wisely decided to trust the experts who were trying to shield us from sharks, we’re right in that position I thought I was giving up. Only, in a much stronger position, actually. Having signed away none of our rights, and an even more potent representation team.

There’s a lesson there.

a lot of delay, and now a lot of activity

Two things to get out of the way. One, I cut my lip on a waffle today and it hurts to smile. Yes, that’s true. And two, I stabbed myself in the stomach with a fork today. Clearly, I’m not cut out for the dangers of eating meals.

On Thursday, Doc and I had noted with some small measure of impatience that it had been 2 weeks since we’d last talked to our representation, with what had seemed like a lot of momentum at the time. Should we be worried? Should we be doing something? Was the ball in our court.

And then today, no less than 4 meetings for next week were scheduled, with legitimate television producers, all with produced television shows. It was honestly a dizzying flurry as they all came in. Next week will be full of pitching, and very busy.

And actually, I guess this worked out perfectly, in hindsight. I really wanted to have just a small amount of time to be able to get away with Darby, Lyric and Ollie – since I had been whisked away from them when this whole UTA whirlwind began. So really, this slight delay was timed perfectly, as we just got back from our tour of central and northern California today.

Good times. I’m working to enjoy them.