Pitch Practice
A good pitch is not good writing!
Hello Hollyweirdos --
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Now, on to the business of the week.
I've been revising a pitch for a project (it's an adaptation of a novella, see last week’s newsletter). This project had a director already attached, which means the two of us have spent a lot of time together over coffees and lunches and zooms to figure out how to pitch the idea (and our team) to possible financiers. As a result, I’ve been thinking more generally about what makes a pitch good in the first place. What actually is the best way to convey the essence of a movie? And why have we as a business decided that the only way to do so is with a 15-30 minute verbal presentation which breaks down the entire story of a film (before it has been written) to executives trying their best to listen and not be distracted by their inbox pinging directly next to the zoom window?
Some of you, dear readers, know all about pitching movies. You pitch movies all the time. But, for those of you who maybe aren't as deeply familiar... a little table setting:
There are two ways movies get started. One way is... a writer has an idea and thinks "Wow, that would be an incredible movie!" That writer then pours their heart and soul into it for weeks, months, years (depends on the writer) and sends it to someone who loves it, buys it, makes it, and they all win a bunch of Oscars. That is considered writing a movie "on spec." It's a speculative business decision, one that could be high risk, but also could be high reward. Writing a movie on spec takes time, dedication, and is a bet that what you're writing will, in the end, be undeniably great. I've written movies on spec! It's fun! You can do whatever you want! But… there’s no guarantee. What if nobody likes your incredible movie idea? Or worse, somebody does like it but can’t convince their boss to pay for it?
The second kind of movie is an assignment. Let's say David Zaslav has decided Warner Bros. Discovery really needs to make a movie about Clippy, Microsoft Word's clip art digital assistant from the 90’s. He'll task an executive at the company with cracking Clippy: The Movie and they'll send an email out to all the agencies saying... "We're looking for someone with a unique and timely take on the classic character Clippy." They'll maybe even include a PDF of pictures they've compiled of Clippy and movies they want Clippy: The Movie to be like (Barbie, War Games, Inside Out). Then every writer in Hollywood whose agents think they may be good at writing a Clippy movie will get that email forwarded to them with little to no context, just a "What do you think?" Now, Clippy would probably make for an incredible movie, one we’d all want to see, so every writer who gets that email will then pitch to try to get the job. If you're the writer with the best pitch, a pitch that makes everyone laugh and cry and really feel like they can't wait for audiences across America to fall in love with that digital paperclip / assistant... then you'll get hired to write Clippy: The Movie. You'll sign a contract, you'll get paid, you'll write a script, and then WB/Discovery will or won't make the movie.
Or… they might hear everyone's pitches and then decide, after months of searching, that actually Clippy's not really an interesting movie, Clippy is a paperclip and mascot for a computer company, the executive in charge has actually been fired anyway, and the company might be splitting up anyway, so they actually don’t hire anyone. At all. That’s what we call an OWA (Open Writing Assignment). In theory, an assignment gets you paid sooner (while you're working on writing the movie) and guarantees that you do get paid for your work (assuming they don't just not hire anyone, which happens pretty often, actually).
Then there are things that are in between the two, where a writer gets to pitch on a project but not many people know about it, which is yes, an assignment, but not exactly an OWA. The movie Spaceman was one of these, a sort of assignment but one I heard about before anyone else did. The current thing I’m pitching is the same.
This is all super reductive, but I want to get us all up to speed. I have now pitched on a lot of Clippy Movies. I have written movies on spec that have been made (hello In the Blink of An Eye coming at a date TBD from Searchlight), but I've written more assignments. And I have pitched on roughly one million. And learning how to pitch a movie, as someone who’d previously written theater in New York, was probably the steepest learning curve of the entire business for me, personally.
A good pitch is a sales presentation. It's verbal, not written. But I’m a writer! Shouldn’t I be judged on my writing? Great question, but this is the way we do things here. Is this the best way to judge whether a film works or not? Probably not! Does this format allow for a tremendous amount of originality and groundbreaking work? Also no.
In fact, a good pitch is, in many ways, not good writing.
If anything, it’s good book reporting. The goal of a pitch is to tell a coherent emotional story with familiar story structure so that an executive won’t get lost as they try their hardest to listen (again, their inbox is RIGHT THERE).
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Here’s what I’ve found to be most successful (for me):
Right up top I explain “the idea” of the movie. You could call this the logline, but I think it’s broader than that. It’s whatever people would tell their friends about the movie if they liked it. Remember Clippy? The paperclip? Well this is a wild adventure movie about Clippy breaking out of an old computer in the attic in order to save the world from nuclear annihilation, with the help of Merlin the Formatting Wizard and a young boy who still owns the ancient computer because it’s the last connection he has to the father who died before he was born.
It’s great if you can also put two highly financially successful comparisons in there: It’s part Barbie, part War Games, with just a hint of Inside Out! And if you can explain the thematic takeaway of the movie here — then you’ve made it painfully clear: this is what you need to pay attention to as I keep talking at you. In Clippy’s case I guess maybe it’s about using computers for good and not for evil???
When I’m doing this well, it usually takes two to three minutes. Then you talk about the characters (you have to describe the main character, people want to know about them) and then you tell the entire story of the movie. Act One, Act Two, Midpoint, Dark Night of the Soul, Act Three. The whole pitch should take 15-20 minutes. A writer friend of mine told me that his ideal pitch is 2500-3000 words when written out, and I loved hearing this because… I never knew how long it should be! And when I looked back at some of mine, the good ones were all in that ballpark. Any longer is going to be too detailed and boring. Any shorter and you won’t be able to tell people the entire movie from start to finish in enough detail.
Oh, also, practice the pitch! Practice practice practice! You want to be sure that it sounds like you, that it’s quippy, that nothing you’re saying is clunky or going to slow you down, and you want to know how long it actually is!
Just to be clear, what all of this means is that before you go pitch a movie you are going to have to figure out… oh… THE ENTIRE MOVIE. Does it make sense that this is the thing you are asked to do in order to get the job of writing the movie? No. Is it fair? Also no. Does it result in the best work? I would wager this is also a no.
I actually think the secret to a decent pitch is… familiar but different. If it’s too familiar, people listening will get bored. If it’s too different, people listening will get confused, which is worse than bored. Something familiar enough that follows a clear, coherent hero’s journey (do not deviate from this in a pitch, it just… it doesn’t work, they don’t like it) but has a few interesting twists and turns along the way and mashes stuff up in a way that’s totally unique to you (but not too unique)!
Now… a lot of people have complained in recent memory that movies are all kinda the same? And kinda… boring? And there’s a lot of remakes? And retreads? And things that actually aren’t remakes but feel like they are? And why does Hollywood keep making action comedies where people have guns for some reason, even though that’s not particularly funny? Wellllllll… guess what my theory is about that?
Those movies are the easiest to pitch!
The more I’ve worked, the less I’ve wanted to pitch on Open Writing Assignments.
It’s a huge time suck, you’re not compensated for the work, and while it seems like the lower-risk effort (if you do get the job, you do get paid), the trade-off is, if you don’t get the job, you spent weeks thinking about Clippy: The Movie and will never be able to do anything with that work.
I personally try to be judicious about when pitching feels like it’s worth my time. I always try to find out how many people are up for the job (you can ask your agents/manager/producers), I try to find out how long they’ve been trying to figure this movie out (if it’s a long time, warning warning!), and I really try to limit the amount of work I put into these. I also try to make them a little bit boring and familiar. Not too boring, or you won’t get the job! But I've stopped trying to reinvent the form, or crack a new kind of story, or propose a wildly original structure. Those kinds of really cool original ideas, those may just be better suited to writing an original screenplay on spec!
So… writer beware! Pitching is hard! And not as rewarding as writing something original (in my humble opinion)! But… it does seem to be the way we do things here. Most of the paid work I’ve done has been something I’ve in some way had to pitch. That being said, I think percentage wise the specs have paid off more frequently than the pitches. Which does lead me to kind of question the entire way we do it!
Is this the best way to make a movie? I don’t think it is! I actually think it might be harmful to the industry as a whole, resulting in product that is not as original, because the entire mechanism by which projects are chosen creates movie ideas that are easily digested as 15 minute powerpoint presentations.
One thing that might radically change the pitch process: paying people to pitch!
I know a lot of Hollywood has a lot of feelings about this, but I think it might actually incentivize originality, incentivize commitment from the companies, and compensate people for work, because… pitches are a lot of work! The work of figuring out the movie is, in fact, most of the work! I know the Writers Guild has a firm position against writers leaving behind written work for free, which is understandable, but the unintended consequence of this (I think) may be that we’re letting the most charismatic writers scoop up jobs, and potentially leaving behind very good writers who happen to not be good salespeople! So… if pitching were paid (can you imagine?!) perhaps the process would orient itself a little bit more around good, well considered writing, and a little bit less around showmanship (and familiarity).
But, hey, what do I know? I can’t put too much time into solving the problem, I’ve got a pitch to figure out!
[Here’s where I’m putting the usual caveat that this is just my experience, your mileage may vary, and what the hell do I even know? I’m just a guy. Consider this caveat part of literally every week’s entry.]
What about you dear reader? Like to pitch? Hate to pitch? Any tips for me as I go revise this pitch? I do not pretend to know it all (or even half of it all)!