FIX YOUR PITCH!

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] FIX YOUR PITCH! This is perhaps the most dangerous screenwriting lecture you will ever hear.   That’s because today I’m going to be talking about one of the most dangerous concepts for screenwriters: the concept of pitch.   The reason that pitch is so dangerous for screenwriters is that when all we’re thinking about is “can I sell it, can I sell it, can I sell it?”  it takes us away from the kind of writing that we can actually sell.   Similarly, when all we’re thinking about is “what do they want, what do they want, what do they want,” it cuts us off from our own voice.   If you’ve listened to this podcast you know that without your voice you don’t have a shot. That in fact, your voice is the only thing that a producer can buy.   The truth is if a producer wants to buy a well executed, well-crafted script with a good hook, there are thousands of working screenwriters from whom they can buy those scripts.   In order to take a chance on you, in order to take a chance on a new screenwriter, you need to be giving them something they can’t get from somebody else. That thing that you can give that they can’t get from somebody else is your voice.   The biggest danger of pitch is it’s potential to distract you from the questions that actually lead to great writing. What do you want the script to be? Who is the character that’s fascinating to you? What is the question that you don’t know the answer to, that you wish you did? What’s the event that moved you and changed your life? What’s the dream you had last night that kept you up? What’s the terror that haunts you? Or the dream that keeps tickling you?   Instead of starting there with the personal, we start outside of ourselves. We put our focus on what they want. And all kinds of problems emerge.   The first is that you don’t know who they are. And because you don’t know who they are, instead of dealing with the real they, usually they just become a projection of the most insecure part of yourself.   So, the first problem is that when we start to think about they, the they that we think about is not like some cool producer who’s going to dig our work.   The they that we think about is the part of us that thinks we’re not good enough.   It’s the part of us that thinks that our idea is never going to sell. The part of us that feels like we have nothing to offer. The part of us that feels like our craft isn’t good enough, or our voice isn’t good enough, or our art isn’t good enough. The part of us that wonders if we have enough talent.   As writers, we are all desperately insecure. We’re desperately insecure because, as writers, we’re introspective people. Our job is to look inside of ourselves, look at those little niches that most people don’t look at, those little doubts, those little questions.   And so, because of this, if you allow yourself to get into thinking of the they that is going to judge you, it’s going to cut you off from your real instincts. It’s going to cut you off from your freedom to improvise as an artist. It’s going to cut you off from your voice.   You may end up with a really clear, clean idea, but it’s likely that the execution is going to be lacking something. It’s going to be paper thin. It’s going to feel like there is something missing, like there is a glass ceiling that you can’t quite get through in your writing.   The second problem occurs when we start our process by thinking about Can I sell it? Can I sell it? Can I sell it? is that you probably don’t have a clue if you can sell it or not. And, most likely, neither does anybody else in your life.   Now if you’re lucky enough to have a really powerful agent or a really powerful manager, that person’s job is to be on the phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, finding out what is hip, what is popular, what is in style, what is in vogue right now.   But if you’re a normal human being who walks the earth, particularly if you’re a normal human being who probably has a full-time job, and on top of that is probably doing a second full-time job writing, the truth is you have no time to play the social networking game of finding out what’s coming in and out of fashion.   By the time you actually see a movie in the theatre, you’re already 2 years behind the trend.   So the next problem when you start thinking Can I sell it? Can I sell it? Can I sell it? is that not only are you most likely censoring your true voice, but you’re also probably full of doubt about the stuff that actually makes it on the page.   The truth is you probably have no idea what “commercial” is. Because the truth is the industry has no idea what “commercial” is. What “commercial” is changes every day.   Back when I was coming up in the 90s, what people were talking about was hook, and money. Hook and money, hook and money, hook and money. You had to talk pure business to the business people because they weren't even seeing film as art, they were seeing film as just an extension of the MBA training they’d had before they headed out to Los Angeles to make more money in a very lucrative profession.   But when we were speaking to managers and agents and producers at the iTVfest Retreat, we were hearing something very different. We were hearing managers say things like “yeah, we’re making art.” “Yeah, we’re looking for artists.”   That’s a really exciting change. And where did that change come from? Did managers suddenly become philanthropists? Absolutely not.   What happened was we’ve had a little renaissance happen in television. And that renaissance is trickling up from television to features. And what agents and managers and producers have finally realized is oh my god there is “money in them hills.” There is money in art.   So, this is a very exciting time to be a filmmaker. But if you’re thinking about “What can I sell?” If you’re thinking about “What is hot right now?” If you’re out there chasing the trends, not only are you once again cutting yourself off from your own vision, you’re also most likely chasing a trend that is already over.   The truth of the matter is to sell something you’ve got to get a little lucky.   Because even if I were to whisper into your ear exactly what is hot right now, by the time you write the darn script, you’re now a year behind. Especially if you put the time in to actually get that script to a place where it fully captures your voice, what you’re trying to do as a writer.   I started my career writing with professional screenwriters. I had a really unique job in the industry. Basically, my boss would knock on my door and he’d say “I want to make a movie about Sacajawea,” or whatever, name the topic of the day.   And I would go out and I would write the story. And oftentimes writing the story meant writing the script, because I was never a guy who could just arrive at a story without really getting to know my characters. I couldn’t arrive at the kind of story that was going to sell.   So, in the process of writing the treatment, or the story, or the outline, I would often have written about 70% of the script. Not in the final version, but in a rough version.   Then we would go out and sell it, and we would find a professional writer who had more credits than I did to finish the script. And what would usually happen would be that that writer would screw it up.   Don’t get me wrong. There are some really brilliant writers we worked with that were able to take these concepts and do extraordinary things with them. Sometimes things that I could never have even imagined.   But most of the writers that we hired screwed it up. And if you’re a development executive, you know that’s pretty much par for the course. Sometimes 7 or 8 or 9 different writers have to be hired before the project either goes into the turnaround graveyard or finally gets the green light.   So my job was then to sit down with those struggling writers and to somehow save the script. Because it was a hell of a lot cheaper for my production company to pay me to fix that script than it was for them to fire that writer and hire a new one.   And that’s actually how I learned to teach. I learned to teach working with professional writers. And I was a really young kid. I was 22 years old.   So you can imagine, you’re 22 years old, and you’re staring across the room from an Emmy Award winner or Academy Award winner. Somebody who is extraordinarily talented, but is lost in the script. And you learn really quickly if you try to impose your idea on that script, you’re going nowhere. Because you’re 22 years old and that person is not going to listen to you.   So, I learned very quickly that the way that you get a great script is not by trying to impose your own ideas, and it's not even by going back to what I originally wrote in the treatment, or what I originally wrote in my rough draft script.   The way I got great scripts out of these people was by identifying the little pieces of them that had somehow made their way into that bad draft.   And this is something interesting to think about. Why were these great writers writing bad scripts? Well, quite frankly, they were doing it for the same reason you’re likely to do it if you think about the pitch.   We were a smaller production company, so many of these writers were writers who’d had had tremendous careers but were kind of on the downside of their careers.