What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Well, October anyways. And with the weather turning cold here in New York (it was in the 30's this morning! The friggin' 30's!!!) spending a week in sunny, warm, LA felt like summer.

I went and pitched. I had 13 meetings. 2 for TV. 11 for film.

I had a good week. Thanks to everyone who gave me bits of advice, everything went well, and I only had to take my clothes off a couple of times.

The TV pitches were fun, one more formality than anything, the other legit. My Manager and I have a TV pitch we've worked on and this guy likes it. So this guy is gonna bring it back to his people and see if they like it and so forth. I just hope they're ready for an all-midget version of Payton Place.

The film pitches were also fun. Lots of different reactions to the same material. From the lows of one meeting that, after about 5 minutes I knew was a total waste of everyone's time, to the highs of another meeting that went so well, I'm surprised they didn't propose.

I went in with a stable of pitches: projects of mine in one form or another that I wanted to toss out at folk. I'd get in the room, feel out the person I was meeting with, and choose which projects to pitch to them. The winner, the pitch that got the most reaction and the one I'll probably start to work on right away, was actually a story idea that both My Manager and My Agent didn't like, so it wasn't on the A list of pitches. It didn't even make it into the first couple of pitches. But I started to pull it out for fun and it was the big winner everytime. So I kept pulling it out. Ended up leading with it. I told My Manager and My Agent and they both went, more or less, "Huh. Well I guess we know what your next project is going to be."

Even more fun was when the meeting would take a turn and they'd talk about projects they wanted to pitch me. That happened three times. That's the sweet spot, because if you start working on their projects, they're already invested in the project and are driven to push it through all the red tape that can pop up.

One of those three has come around very quickly, to where I've already come home, worked on their idea, and pitched my take to them over the phone. They liked my pitch, and I'll probably know next week if I've struck gold or struck out.

So in all, a very good trip, some very good meetings, and I am totally jazzed.

Side note: One of the companies I met with would be an absolutely perfect place to land Siege, and for a lot more money than we'll ever see from Producer Dude. Am I tempted to rip it away from Producer Dude and get it set up somewhere else? Of course. But I'm not ready to be that shallow yet, that slimy. Neither, I think, is Charlie. But I have told Producer Dude that as the days tick away without any movement, he needs to be realistic with me and let it go if it's just not going to happen. Remember, Siege was written in Sept. '05 for a Dec. '05 start date. If it goes into '07 without a peep, I may bring it up again. We'll see how some other things go.

Gotta go write. Rock on.