The Industry

The Comedy Pitch

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Today Ken Levine, the Emmy-award winning writer/producer and all-around nice guy, gives you the inside scoop on what happens when you go in to pitch a sitcom pilot. Of course, he shares some great anecdotes, too.

Our PA on CHEERS who used to get us lunch became the VP of comedy at a
major network. We had to pitch our PA. (No sale. But we were offered
drinks.)

The comedy VP (who later became the president of that
network) once asked us “What is the opening episode of the seventh
season?” Huh??? How the fuck do you answer that? We said “the clip
show, featuring all the highlights of the many Emmy winning episodes.”
(No sale)

To Be Or Not To Be A Writer’s Assistant

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I got this email the other day:

I realize that I don’t have the
experience or knowledge to land a job in the industry.  Therefore, it seems
reasonable to me that I should try to break in as a writer’s assistant. I  know it is an unglamorous job, but I also know it will expose me to the production process by allowing me to observe the daily workings of whatever show I’m working on.   So the question is, obviously, how do I do it? How do I break in, and whom do I contact?

Here’s what I told him. The best advice I can offer you isn’t that revolutionary….you need
to send your resume to the personnel offices at the various studios and
production companies, big and small. You can start by getting getting
copies of VARIETY and THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, the weekly issues with
the TV and Movie Production reports,  jot down the names of every production company you see
and send them your resume.  Familiarity
with Microsoft Word, Excel, and the various screenwriting programs
(Movie Magic and Final Draft) will be essential.  You might also try Variety Careers and searching for openings for writer’s assistants.

He wrote back to me right away:

If my long-term goal is
to direct, is writer’s assistant the best path, in your opinion?  Or should
I be focusing on a Production Assistant position?  I ask because I want to
take the best approach, before I go around papering the town with my resume as a
Writer’s Assistant.  Someone made an interesting point in a book that I
read, that it’s very easy to become pigeonholed as a "PA" or as an "Assistant"
if you don’t map out your plan for your long-term career ahead of
time.

I don’t know much about becoming a director, but being a PA would give you more "on the set" experience, even if you are just fetching bottled water for people. That said, I’d recommend taking some directing classes and learning the essentials of the craft.

The Lion’s Share

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There’s an article in today’s Los Angeles Times talking
about how Lions Gate Television, my former employer on MISSING, manages to make
a profit on their cable television shows.

But by employing financing formulas it has used to make and distribute
such profitable, low-budget movies as "Madea’s Family Reunion" and the
"Saw" horror franchise, Lions Gate not only covered its costs on
"Weeds" but also cleared what industry analysts estimate was about
$100,000 per episode of pure profit.

[…]By cobbling together money from license fees, income from international
sales, state and local tax rebates and subsidies, Lions Gate has at
least broken even from day one on all nine of its shows — a rarity in a
business where most network shows begin in the red.

It’s interesting stuff. The TV
division is run by the impossibily energetic Kevin Beggs, easily one of the
brightest, friendliest, and most creatively supportive execs I’ve ever worked with. It’s nice to see him
getting the recognition he deserves.

Making a Living

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I had lunch with a TV writer-friend not long ago, and he was lamenting how the business was letting him down lately. He hadn’t worked much in TV during the last year and was despairing about his future. He told me that he wished he wrote books, too. So write one, I said. But I could see from the expression on his face that he wouldn’t. He liked the idea of writing a book…actually doing it was something else. He was a TV writer, and that was it.

I decided long ago that I was going to be a writer first and a TV writer second. There’s no question that I make most of my living in television…but I believe it’s important to me professionally, financially, psychologically and creatively not to concentrate on just one field of writing (It probablyhelps that I started my career as a freelance journalist, then became a novelist, then a non-fiction author, and finally, a TV writer/producer).  So I write books, both fiction and non-fiction, I teach TV writing, and occasionally I write articles and short stories… most of the time while I’m simultaneously writing & producing TV shows (though the TV work always takes priority over everything else). 

While the income from books, teaching, and articles doesn’t come close to matching what I  make in TV, those gigs keep some cash coming in when TV (inevitably) lets me down, keep me "alive" in other fields,  and, more importantly, keep my spirits up.

As a result, who I am as a writer isn’t entirely wrapped up in whether or not I have a TV job or a book on the shelves. I often have both, or one or the other — but if I have neither, I have a class to teach or an article to write.

I’m not producing a series right now. But last week, I partnered with a major production company and pitched a movie with them to a cable network. I met with representatives of a European TV network that’s interested in having me teach TV writing to their writer/producers and consult on their series. I rewrote a  TV movie treatment to incorporate studio notes.  I turned in a freelance script to the producers of a new drama series. I taught an online screenwriting class. I submitted a short story to Amazon shorts. I wrote 60 pages of my next novel. Next week, I have a meeting with a studio exec who has shows to staff up, a notes meeting on the freelance script, galleys to proof on one of my novels, more pages of my book to write, and probably a whole lot more that I don’t even know about yet. 

The bottom line is, I am always writing something for pay, even if that check is miniscule and hustling for my next gig, whether it’s in TV, publishing, or something else.  Why? Because that is who I am… a professional writer. And I have a mortgage to pay, just like everybody else.

Suck Ups

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There was an essay in the LA Times magazine this weekend by Sharon Bordas, an aspiring sitcom writer talking about "staffing season," that hectic period after the series pick-ups in May when shows hire all their writers. But the essay wasn’t really about that. It was about sucking up. Her first interview didn’t go well, so she lavished praise  on the next showrunner she met with.

I prostrated myself before him, calling him the best writer
of his generation. Without a trace of irony. It worked. My agent called
to give me the good news: Boy Wonder Two (BW2) loved me.

She didn’t get hired as a writer, though. She got hired as a writer’s assistant. Not surprisingly, she lost the job on her first day when she pitched story ideas to the co-exec producer.

The next day I was fired. "It’s not going to happen," my agent told me,
explaining that showrunner-for-a-day had found me presumptuous and
overbearing.

She’s at a loss to understand why they got this impression of her and goes on and on blaming her career troubles on the inflated egos and duplicity of the showrunners she meets.

I didn’t even try to eat the day of my meeting with my third Boy
Wonder. I complimented everything from his writing to his shoes. Soon,
an offer was on its way, and my agent was thrilled…
The next day, one of the show’s producers announced that he had promised my job to the son of a friend. I was out. Again.

It never occurs to her that maybe the third Boy Wonder called around about her and didn’t like what he heard — so came up with a lame excuse for backing out before compounding his mistake. The whole point of the essay is that TV shows are run by assholes and talented, good-hearted people like her don’t get a break.  (She clearly thinks she’s coming off as lovable, funny, and sympathetic in her essay. She’s not).

She looked down her nose at each showrunner before she even stepped in the door for her  interviews. Each prospective employer was a "Boy Wonder," implying she thinks they got their show on the air not because of any talent or smarts,  but because they kissed the right asses and sold out. They don’t deserve her respect, honesty, or good-will. They are frauds. She is the real deal. (Even the co-exec producer is shrugged off as "showrunner for the day" when he should have prostrated himself in front of her awesome talent).

What was her interview strategy? To be a manipulative, lying little weasel, lavishing false praise on showrunners to hide her contempt for them. And when she finally snares an assistant position,  she has the gall on her first day to suggest story ideas to the co-exec producer when, in fact, her job is to answer the phones, type scripts, and get everybody lunch.

And she wonders why she was fired? Hollywood isn’t the problem, lady. It’s you.

Flying Without a Pilot

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I didn’t write a pilot this season, but this post from Ken Levine reminds me of what I’m missing… notes, notes and still more notes.

This conference call features eleven people – one more David and three Katies. These are the network notes but the lower tier (development department) notes. Once these are done to all eleven peoples’ satisfaction it goes up the ladder, usually to the middle tier VP’s. Writing a pilot is like playing Super Mario Brothers.

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

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The vast majority of execs I’ve worked with in TV and publishing during my career have been terrific people who I count as friends. But I’ve had several situations in recent years where I’ve caught a few executives lying about me or the work that I’ve done. When I’ve confronted them with their dishonesty, they freely admitted it without shame or apology.

In one case, I accidentally found out about some damaging untruths about me from a friend and quickly contradicted the story, figuring there had been some unfortunate, but innocent, mis-understanding somewhere along the line. It never occurred to me that the exec I was working with had intentionally lied about me…until I heard from him.

"Why did you tell X the truth?" he demanded.

"Because someone gave X the impression that I’d fucked up." 

"That was me," he yelled.

I was astonished.

"But I didn’t fuck up," I said. "I’ve never done anything like that."

"I know."

"Then why did you tell X that I did?"

"Because I was the one who fucked up," he said. "Now you’ve made me look like a liar!"

"You are!" I yelled back.

"They don’t have to know that," he said.

"You lied about me to hide your own fuck-up. You made yourself look good and me look bad."

"So? You should have gone along with it," he said. "You’ve deeply hurt my feelings."

No matter how much I tried to explain that it was his fault, and that the injured party was me, he just couldn’t (or wouldn’t) understand. Nor did he seem to care about the damage he’d caused to our business relationship.

In another case, an executive told me how happy he was with my work writing/producing a TV series, how much he loved being in business with me, and how he hoped we’d enjoy a long professional relationship together. Which would be nice, except that I knew for a fact that earlier that same day he’d told another producer how much he hated me and offered him my job for the following season. What the exec didn’t know was that the producer was an old friend of mine and immediately called me.

When I confronted the exec with this, he simply said "So what? That’s business. Grow up."

Another exec we worked with took credit with the network, right in front of us (and in conference calls), for creating and developing stories and scripts he not only didn’t come up with or work on, but that he didn’t even see until roughly the same moment the network did.

We never confronted him about this, nor revealed it to the network of course, because it would have made him and the show (and us) look bad. But the exec had no problem whatsoever lying to our faces or, apparently,  any fear that we’d contradict him. I guess he was right on that score. I didn’t know how he could do it without feeling deeply embarrassed and ashamed every time he saw us. That said, we are team players and we thought that establishing that was more important to us and our careers than speaking up to him or anyone else. In the end, this came back to haunt us, but if we had it to do over again, even knowing what I know now, we’d make the same choice.

Lying isn’t new…but I think the complete lack of shame some execs are showing when they get caught in the act is a new wrinkle. I mean, they aren’t even bothering to make excuses or dodge blame or cover up…

Hmm. Come to think of it, I may have discovered a new kind of honesty: being honest about your dishonesty. Pretty soon, if we aren’t vigilant, that may become the new definition of integrity in Hollywood…

Your Great Idea for a Pilot

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My friend Javier Grillo-Marxuach, supervising producer of LOST,  has a wonderful, brutally honest post on his blog about his experience writing and producing pilots. The post is nearly a year old, but the wisdom and bite of his story hasn’t dimmed.

so anyway – pilots. the one question i hear most is “i have a great
idea for a pilot, what do I have to do to get it see/produced/on the
air?”

the stock answer to this is “move to los angeles and spend
ten years making a name for yourself as a television producer with an
established track record that will make a studio and network believe
that they should trust you with forty-four million dollars of their
money to produce twenty-two hours of television.”

however,
things have changed in television, and now it is easier than ever to
get a pilot on the air without establishing a track record as a
producer…

…and I say that in the same way one might say “now
it’s easier than ever to put an orbital mind-control laser in a
geosynchronous orbit over your mother-in-law.”

You’ve got to read the rest. It will make you weep.

How do I become a television writer if I don’t have any contacts?

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I get asked this question a lot…but it’s disingenuous, since I’m a
TV writer/producer and whoever is asking me that is really asking me to either read
their script or to invite them in to pitch. So, theoretically, they already
know somebody in the business.
 
They’re luckier than I was when I got started. I didn’t know
anybody in the TV industry. But I got in. How did I do it? Everybody’s story is
unique. Most of those stories, however, share one common element. You have to
put yourself in the right place to get your lucky break. And it’s easier than
you think. 

The first thing you have to do is learn your craft. Take
classes, preferably taught by people who have had some success as TV writers.
There’s no point taking a class from someone who isn’t an experienced TV writer
themselves. 

You’d think that would be common sense, but you’d be
astonished how many TV courses are taught by people who don’t know the first
thing about writing for television or who, through a fluke, sold a story to Manimal twenty years ago and think that
qualifies them to take your hundred bucks. Even more surprising is how many
desperate people shell out money to take courses from instructors who should be
taking TV writing courses themselves.

There’s another reason to take a TV writing course besides
learning the basics of the craft. If you’re the least bit likeable, you’ll make
a few friends among the other classmates. This is good, because you’ll have
other people you can show your work to. This is also good because somebody in
the class may sell his or her first script before you do… and suddenly you’ll
have a friend in the business. 

Many of my writer/producer friends today are writers I knew
back when I was in college, when we were all dreaming of breaking into TV some
day. 

A writer we hired on staff on the first season of Missing was in a Santa Monica screenwriters group… and was the
first member of her class to get a paying writing gig. Now her friends in the
class suddenly had a friend on a network TV show who could share her knowledge,
give them practical advice and even recommend them to her new agent and the
writer/producers she was working with.

Another route is to try and get a job as a writer/producer’s
assistant on an hour-long drama. Now only will you get a meager salary, but you
will see how a show works from the inside. You’ll read lots of scripts and
revisions and, simply by observation, get a graduate course in TV writing. More
important, you’ll establish relationships with the writers on the show and the
freelancers who come through the door. Many of today’s top TV producers were writer/producer
assistants once. All of the assistants I’ve had have gone on to become working
TV writers themselves… and not because I gave them a script assignment or
recommended them for one. I didn’t do either.

 The first step towards getting into pitch a TV producer for
an episodic writing assignment is to write an episodic teleplay on spec.

Read more

WGA Election Packet

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The fat WGA election packet arrived in the mail yesterday. I haven’t opened it yet. I’m dreading going through all the election material and reading all the statements. I haven’t made up my mind yet how to vote. This one isn’t easy. My friend Mark Evanier does a great job summing up the election over on his terrific blog.

If you’re not a WGA member, you’re missing out on the fun of seeing a
batch of articulate, dedicated people who essentially agree on almost
all the key issues waging a bloody battle against one another. Every
one of them is in favor of strengthening the guild, increasing
minimums, protecting and rebuilding the health insurance and pension
funds, extending WGA jurisdiction to non-covered areas like animation
and reality programming, etc. Still, in the guild, we never like to let
the fact that we’re all on the same side keep us from having a nice,
divisive fight…

…To the extent there is a difference of issues between the teams, it’s
that the "New WGA" crew wants to drastically increase the amount of
money the WGA spends on organizing efforts, getting non-guild TV shows
and movies under the guild umbrella, along with new technologies. The
"Common Sense" candidates endorse the goal but not the strategy,
arguing that the "New WGA" guys are looking at a very expensive
organizing model that might work for non-creative unions but won’t work
for writers.

Like Mark, I’m unlikely to vote for one of the slates but will pick individual candidates I agree with (he calls it the "Chinese Food" approach).