I received a reply from the guy with the great idea for a TV show who needed someone with "industry credibility" to team up with.
Feel the need to vent? No problem! Since we don’t each other, it can’t be
personal. A simple, "not interested" would have done the trick though.
The television saying you mentioned….we say that same thing in
marketing and advertising! Since I’m a professional in my chosen field too
(no, really), I receive numerous offers to partner from people looking to break
in. Though it almost never goes anywhere, I usually offer some slight
encouragement. The upside is so much greater than the downside and the cost to
let it play out is so insignificant…..so why not?
Instead of offering encouragement, I offer honesty and reality. Obviously, you didn’t want to hear either. You can’t expect to scrawl a drawing of a car on a napkin and sell it to Ford… why should you expect it to happen with a TV series idea? The way to break in is not to look for shortcuts, for a way to start at the top…which is what you are trying to do. The way to break in is to write a terrific script, get hired as a freelancer on a show, get picked up on staff, then work your way up the writer/producer ladder until you reach the point in your career when someone from a studio or network calls and says "Hey, got any ideas for a series?"
As for the networks buying years of
experience and a track record……I sincerely hope that is true (means better
television). The jury seems to be out though: Overnight
successes…..Schwartz, who at 27 created The O.C….Trey Parker and Matt Stone
created South Park while they were still in college.
I figured that’s where you were coming from. You didn’t do your homework. Josh Schwartz worked on other shows and wrote other pilots before THE OC. Parker and Stone made a short animated film, THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS, that wowed the industry. That short film proved their skill as animators/writers/performers and they got a series… based on that short film. They weren’t car salesmen from Topeka with a really great idea for an animated TV series.
What must I have been thinking when I contacted
you? I mean…how on earth could a professional television writer really be
interested in what someone from outside the industry has to offer?
". CSI, the No. 1 show was created by relative newcomer, Anthony
E. Zuiker…. CBS hired experienced writer-producers Carol Mendelsohn and Ann
Donahue to run the show…"
Again, you aren’t doing your homework. Zuiker didn’t sell his idea by emailing producers with a come-on saying he had a great idea for a show and he just needed someone with "industry credibility" to sell it for him. He wrote a script. From the CSI Files Website:
Zuiker himself got his start when childhood friend Dustin Lee Abraham, now a CSI scribe but then an actor, would get Zuiker to
write him monologues for auditions. "I wrote a speech about a man, mentally
retarded, watching his wife give birth. He’s a degenerate gambler, and he went
into an announcing [mode, a play by play]," Zuiker says of the monologue that
got him attention in Hollywood. The speech was turned into a movie, The
Runner, which was made for seven million dollars. It turned out to be
Zuiker’s gateway to Hollywood.
You’re wowed by what you think are strike-it-big-in-Hollywood-quick stories that really aren’t. Stop looking for a short-cut. The best way to sell a series is to write some great scripts. Don’t look for someone with "industry credibility," earn some of your own instead.
” He’s a degenerate gambler…”
What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Maybe he meant inveterate gambler, but no wonder tv’s so bad when that’s the way a hotshot writer speaks.
Well, I can understand that it’s annoying to get the same eMails asking for help with this or that idea or project again and again. I’m not a patient person and would surely react similarly unfriendly like you.
Otoh, you cannot really blame people for thinking an original idea would be welcome with TV producers, seeing as they’re basically recycling and re-using the same ideas and concepts over and over again.
kete
“Instead of offering encouragement, I offer honesty and reality. Obviously, you didn’t want to hear either. You can’t expect to scrawl a drawing of a car on a napkin and sell it to Ford…”
Actually, the Ford Mustang sprang from drawings on cocktail napkins.
However, it goes back to your original point. Lee Iacocca, a couple engineers, and some guy from the Rouge River assembly line were sitting around in a Dearborn diner playing around with an idea. So while you can draw a car on a napkin and sell it to a car company, you have to be hanging out with the prez and drawing your paycheck from said company to do it.
“Degenerate gambler” is a common expression. Can’t believe you’ve never heard it before.
It’s a person who gambles compulsively, usually loses, and doesn’t care; a person who is addicted to the action, in way over his head, and can’t stop.
(c.f. Degenerate: “Having fallen to an inferior or undesirable state, especially in mental or moral qualities.”)
//Otoh, you cannot really blame people for thinking an original idea would be welcome with TV producers, seeing as they’re basically recycling and re-using the same ideas and concepts over and over again.//
Actually, Kete, you’re way off base. It is not the “TV producers” who are recycling and re-using the same ideas, it’s the network executives.
Trust me, Lee – like any professional writer – has dozens and dozens of ideas just waiting to be put on paper. That’s part of why we write. We (writers) don’t need other people’s ideas – we have plenty of our own.
Mr. Idea Man should have contacted the network execs if he was looking for someone lacking original thought and with the power to help him out. Best of luck with that route, BTW.
If the guy really thinks he has a winner he can put his money where his mouth is: I’m sure there are plenty of credible writers (novelists as well as screenwriters) who’d put the guy’s ideas into a screenplay for a fee.
Who’d read it? That’s the problem.
Refreshing and inspiring as always, Lee.
You wrote:
“The way to break in is to write a terrific script, get hired as a freelancer on a show, get picked up on staff, then work your way up the writer/producer ladder until you reach the point in your career when someone from a studio or network calls and says “Hey, got any ideas for a series?”
Great Idea! Absolutely!! I’ll drop everything I’ve worked to achieve over the past twenty years so I can hop, skip and jump back to L.A. and get hired on a series. (Course… if that was what I wanted, would I have left in the first place…hmmmm?)
You wrote:
“Instead of offering encouragement, I offer honesty and reality. Obviously, you didn’t want to hear either. You can’t expect to scrawl a drawing of a car on a napkin and sell it to Ford…”
You offer your reality. In addition, you don’t know me and have absolutely no idea of what I want to hear. How presumptuous! (BTW, lots of great ideas got their start on napkins).
You wrote:
“I figured that’s where you were coming from. You didn’t do your homework.”
I wanted to illustrate one point only: In Hollywood (and almost everywhere for that matter) there are many instances of people with little or no experience working in partnership with “experts” to develop concepts and ideas. You know that.
You wrote:
“You’re wowed by what you think are strike-it-big-in-Hollywood-quick stories….”
Come on now, if I was “wowed’ by strike-it-big-in-Hollywood, why would I have left? (Again, you’re assumptions are not logical)
You wrote:
“Stop looking for a shortcut. The best way to sell a series is to write some great scripts, not emailing TV writer/producers”
I’m sure that’s true….trouble is, I’m not looking to sell a series! My original query to you said, “…I’m looking for a talented television writer with industry credibility that might be interested in partnering to develop a pilot.” I never mentioned selling anything…. that was you. (How long ago did you get out of the car business and leave Topeka anyway?)
You went down the wrong path but, obviously, meant to go there. It might be enlightening for you to understand why.
there are many instances of people with little or no experience working in partnership with “experts” to develop concepts and ideas. You know that.
Name ’em.