John August

Pitches

Spec, or write it for the producer?

Film Industry, Pitches, QandA

questionmarkI recently went out to about 10 companies with a comedy pitch. I had some good response, although no sale, as I somewhat expected as a new writer. But it was a great experience to pitch it, meet new people, etc.

*One of the producers I pitched to loved the overall concept but had issues with my execution of it. He wants to develop it with me as a script.*

*On the one hand, I can see the value of having an experienced exec’s insight. Plus he was very excited about the idea and got it on a thematic level.*

*On the other, I am so sick of developing this idea which I’ve been working on for months and really want to start writing it now. (Even though it didn’t sell, I still think i can execute it well enough to sell.) I’m worried the producer’s ideas for plot changes were pretty major, and I may not agree with all of them. Plus I’d have to cater to his views in order for him to bring it to the studio. My inclination is to just go ahead and spec it, then show it again to him and everyone else. But I’m wondering what you think. I’d hate to pass up a good opportunity.*

*–KR*
*Los Angeles, CA*

I don’t know the producer, so I can’t speak to his taste. But I think your instincts are right.

Look at it this way: Say you write the script and it still doesn’t sell. At least if you wrote the script the way you wanted, you’d always have something you believed in. But if you wrote it to the producer’s vision and it didn’t sell, you’d be stuck with a script that’s not really what you wanted in the first place.

So I say, spec it and take it to the producer first. If he still wants it his way, you can decide whether it’s worth the work to try it. He may even option it. But whatever happens, you’ll always have your version in the vault.

Writing loglines for a comedy

Pitches, QandA

questionmarkSo now I have 120 pages of the funniest damn stuff you’ve never seen and I have to describe it in three or four sentences. How do you convey the witty dialogue, the clever visual gags, the essence of the humor in a logline?

Whenever I write one it ends up sounding like it’s describing an action movie or drama. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

— Jeff in Maplewood

You aren’t going to be able to summarize the visual gags, puns and one-liners in a logline, so don’t try. Rather, you want to distill what’s funny about the idea of your movie. The best practice is to take existing movies and figure out how you’d boil them down if you had to write a logline.

None of these would classify as John’s Best Effort, but they get the point across:

* [Groundhog Day](http://imdb.com/title/tt0107048/combined) — Bill Murray gets stuck repeating the same day, again and again. Every day, he tries to do something different, but the next morning everything resets to the way it was.

* [Shrek](http://imdb.com/title/tt0126029/combined) — A grumpy ogre and his hyperactive donkey have to save a princess. The world is made up of all the different fairy tale characters, like the Three Little Pigs and the Gingerbread Man.

* [Clueless](http://imdb.com/title/tt0112697/maindetails) — An airheaded but ultimately well-meaning Beverly Hills teenager tries to “makeover her soul” in a riff on Jane Austen’s Emma.

Accept the fact that some movies aren’t so easily summarized. For instance, we never did come up with a logline for Go which sounded actually funny.

Note: Looking up the IMDb summaries for these examples proves that anonymous posters can do better than the pros. For Shrek:

A reclusive ogre and a chatterbox donkey go on a quest to rescue a princess for a tyrannical midget lord.

Damn. It’s the “tyrannical midget lord” that makes it funny.

Whether to pitch or to spec

Film Industry, Pitches

Craig Mazin has a [good article](http://artfulwriter.com/archives/2005/04/why_pitching_is.html) on [Artful Writer](http://artfulwriter.com) today about whether screenwriters are better off pitching their ideas, or just writing the script and trying to sell it as a spec. I largely agree with his points.

Keep in mind that Artful Writer is geared towards screenwriters who are already working in the industry, so the pitch-versus-write decision wouldn’t be the same for most aspiring screenwriters.

Pitch fests: Are they worth it?

Pitches, QandA

questionmarkI’m considering plunking down $300 to go to a pitch fest, but I’m wondering if they’re really worth it.

— Raffi Bagadasarian

For readers who don’t know, a pitch fest is an event where aspiring screenwriters pitch their screenplays to a group of Hollywood-types, who hopefully will want to read-slash-buy their scripts, or at least offer suggestions for improving their pitch technique.

A few years ago, I was on a (free) pitching panel for a local screenwriting conference. It was interesting, but I’m not sure it was terrifically helpful for the writers who pitched. (In fact, the other writers in the audience may have learned more just by listening to misguided pitch after misguided pitch, and the criticisms thereof.)

I’ve heard tales of studio executives buying ideas they heard during a pitch panel, but I don’t know of any verifiable success stories. If any readers have experiences, positive or negative, with pitch panels, please help Raffi out by leaving a comment.