Stick a Fork in Me, I'm Done

I'm finally done with my exciting week pitching series in LA. I was thrilled to see how open people are to a writer with Canadian credits pitching a Canadian series; they're ready to see a show set in Montreal. ("The audience is, do we like this person? Whether the police have square hats or not, who cares.")

When you get into the room, you instantly realize that some of your pitches are lame. They're the ones you wrote to be like what's on TV. The execs don't want that; they've already got'em. From you, they want the project that you're mad about, the project that takes 10 minutes to pitch instead of only 5 minutes. They want passion. They want something they haven't heard before. "What do you want to spend the next seven years writing?" the very gracious exec at Fox asked me.

That doesn't mean they want a big serial show with lots of mythology, necessarily. Episodic is always easier, so long as you can twist it in a way that makes it fresh.

You have to hear the mandates, of course. The CW no longer wants serials about high school students. They want procedurals about 20somethings. At least, right now they do. TNT wants shows for people from the heartland, ideally character-based procedurals. TeenNick wants your upbeat, big-idea show about a sixteen-year-old girl.

Now we'll see how the enthusiasm I felt in the room turns into followup. Of course, I won't be stressing about it. I will immediately put it out of my mind as I turn to the next thing I need to write. It is the only way to stay sane...

Mandate

I'm down in LA for the week, pitching a series. The thing you have to watch out for is: the mandate is always on the move. We pitched one production company famous for its HBO and Showtime series. What do they want? An episodic procedural for broadcast. (Which is what we're pitching, which is why they wanted to see us down here.)

Talked to the CW. They don't want high school serials. They don't even want 20something serials, like all their new series. They want older and episodic. They want those 40 year old female eyeballs.

Just met an exec who tells me he can't do anything with a genre show. In other news, someone told me angels are the new zombies.

Always ask about the mandate before you start pitching. Until you find out what they're actually looking for now, this very moment, talk about the weather. (Which, by the way, is ridiculously brisk for summer. Low of 59F? Come on.)

Christmas Schadenfreude

If you're wondering why your spec didn't sell this year, relax, spec script sales collapsed in April, sez Nikki Finke:

The wide spec basically died on April 30, 2009. For the first four months of 2009, 8.2% of the specs that went wide to the town ended up selling (16 out of 195). Not a great percentage, but probably to be expected, all things considered. From May through the end of the year, however, sales of wide specs fell off a cliff: 3 out of 178 wide specs sold during that period, or 1.7%.

Basically, "three studios put a moratorium on development spending."

It makes sense. Scripts are the first thing in the pipeline, so if you want to cut costs without affecting output immediately, those $200K vs. $500K deals are easy to cut.

Things should pick up at some point, when execs start getting antsy about having a dry pipeline. When that will happen, who knows. My feeling is that January is going to look better than November, but that's just a gut check.

And then there's this:

According to BoxOffice.com, 2009's domestic cume has already topped 2008's record haul of $9.626 billion from January 1 to December 31, 2008.

At some point studios will realize that they are actually making a profit, and need to continue to make product if they want that to keep up.

I thought this tidbit was also interesting, if you're wondering about the seasonal cycles of Ho'wood:

The Spring selling season is roughly twice as long as the Fall season: this year, there were 21 weeks in the Spring (from the end of Sundance to the week before Independence Day) versus 10 weeks in the Fall (from the week after Labor Day to the week before Thanksgiving).

In Toronto A-Tiffing

The 3rd Annual Writer Mafia party was a big hit on Monday night, with tipsy writers jamming the upstairs and rooftop of Czehoski, along with writer-friendly producers, actors and directors, and even one glam journalist interviewing away.

I'll post pictures as soon as I can download them off my camera.

The refrain of the night was, "Seen anything at the festival?" "Nah." I'm not sure why, but I'd guess that writers come in at the beginning of a movie; by the end of the movie they're on to something else. So why pay $20 (or whatever) to watch movies that don't have distribution yet? If they're good, they'll probably come out in theatres or DVD. And with four hundred movies at the festival (I'm told), there's a lot that don't necessarily deserve distribution.

Line of the evening was Jenn Cowan's, remarking on the plethora of cute young writer guys: "If I'm not in bed by eleven, I'm going home!"

Anyway, no one except my agents had seen any movies. My schedule is packed too full of meetings and parties; I'm here to sell my wares, reconnect with friends and colleagues, move my projects along, remind people I'm alive, and occasionally put friends together. Nothing very high profile, just "you don't schmooze, you lose."

Another day of this and I'm happily boarding a train home. I love visiting Toronto, Toronto really shows me the love, but Montreal is the best city in the world to live in, as far as I'm concerned.

Word is biz seems to be picking up. Thank goodness.

Look North

I've been a bit quiet here lately, because I was prepping for my trip to the Banff Worldwide Television Festival. Not just setting up meetings with a billion producers from Out West, but trying to think of questions to ask Ron Moore that he hasn't answered in his fifty-odd hours of BATTLESTAR podcasts or on the many fan forums he has graced with his presence. I think I came up with a few, and I'll be posting my interview with Mr. Moore in the next week or two.

My big takeaway from this year's Banff was that US networks and cable outlets have finally decided to take Canadian shows seriously. When the Writers Guild strike came two years ago, I thought that US buyers would be forced to look at Canadian shows, and once they were forced, they'd realize that Canadian shows don't all suck. And once Canadian shows pass the don't-suck test, they become a fantastic bargain. Thanks to CTF funding and tax credits and the Canadian domestic license fee, you can pick up a Canadian drama for anywhere from 20% to 10% of what it would cost you to film it yourself in the States. (I've heard of US license fees going down to $200K for a show that would cost at least $2 mil to shoot in the States.) That's cheaper than reality TV. It's cheaper than putting on a talk show.

The fallout from this epiphany is FLASHPOINT and COPPER and THE BRIDGE. (And, I guess, the pilot I'm writing for The N, but they were always Canadian-friendly.) And more are in the works.

I won't say every US network exec was up in the Rockies to buy. Some of them seemed to there to hang out with other Americans. But I heard again and again that, yes, please bring us your shows. AMC is particularly open, for example. And of course, CBS, which already has THE BRIDGE and FLASHPOINT.

A word to the wise: the other thing I heard over and over again was: we want shows with a strong creative vision, it's all in the script, we were excited to work with Stephanie and Mark (the creators of FLASHPOINT). The guy from AMC said he bought a pitch from a writer because her agent described her as "the Canadian JJ Abrams." (Could that be Tassie Cameron? Or, as a spy tells me, Esta Spalding?) They are looking for strongly scripted shows where the creator/showrunner, or the creator and the showrunner, has the authority to deliver their vision. I did not hear anything along the lines of "we were interested because the producer has a strong track record hiring writers to execute her vision."

If you want to sell shows to the Americans, they seem to be much more comfortable when the person writing the show is the person responsible for the show. The producer is important, no doubt. They want high production values, shows delivered on time, great crews. (Ron Moore went on at length about how fantastic his Vancouver crew was, by the way.) But they believe that the producer is there to support the creative vision of the writing team, not to dictate it.

There's still economic gloom. Everyone was saying this Banff was sparsely attended. To me it was a whirl of meetings and interviews, and on Monday I came home so tired I couldn't even take a bath. But I'm coming away feeling much more confident about selling my ideas and getting them made than I've felt since January when my fallen angel series did a face plant.

If you're a writer in the States, this is probably bad news for you. More outsourcing. Yeesh. Canadian service productions stole a lot of business from LA, and now Canadian creative productions are stealing more. But you can take heart that we're a tiny country -- 22.5 million anglophones compared to your 300 million plus. And our government is anxious to gut all the tax credits and subsidies that make Canadian shows so attractive.

I'll blog more about what I learned at Banff, and you'll soon (or soon-ish) see interviews here with Stephanie Morgenstern and Mark Ellis, Mark McKinney, Dmitry Lipkin, and Ron Moore.

I've gotta catch a plane.

Off to Market

I don't live in the same town as all the networks. In Canada that's possible because the Canadian government supports the arts regionally -- there's some money to develop in Ontario, some to develop in Saskatchewan, some for Québec, etc. Likewise, production support.

But you can't count on it to come to you. You have to make a pilgrimage to the money. I try to go whenever there's something fun happening. I'm heading up to Toronto tomorrow for a CFC party and a WGC party and another private party. Good way to catch up with everybody, see my friends, and remind people I exist. Then on Friday, a producer and director are organizing a reading of a script I wrote for them, so I'll get to hear what works and what doesn't. That's always exciting.

Quite a bit of show business is over the phone and Internet. I know an agent who spent an entire month in Aspen during an LA heat wave, pretending he was suffering too. He just had his phones forwarded. No one knew.

But you have to physically be there every now and then, or you fall off the radar. My friend J had already had lunch with everybody he was talking to on the phone.

It's harder to live outside the epicenter when you're in the American side of the biz, and it's harder in either industry when you're unknown. In either case you really don't want to miss an opportunity to meet people and make friends. You need to absorb the feeling of the biz -- the sensibility that enables you to match up a story against what you know people are looking for and go, "Naaaaah, that's just not going to happen."

Success in show business is maybe 30% talent and 30% craft ... the rest is actually getting out there. You have talent, and you can learn craft ... but getting out there is your job too.

Writer Mafia Partay

The Canadian Writer Mafia had a party at the TIFF, and DMc has a dishy rundown. Check it out. (I have no idea what I'm representin' there, you do weird things when people point cameras at you.)

Up at the Barbecue

Spent the afternoon at the CFC barbecue, the one party at the Toronto International Film Festival where I don't feel oddly out of place. At the CFC shindig, I know a few dozen writers and directors and producers and so on. But the film festival parties seem to be distributors and buyers ... and a lot of young women in slinky dresses that turn out to be the Assistant to the Associate Director of Legal Affairs at Alliance Atlantis. Or the Associate Director herself. Or something equally fun. The parties are their reward for the rest of the year. I'd rather be in a writing room breaking story.

I gather that quite a few people are in town to see films, and a number of stars are here to have their picture taken. It all seems quite glamorous! I'm basically here for two network meetings and two parties, and then I'm catching the first train for home.

Thanks Folks, You're Wonderful, I'll Be Here All Week

If you want to see what I look like pitching in front of an audience, and you're in Montreal on the 19th, check out the Just for Pitching event at noon at the Hyatt Regency. I'll be pitching a sexy comedy called ... well come to the event and you'll see!

Pitch Your Comedy

There's an open comedy series pitch at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal. Anyone can apply, and you don't have to go to freakin' Banff to participate. If you're in the neighborhood, and have a 750 word comedy pitch, go for it. The deadline is June June 22 June 29.

And check out the festival site to see when the ten finalists actually pitch on stage on July 19!

So We Pitched At Banff

And in an hour, we'll see how we did when the winners are announced.

And over the next week or so we'll see how we really did, when producers and networks do or don't ask to chat with us about our show.

The last time I pitched here, I tried hard to say as much as possible about my show -- to answer every conceivable question in the four minutes allotted. Consequently, when the questions came, I didn't have answers for them.

What we tried to do this time is flesh out about half of the aspects of the show really well, and leave the other aspects for the inevitable questions. So for example, we didn't include any story springboards in our pitch; but we had them ready when Rob Thomas asked for them (as we knew one of the judges surely must).

(It is very cool to be pitching a high school show to Rob Thomas.)

Our friends say we had a very solid pitch and made the show really clear, and it's a good show. I hope we did. Fortunatley, there is nothing I can do about it either way. Which means I can go and have a drink now.

All Over But the Pitching

I've had just about all my planned meetings here at the Banff Worldwide TV Festival. The only thing that remains is the small matter of Shelley Eriksen and I pitching our high school show at the Youth Pitchit! session in front of a couple hundred people. (If you're here, come vote for us! Even if we suck.) I've been pitching our show retail all festival long and the response has been great.

I think I can tell you now that I'm creating a show for The Movie Network called THE FALLEN. They've ordered three scripts, for starters. I don't think there is a better job in the world than creating a show for pay cable, except running one.

I'm still putting irons in the fire, 'cause there's always 2008 to worry about -- and 'cause I'm here, and what else am I supposed to do with all these irons? But I'd say my summer, at a minimum, is booked up. And that is good.

It's that stage of the festival where I've bumped into most of the people I know, so now I can relax and stretch my fingers, instead of roaming around feverishly. I think I might even hit the hot tub at the hotel later. After the cocktail party, of course ... to slip out early would be shirking.

Believe It Or Not I am A Fundamentally Shy Person

It's midafternoon here in Banff, and I'm already exhausted from all the schmoozing. Granted I was up late last night watching The Sopranos (smuggled in via DVD since none of us were going to be around to watch it in its regular programming). And then I woke up early, kinda stressed out. But fundamentally I find nonstop mingling exhausting. I have a limited amount of energy for meeting even people I know and love, which exhausts itself rapidly. (Writing tends to replenish it.)

The meetings are good, though. I had a nice chat with TNT and a great meeting with Canadian Learning Television, meetings I probably owuldn't have anywhere else. But the unscheduled meetings are just as important: just bumping into people and reminding them you're alive.

<'scuze me while I stifle a tired yawn.>

This afternoon is light, but after coming all this way I don't feel right about napping. And I probably can't concentrate enough to write something creative. So I will press on.

14 hours going to parties and shaking hands and eating is, amazingly enough, hard work.

Pitching at Banff

Looks like a friend of mine's and my pitch is in at the Banff Youth Pitchit! program. That's where you pitch for five minutes in front of 150-250 showbiz people. Yikes. This one is a simpler concept than the one I pitched last year. And my friend and colleague is a veteran pitcher and showrunner. Not to mention charismatic as all get out. So this should be sheer joy and fun, no stress at all. Right?

To Market, To Market

Alex and Denis share a drink or two at the Spoke before the WGC Awards. Because why wait to start celebrating the winners?



And here are my agents, Tina and Amy, as talented and hardworking as they are hot.


Robin, the producer on my pay cable series. I'm lucky to be working with him. He's hugging Tina, my agent's partner.

Where is Alex?

Today I've been walking all around lower Manhattan having meetings with New York production companies. I have a few scripts that really need to be done in the States, either because the budget is beyond Canadian means, or because the material is really about the US and not about Canada. (The one I'm meeting on is a story about military families, and how you can be wounded by a war your father went to. Canada mostly tries to stay out of wars.)

These meetings are frustrating because they're meet'n'greets. They've read my script, unless they haven't. They don't want to buy it, but they like the writing, so they want to meet me. They're smart people whose company I enjoy. But there's a vagueness to many of these meetings that suggests the relationship may not go much further. I feel semi-obliged to meet because you never know. One of the meetings was actually semi-promising, in a long term kinda way.

But they're so different from the meetings I've just been having in Toronto, where I've have to think hard about which projects I want to do and when I have time to do them. It's the difference between "nice script, we'd love to read your next thing" and "nice script, how busy is your summer?" (A: Busy.)

Has anyone cracked the meet'n'greet? Any idea how you turn one into a job? Has anyone ever got a job off a meet'n'greet? 'Cause I sure haven't.

I'll be happy to get back home. I know a week of traveling isn't actually all that much. But I'm tuckered out, and I've got a big nasty blister on my foot, and I want to sleep in my own bed.

Off to Market

I'm on the 6:55 train to Toronto again. Montreal is a lovely place to live, and not a bad place to write or shoot television, but it is not where the financing is. Over the past couple of years I've found myself making the pilgrimage to the Big Smoke more and more often; now it's about once a month. I've got three network meetings and a bunch with producers.

Plus, of course the Canadian Screenwriting Awards -- I'm not up for anything this year but it's good to go and applaud your fellow Guild members. The WGC throws the best party, I think.

(Plus, I just love trains. The view is better. The tracks run through people's back yards and fields. The freeway accumulates suburbs and strip malls like arterial plaque.)

Could you get away with this kind of monthly commute in the States? It wouldn't be easy, even if the US had modern train technology. In Canada the provinces have their own subsidies, which tends to spread out film and television production. When CHUM bought Craig Media, they had to spend money in the Prairies. And Telefilm has offices throughout the country. In the States there's no similar regulation. There's money to shoot in Louisiana, but the screenwriter and director don't have to be from there.

But you don't really need to see people more than once a month. You'd need to be in LA for staffing season. You could skip August and February entirely. If you could get into LA for a few days every month the rest of the year, and so long as you have enough of a name that people are willing to see you when you are in town, you could probably live anywhere.

Pitching Networks

Q. We're coming to Banff armed with (a) a spec episode of a current show and a comedy feature, to show as writing samples, because (b) we've also got a couple of shows we've developed and we're looking for network or producer interest in them.

So, my two-fold question is:

1) Is it possible to make a deal for a show with a network without produced credits or are we only likely to get something done if we get a legitimate producer with a track record attached first, perhaps while in Banff?

Attaching a strong producer is a definite plus. Networks will often agree to read your material whether you have credits or not, but my experience is they don't read it as seriously. Often the pitch just disappears. The right producer validates your pitch and makes up for your inexperience.

Q. 2) I'm not sure what kind of documents to come armed
with for a show. Is a simple two-page leave-behind going to be enough? Or do we need more comprehensive documentation? You mention a 20-page pitch document you put together last year...?

I generally like a 3-6 page pitch doc that says what the show is. That way the exec I meet can pass it up the chain; otherwise it's just the exec's recap that gets passed up the chain. Also, it's easier to prove it was your idea. A good friend of mine who's a veteran writer uses one page leave behinds. But I like to work out more of the details of a show before I pitch it. Working up 3-6 pages forces me to come up with springboards, that forces me to nail down the relationships, and I often discover (and hopefully fix) problems when I have to do that.

Another Week, Another Trip to the Big Smoke

This afternoon I am in the lounge of Toronto's Union Station, waiting for the 5 pm train. I've been making the pilgrimage to Toronto a lot lately, but this has been one of my most focused trips. I went to Telefilm twice to pitch movie projects with some very classy producers. I met with one of Canada's top production companies and one of our top actors who likes one of my projects. (And he's perfect for the part, too. Which don't always go together.) And I got to answer a lot of questions for the current CFC Prime Time TV class. That was fun.

Here's hoping some of these meetings bear fruit.

WALKING AROUND TORONTO

I'm in Toronto today and tomorrow, mostly for a Big Network Meeting tomorrow, but I try to make the most of each trip here.

Unfortunately for Yours Truly, Montreal is an ideal place to have a life, and it is even a superb place to set a TV show, but it is not an ideal place to get a TV show set up. So I find myself hopping on the early morning train every couple of months for a slew of meetings in Toronto.

The vibe here is quite different from Montreal. There is a real English language show business community. I walked around the renovated part of town with a development guy who was planning to head off later to have drinks with a dozen other development people. Couldn't happen in Montreal. I'm not sure there are a dozen development people in Montreal (as distinct from producers who read), and if there are, they don't know each other. I always feel a lot better as a writer trying to get things off the ground when I'm here. In Montreal it can be tough to get people to meet. Here they all seem very happy to.

(Of course this is also a function of my being from out of town. It is easier, ironically, to set up a meeting when you're only in town for a couple days than it is when they can theoretically see you any time they want.)

Here they also seem to have a better sense who I am, again ironically, than they sometimes seem to in my home town. Well, go figure.

Tonight I'm going to study up on the series I'm pitching tomorrow. My writing career is a constant job of swapping concepts and plots and worlds in and out of my head. At any given moment I'm only completely on top of one or two projects at most. I've been working on THE ALTERNATIVE, so now I've got to swap that out and swap in my drama series...