The Lost Art Of Pitching...Not Baseball

Pitch is actually quite impressive for such a little word. Look it up in on online dictionary (only kind of dictionary I’ve used for the last eight years) and you’ll get about twenty definitions. If you count urban slang then you’ll get about ten more, half of them probably British.

For the sake of clarity, I’m talking about pitching creative ideas. As aspiring screenwriters this is something that we will all have to do, and do well if we hope to sell our material. Old timers who have had experience in the industry tell me it’s a “lost art”. I always felt that term made it sound so mysterious, as if pitching as it was originally understood is buried somewhere next to Atlantis.

Pitching must be a lost art, because I’m not too good at it, and most screenwriters I know aren’t too good either. Sure, we can all convey our ideas, but it’s not the same as what those old timers talk about. They talk about going into a room and having a riveting conversation that turns strangers into family. By the ninetieth minute they’re on the edge of their seats and you’re on top of the table as you walk them through the same amazing experience the audience will have. Can people still do that? I know I can’t...not yet at least.

There was no doubt that my pitching muscle needed strengthening after what I would call my first official pitch session. All in all it went fairly well, but as the two men studied me for flaws I couldn’t escape that feeling that I wasn’t in control. It’s my pitch, my idea. I should be in total control, but their eyes, their gestures, and their comments began altering my idea and even how I felt about it. It’s a warm smothering feeling. I imagine it would be similar to making out with the facehugger from Alien.

I felt creatively stronger after the session, but I also realized that I still have a long way to go. In our world, pitching is an ability worthy enough to be a superpower. I hope writers aren’t passing up the opportunity to study this lost art.

Motherly Love

While I assure you that the conversation that influenced the comic was not nearly this...um, annoying, while recently speaking to my mother, the questions regarding my life's current course inevitably came up. It's becoming a tradition as tried and true as the change of the seasons. The simple act of nature showing some kind of progress, albeit cyclical, is a reminder to those with something invested in my future to ask just what, exactly, my progress has been. I suppose blogging, drawing crappy comics, and writing movies is not quite the answer they're looking for, but then I could probably be rescuing babies from alligators in China and some naysayer would still find trouble with the fact that there was no ultimate point. It seems even the most heroic, even superheroes, are bound to this criticism.

So where then does that leave the indebted yet artistic twenty-somethings?

I shudder at the thought.

FYI: The 2nd part of "And So It Begins" will be posted this week. I'm not too sure there are people out there squirming with baited breath, but it never hurts to inflate one's importance.


Write On...

A Tribute to Lost Drafts, the Drafts of Drafts, and Other Such Variants

Last night I received a large helping of feedback on the first half of my current screenplay. I actually enjoy receiving feedback from a large number of people at once (eleven in this case) because it helps you determine what's working particularly well, and what, specifically, must be addressed. While I value individual criticism, it becomes much more valuable when two or three people share a common gripe. If red lights aren't going off by then, well, my stubbornness will be my downfall.

Unfortunately some of those common gripes regarded my protagonist. I knew when I sat down and started the actual script that I had failed to make some critical choices about his backstory, hoping that those things would become more clear as I progressed (things that would then be better addressed in a second draft); however, I hadn't as clear an idea that those vague impressions would lead to a lack of clarity regarding his objectives and stakes. Ouch.

Any screenwriter (...actually, any writer in general) would know that fixing that problem isn't terribly difficult. It simply requires me to make some concrete decisions, most of which I've already decided. The aforementioned "Ouch" comes into play, however, because the clarity that those decisions provides will ultimately change almost everything that I've already written.

Well, duh. Writing is a long process, one involving multiple rewrites - not polishes - and I am well aware of this. It's just that the pages I still have to write probably won't be the same either, and it's as though they're gone before I've even set them down.

I find something sad about the fate of drafts. In melodramatic fashion, I mourn the loss of scenes and moments that will never make it into important hands. I think fondly of the drafts of drafts - the pages and pages written before the actual pages became clear. Maybe it's laziness manifested in nostalgia, but how wonderful would it be if the ambition and excitement poured into that rough draft wasn't somehow dulled by the labor of subsequent revisions?

It's completely silly, I'll admit, but it's an odd feeling knowing that the pages I have yet to write have already lost a bit of their importance, even if it's due to the revelation of changes that will make the entire project that much better.

Write on...

Without A Box

Editor's note: it took everything in the writer's power not to include any references to the end sequence in Se7en ("What's in the BOX??!!") or the SNL Digital Short, "Dick in a Box."


A fellow League member pointed me toward Withoutabox, which is an enormous online database of film festivals and screenplay competitions. This is a great resource for writers sans representation because the more people that see and recognize your work, the better chances that your script will fall into the right hands. Seeing as many agencies only take submissions based off recommendations, winning a few competitions with a kick-ass script certainly can't hurt.

(It may be common sense, but should be reiterated: make sure the work you submit is not a first draft, has been toiled over laboriously, is polished, and is the strongest representation of yourself. Nothing worse than a bad first impression...)

(Also, before submitting anything, please take the time to COPYRIGHT your work. You can do so with the US Copyright Office or even the WGA. You've worked hard on your screenplay. Take the extra steps to protect it. )

We're starting a links list here at League HQ - you'll find it in the right hand margin - linking to sites that are assets to writers. Hopefully it doesn't turn into the behemoth that is our list of labels (which I suppose defeats the purpose), but time, of course, will tell. If you have recommendations, pass them along! Leave comments or send an e-mail to swritersleague@yahoo.com.

Write on...

Box Office: Will Ferrell, FTW

At the beginning of March, it looked like the last two weeks of the month would be surprisingly strong. Sure, 300 tore everything apart, but looking ahead, there was TMNT, Reign Over Me, Meet the Robinsons, and Blades of Glory.

"Wow," I thought to myself. "What a surprisingly strong-looking March!"

Well, then the past two weeks happened and Reign Over Me, Meet the Robinsons, and TMNT got demolished by the critics (I'll admit, by "the critics" I only mean the NY Times. I'm lazy like that), 300 and Wild Hogs stayed strong, and there ended up being more buzz about the trailers for summer blockbusters than the humble movies of March themselves.

The more things change...

Blades of Glory took the top spot this week, grossing a little over $33 million, and having seen it, I highly recommend it. If you're a fan of other Will Ferrel fare, you'll enjoy this one, despite the fact that it's not as strong as Anchorman, or even Talladega Nights.

Meet the Robinsons did fairly well, pulling in $25.1 million, and 300 fell to third, grossing another $11.4 million.

(TMNT, which took the box office gold last weekend, already dropped to #4)

You can read more in-depth coverage here.

On another note, when seeing Blades of Glory, I got to see trailers for Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and Shrek 3. May the countdown to summer begin.

Also, don't try this at home kids.

Getting Away

A couple of months ago, I started taking a screenwriting course. I felt I could use a refresher, I was looking forward to writing with a deadline, and I wanted to root out a general sense of irresponsibility in my writing. It's something I didn't realize at the time, but I wrote as though I was someone who didn't have to care about the end result. In a way, I didn't.

Thus far, and with only a month left to go, I've received from the class all those things. One thing that has struck me though, one thing that I didn't expect, is how much my writing has changed since the last time I took it seriously, almost two years ago, around the time I graduated from college. It comes off as subtle, I'm sure, and to use a cliche, I think it's clear that I've matured as a writer. Example? Well, two years ago, it was difficult for me to inject comedy into my work. It would always pop up as a backlash, as a way to stick it to the faculty and students that didn't appreciate the weight of my drama. Now it seems I've come to understand the world (maybe?) as comedic, if only in the Checkhovian sense. There's also an appreciation and humanity toward my characters that has made them much more three dimensional than I could have managed while in the halls of the DDW.

I got to wondering what exactly might have caused this change, and I don't have any kind of concrete answer. Time? Growing up? The break I took from writing? Maybe. When I was studying acting, there was a scene study class where I got into a verbal altercation with my teacher. She was giving me notes, I was stating my case, we each had monumental egos, and we weren't listening to each other at all. Needless to say, we ended up apologizing to each other the next day, but she left with an odd note: she mentioned that I walked the halls of the studio like I was a 40-year old. She left it purposefully vague, but I'm sure I drew from it what she was suggesting - namely, that I was acting more mature than I was, and that I was putting too much pressure on myself.

I bring up this story (and there are plenty more like this) because the difference between faux maturity and the real thing is staggering. For me, the real thing, ironically, required a certain amount of immaturity, which, in turn, helped me open up and...well, relax. Of course, actually growing up and struggling since entering the real world has helped me not give a crap about the things I thought were so important for the past three or four years. I take pictures to frame the memories of my life, like I'm shooting my own movie, but the images themselves have changed, and it's helped my writing in ways that could never have been learned in a classroom.

...I just had to be in a classroom to realize that.

Hmm.

I was in Connecticut this weekend with some friends from college - an old group of us that date back to the first days of living in New York. We were there to see Video Games Live, which is an orchestrated concert of video game music, and while I suspect this was something I would have eaten up a few years ago, while flipping through the pictures I took of the weekend, the images of the concert meant the least to me. In fact, the concert itself was silly, disappointing, and nothing more than a masturbation vehicle for co-founder Tommy Tallarico. Seriously. Playing an electric guitar during "One Winged Angel?" Gimme a break.

The thing that stands out the most from the weekend wasn't that concert, nor my personal satisfaction with getting to play a Wii again (which we all did, in earnest), but rather being there with my old friends. The best part? Taking walks, eating dinner -- the human aspects of the trip that weren't the intention, but instead were the result.

It makes me wonder what parts of myself were honest. I was gamer, I guess, but never hardcore. What does it say about oneself when the things that used to be exciting are exceptionally bland? It just seems that I've lost more and more interest in my past these days, which, I propose, is ultimately a good thing. However, in this age of instant nostalgia, it can be a little sickening.

Yet, mix all that with optimism for the future. There are visible signs of growth, and at least I'm dealing with nostalgia and a desire to shift focus rather than a crippling fear of change. After all, as I've seen with my writing, I'm able to do things now that I never could in the past. I feel like I live life more fully and can express and share things that might not have been possible. There's a strange relationship brewing between the stories I want to tell and the way I go about my day. I've written how the status of my current projects affects the way I behave, but I'm understanding that it's a relationship that goes much deeper and works both ways.

In other words, I'm not thinking of it anymore as a debilitation. If nothing else, and for lack of a better word, I'm starting to think of it as a strength.

Write on...

Music

I was in the car the other day (on my way back from court, but that's a whole other issue and does not really belong here, at least not in this post) and was listening to some music on my drive. I had the good fortune of having three songs play in a row that had a kind of theme to them. They were "angry" songs, not necessarily bleeding heart songs about lost loves or blood vengeances, but hard rock/heavy metal songs that got my heart pumping and psyched me up. If I wasn't in a car, but rather in a bar, I'd have been tempted to smash a bottle on the counter and start a fight (a testament to my mental state, I'm sure).

But the point is this: it made me want to write. It made me want to be angry, to be out for blood, to be able to punch through walls and not even blink when I take on twenty opponents. In short, it made me want to be the protagonist of an action/comic book script I had worked on earlier, and not thought about revisiting up until that very moment.

(Interestingly, I knew that I would probably never be that guy who could walk into a bar filled with huge guys and hold his own in a fight. I never expect to be in the middle of a firefight or battling for my life. That is why I write. I find every day life to be rather dull and uneventful. The things that I worry about are rather banal and unimportant in the long run. I know that I am very privileged to think of life that way. I am not living in a war-torn country where militias raid my town daily. I am not dying of starvation. I have the luxury of watching movies and fantasizing about what it would be like to live those lives, to be that guy. And for that, I am grateful. But I am also restless. That is why I write, and why, I believe, most writers do. We have our demons, and many of those come from our comfort.)

It is amazing what music can do. The right songs, no matter the subject, can put me (and many other writers) in the optimum mindset for writing the very kind of scene or movie they want to do. I've often found that it's best to listen to soundtrack for pre-existing movies, because those films that I own soundtracks to are generally well made, award winning films -not because I'm a snob, but because those are the films that have moved me so much that I wanted to own the music, as well as the films themselves. It is amazing what music can do, and when you're not in the mood to write, don't be surprised if you find yourself heading for your desk after listening to a few relevant songs.