Hollywood Hopefuls (Dream on) at Pitchfest
LOS ANGELES, July 22 — It’s probably best envisioned as a horror flick, with comic elements.
So, here’s the pitch: 200 writers from all over pay $395 apiece to take face-to-face meetings with legitimate Hollywood buyers and brokers. Scouts from top talent agencies and management firms, studios and production companies are seated behind little conference tables, waiting to be bowled over. But the starry-eyed screenwriters, imagining a Cinderella story with themselves in the lead, instead get just a chilling seven minutes to present their ideas before time stops like a guillotine’s drop and they’re ushered out the door — and back into oblivion.
Or, you could try it from the point of view of the more cynical industry players in the room, stuck listening to pitch after underwhelming pitch, hour after hour: think “Captivity” meets “Dumb and Dumber.”
Fade In magazine’s 11th annual Hollywood Pitch Festival, the movie and television business’s answer to speed dating, was a beehive of activity this weekend. Anyone could take a shot at fame and fortune, until the little bell went ringy-dingy and the M.C. said time was up.
“I feel like I’m on ‘American Idol,’ and I’m crushing people’s dreams,” said a talent agent from Endeavor after having swiftly nixed six hicks’ pix. Citing her company’s policy, she insisted on anonymity.
And yet somehow, year after year, the hopeful keep coming back, to both sides of the table.
“It’s hit or miss,” said Rob LaPlante, a producer whose credits include “The Apprentice.” “But if we’re not willing to listen to ideas, we’re not doing our jobs. I really enjoy meeting people who are excited about an idea. It’s sort of invigorating.”
The buyers and representatives are looking for the rare diamond in the rough, the way “Monster,” for which Charlize Theron won an Oscar, was found at a similar event sponsored by the American Film Institute.
Daniel Weisinger of Junction Films, which discovered and produced “Monster,” said fewer than one in 10 pitches were worth following up, but he offered no complaints. “It’s more the person sitting in front of you than the pitch,” he said. “People get better at their craft. You can’t teach talent, but you can teach the skills to liberate it.”
And Todd Cohen of Reveille, a television production company, said he had at least been intrigued by one writing team’s pitch for a family comedy. “There are so many different ideas out there, you never know where the next good one’s going to come from,” he said.
Might it come from the security guard from Chicago? The portfolio manager from Redondo Beach, Calif.? The Microsoft employee from Redmond, Wash.? Or from Joseph Labracio, a tattooed young contractor from Brick, N.J., talking up a mockumentary about the underground amateur-wrestling circuit?
For aspiring screenwriters, events like this offer a rare chance to breach the barricades that bar the door to Hollywood; many of the companies involved normally refuse to accept unsolicited ideas or scripts.
Even those who say no sometimes give valuable feedback. Michael Sugar of Anonymous Content, a management and production company, repeatedly advised rejectees on how to improve their pitches for the next time. “I like helping people,” he said.
Still, Mr. Sugar said he was happily surprised by what he had heard. “I never asked someone for a script here, until today,” he said after sitting through dozens of pitches. “You never know.”
Garth Meyer, an advertising copywriter shopping a modern-day Christmas fable, was turned down early in the day, reworked his pitch, then drew a nibble from Paramount before sitting down opposite a producer he had met at a pitchfest in February. She was interested then, he said, but left her company soon after hearing his pitch, and he had been unable to find her to follow up.
“Anyhow, it’s back on,” Mr. Meyer said. The woman and her new partner asked for his script and gave him contact information for their company. “She said something about thinking she could sell it and get it made by this Christmas,” he added. “That’s Hollywood.”
Mr. Meyer said that unfiltered access to people like this made the entry fee worthwhile. “Hollywood seems to support the idea,” he said.
Sure enough, younger agents from William Morris, Endeavor, United Talent and Creative Artists were encouraged by higher-ups to take turns at the festival, several said. Others at the table included representatives from Warner Brothers, HBO, Paramount and Lionsgate as well as production companies like Jinks/Cohen, DiBonaventura Pictures, Jerry Weintraub, Misher Films, and the companies of actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Taye Diggs and Adam Sandler.
Unlike some of its rivals, Fade In magazine doesn’t do much screening of its participants, so the rule is a democratic first come first served. That open-door policy gives the event something of a guileless, and compassionate, flavor.
Yet it can be so cruel. By 6:30 a.m. Saturday 100 people had lined up outside the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel, waiting to get a crack at the sign-up sheet for meetings. The big names were booked up before many people even arrived.
In the hallways there was desperation on people’s faces as they mouthed, mumbled and pantomimed their pitches while waiting in line.
At a crash course on pitching, a volunteer gave his spiel — for an animated movie about the henchmen who do the real work for superheroes — only to be told (by his classmates, no less) that he hadn’t answered the most basic question: “What happens?”
A coach suggested, “Tell a bedtime story, but make them wake up instead of going to sleep.”
Some came with gimmicks. One two-man team gave a pitch in character, bickering like Felix and Oscar. Another man handed out a bottle of shampoo with the “ingredients” of his project printed on the label.
By midday a walk around the room was a panorama of possibility and improbability, with snippets giving a sense of the heights of each: “Raised by his grandfather, ” “They spend a night together,” “They go to a little tiny town, ” “What happens is, she’s got Alzheimer’s, and ... ,” “So it’s sort of a victimless crime. ”
And, just before the bell rings again, this doozy: “So there are firefights, shooting, bombs exploding, and they end up killing one of them coming out of the bank.”
Across the table a man with his chin in his hands didn’t even flinch.
