My Worst Pitch...
Pitching sucks even when it goes well. Here are stories of when it sucked even worse.
ANDY BOBROW: This week we bare all! I bet when you dreamt of a career in writing, you never considered how much pitching would be involved. It’s so antithetical to what a writer is. The whole reason we became writers is so we could finish the idea before having to tell anyone. So whether it’s the embarrassing pitch, the disappointing pitch, or the infuriating pitch, let it out. What’s the worst pitch experience you’ve ever had?
JON HERMAN: the first real pitch I ever did was to 5 young execs from 3 different production companies at a big studio, and they'd all just been to the studio Xmas party the night before, they were so hung over half of them were leaning back in their chairs with their eyes closed, one of them left midway I'm assuming to puke, and it was traumatic and I don't even think it was a real gig, they never hired anyone. That was definitely the worst one though, glad I got it out of the way early.
There was also the time I pitched a studio and they dug it so they sent me to pitch it to a producer in his home, it was very tight 22 mins that I had practiced many times, almost had it memorized, and when I got there and started to pitch, he interrupted me and said "I really hate pitches, can you just give me the 5-minute version?" I froze and went into a full body cold sweat, somehow got thru it, it was horrible. But I did get the gig, so, not my worst story…
JENNIFER MAISEL: Definitely have a zillion pitch stories but amongst my favorite bad ones was when I and a writing partner and a producer team went to pitch a network. We’re practiced, we have our notecards. I start and three sentences in the exec puts up her hand screams STOP! They had something similar. Then we all just sat there. Awkward. My partner tried to salvage but she didn’t want to hear anything. To this day we start off “There’s a guy” put our hands out and yell STOP. Another case of pitchus interruptus. Was pitching a series to a studio and was super nervous. I start. Five minutes in a new person comes in, has me start over. Seven minutes in a new person comes and has me start over. And then a few minutes in the next exec comes in. Only our kids were in the same elementary school class and it was their birthday week and she needed to know if today was the party. And I had to pitch it from the beginning again and they didn’t buy it.
JILL TWISS: The worst pitch I ever went through was also my first pitch. It was for a children’s toy company that wanted to make movies. But, they stressed, they wanted to be *edgy*. Movies for adults. “Like ‘Juno’” they said. A couple of really nice execs worked with me for weeks on the pitch before we went to their boss. One of them suggested to me that it was a good idea to put a school shooting IN MY CHILDREN’S COMEDY MOVIE PITCH (yes, I *also* hear myself saying those words and want to crawl in a hole.) The first time they brought it up, I was like “I think this is a bad idea.” But eventually I thought “ok, I don’t know anything about anything. It’s my first pitch! Maybe it could work! ”
It could not work.
Every single moment of that pitch was terrible in specific ways that I could not have predicted (suffice it to say that they were NOT looking for something edgy, but in fact an actual lighthearted romp for 8-12 year olds.) But I will say that the topper was when the woman I was pitching to informed me that the school shooting victim in my pitch HAD THE SAME NAME AS HER DAUGHTER.
Honestly, I couldn’t even be upset. It went so entertainingly, disastrously wrong from beginning to end that it might be the best thing that ever happens to me.
BRANDON BOYCE: I love to pitch. It’s always been a part of the job that has come naturally to me. But I’ve tossed in my share of duds.
There was the guy who fell asleep. Which is why, to this day, I never pitch after lunch. I’ll wait an extra week for their first available morning.
There was the producer who said, as I finished up, “I hope that’s not your whole pitch.” It was. This was very early in my career, when I really thought I could “just wing it.”
There was the assistant-turned-development exec who called to hear my take on a rewrite while he was driving through morning traffic. I asked if it would be all right if we connected once he got to the office. He seemed to take offense at the suggestion that he couldn’t process my take on an intricate spy thriller while he zig-zagged side streets on his way to the studio. (The second call never happened.)
Far more recently, there was the mid-level exec whom I could tell I’d lost by the end of the first paragraph, when suddenly he interrupted me, said he needed an iced tea, and left the room. When he came back, cracking open a 16-ounce Arizona, I should’ve politely gotten up and said, “No hard feelings, sounds like this one isn’t a good fit for you.” But instead, I continued. An exercise in torture for both of us.
KAMRAN PASHA: Here's mine -- I went in to pitch a studio that wanted to develop a feature film that would resurrect Bruce Lee using Deep Fake technology. They wanted to come up with something for Will Smith (pre-slap) where Bruce Lee comes back as a ghost in the story. As a huge Bruce Lee fan, I spent weeks prepping a very respectful take, where Bruce Lee is the spirit of a Taoist master who guides Smith on his spiritual journey to become a martial artist who can defeat an evil mystical organization that Bruce had fought in his lifetime. Come in for the pitch, pour my heart and soul into it. The exec looks at me blank face. And then says: "Your take is too serious. We are looking for a buddy comedy where Bruce Lee is the butt of the jokes." I went ballistic in the room. I said to the exec's face: "Bruce Lee is revered worldwide. If you make him a joke, the movie will bomb, bring shame to this studio, and your career will be finished." He turned red with anger that I had the audacity to say that to him. I was basically escorted out of the office.
ANGELA WORKMAN: An older A-list actor, with a production company, kept interrupting my Edith Wharton pitch to regale me with descriptions of his teenage son’s pubic hair. So that was fun. (His son was in the next room.)
SARAH CONRADT: Angela, that’s awful! For me, there have been a couple of super uncomfortable pitches over the years, mostly because I used to get so stupidly nervous and feel the panic attack percolating about 30-seconds in, knowing I had another 19 and a half minutes to go. It was hell. Thankfully, I’ve chilled out over the years.
But, one of the most mortifying moments was on a studio OWA I was pitching to a volatile producer. Since I lived in Seattle, my pitches were almost always over the phone back then. This was before Zoom and when Skype was just catching on, but for some reason, we weren’t using video on this pitch.
The thing about my pitches—I basically write myself a full pitch script. I’m miserable at memorizing things, always have been. I get brain freeze when I feel the pressure to remember, so I have the whole pitch written out in front of me which I rehearse and edit so many times I almost, just almost, have it memorized. I get it to the point where it feels and sounds natural, not like I’m reading it. But truth is, I am. So the trouble with a pitch that’s all written out, that you’re reading, is if you get interrupted, it’s hard to find your place again.
Well, that’s what happened. I’m delivering my intro, pitching the producer why I love the project, what I think the story is saying, why the world needs it now—and he suddenly cuts me off. “Yeah yeah, never mind all that,” he scoffs, “Just cut to the chase and give me the short version.” Oh my god, I didn’t have a short version! I had one pitch and this was it—all 20 minutes of it, and I was less than a minute in. Everything in front of me was written out in sequence, and now it was just a jumble of words as the panic attack set in. How the hell was I going to find the right place to jump to? Those 10 seconds where I had to reroute on the fly felt like a lifetime. But, what choice did I have? I had to find a place to pick it up and move quickly. So I did, awkwardly. Turns out, he liked it. And I got the job, but it was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been pitching.
ERIC TIPTON: There are different ways we can define “worst” I guess, right? Is it your worst/most embarrassing performance pitching in the room? Or, maybe it’s the worst reception by an exec? There’s even “worst” in terms of most heartbreaking and painful. I think I can hit all three, actually.
There was a time in the early ‘00s when a writing partner and I had developed a take with the two execs at a well-known and once “mega” producer’s company, but the producer himself hadn’t heard the pitch. So we go in with the execs and pitch the producer and it started badly when, as soon as we sat down, he said, “You have fifteen minutes.” At first we thought maybe he was kidding around, but no, he looked at his watch. Not kidding. Got it. So we dive in and we’re humming along and the execs are smiling and nodding and we think we’re killing it, but the producer is just listening, stonefaced. And then… then he gets a phonecall that he absolutely has to take right that moment. So, he leaves the room for about five minutes and when he comes back his mood is different. It’s darker. It’s like the air in the room has completely changed. He doesn’t even sit back down, I don’t remember if we started in again, or if he didn’t give us the chance but we were very rattled by what had just happened and stumbled to remember where we were and the producer just says, “Pass,” and walks back to his desk as if no one else were in his office. And that was that. As we left, we heard the head of his company yelling at him for being wrong and being a jerk but it made no difference. To this day, I have wondered what was said on that phone call.
Then, for my most heartbreaking – a few years after that one, I was finally working on my own, and I had been brought in to pitch a take on a project that was based on the life rights of this guy – the quick story is that he had been this golden boy/prodigal son in his family and yet, in the mid-80s, had ended up in Berlin, fell in with a group of junkies, and ended up selling fake nuclear secrets to the KGB to get money for dope before the KGB got wise and started killing his friends. Anyway, as a Gen-X kid who grew up in the heat of the Cold War and who to this day is obsessed with all that stuff, I felt like I was born to write this movie. I worked up my pitch. This was back before people used visual decks, but I did one for this. I even had a soundtrack of ‘80s music to hit the big moments and I went in and I pitched my heart out and when I was done, I had left it all on the field. It was possibly my greatest actual pitch performance because I was so in love with the material and what I could do with it. That was a on a Friday afternoon. I get a call at the end of the day from my agent telling me that I crushed it. They loved me, they loved my take. They had been hearing pitches for WEEKS and mine was the one. Or, they were pretty sure it was the one. They had one more pitch to hear the following Monday, but I was assured it was basically my job to lose. This being Hollywood, I lost it. They heard that one final pitch on Monday morning and hired that writer on the spot. I have no idea what they did that I didn’t do, but even now, twenty years later, it stings whenever I think about it.
And then finally, this is really the worst of the worst for me: back in 1997 – it could have been early ‘98 – my first writing partner and I had been on a run. We sold some specs, we co-directed this little indie movie that hadn’t had a chance to fail yet. We were getting invited to participate in panels and getting interviewed for screenwriter magazines – back when they were in print. Life was good. So we go out with this pitch on April 1st. Action adventure kind of thing. A little Indiana Jones meets some sci-fi conspiracy stuff. We thought it was good fun. The town clearly disagreed. We were about half-way through our day of pitches and we could just tell, in room after room, that this thing wasn’t landing. It wasn’t landing to the point that we were sensing our reputations might be in actual jeopardy. It was going so poorly that we finally called our agents, told them to pull the plug on the remaining pitches and to please tell all the places we had already pitched that it was an April Fools gag – which they did immediately. My former partner and I – although it’s important to note that this story has nothing to do with why we are former partners – never spoke of the idea again… with anyone… including each other.
MATT NIX: Many years ago I was asked to pitch on a feature project for a producer I knew a little bit. It was to be a sharp satire about kid actors at one of those furnished apartment complexes where they all live during pilot season. It was supposed to be edgy in the vein of ELECTION. I was excited - I wanted to do something fun and dark, and I spent a couple of weeks coming up with a pitch I loved. Day came, and I went in to the offices of the partners of the producer I knew. The producer I know walks in to the lobby, in a bad mood. She says hi briefly, goes back. They keep me waiting maybe 40 minutes. Finally I go in. The producer I know is not there. She has disappeared. I sit with her partners, who say how excited they are to hear the pitch and how much they liked my writing sample. They give me a little preface: “We want to do this because we love child actors so much and we want to show a really positive portrayal of this world of amazing kids just loving their lives and dancing and singing together.” I am stunned. I have prepared a dark story about backstabbing little egomaniacs. I try to bow out, saying I was steered in the wrong direction. They insist that they are excited to hear my pitch! They love me! I start… it is incredibly painful as I have lost them in the first five seconds – their eyes are dead and their smiles pasted on. I try to bail out. “See? This isn’t really what you’re looking for. Maybe we should just-“ They insist I continue. “No, no! Keep going. This is great!” I pitch the whole thing as I feel the waves of hate coming off them. The flopsweat soaks my shirt. They have no questions. They will get back to me. Finally I leave. I have not even reached the parking lot before I get a call from my rep, who informs me that I didn’t get the job… because there was no job. They had already hired someone that morning without telling the producer I knew, who had been trying to push them in an edgier direction. She left in a fury, which is why she wasn’t in the pitch. They brought me in and made me pitch it ‘cause… y’know. I was already there. And they didn’t want to tell me they’d screwed me.
SC: Yeah, other than the panic-attack-inducing ones, the worst OWA pitches are the ones where I’m sent down a path by the studio exec, developing the pitch for months of my life, often with in-depth research and always with the exec’s input and support, until in their opinion it’s just right to share with their boss. Then I pitch to said boss and discover that my approach (the approach I was encouraged to pursue by the exec) is miles away from what they were looking for.
The one that stands out most was five months spent honing and tweaking a complex historical thriller/horror pitch based on a well-known Italian individual who’d spent his whole life serving the Vatican—and I’ll tell you, his memoirs were not the most interesting things to read (surprising given his profession), so it was a struggle to get through them and spin a fascinating yarn. This was an exclusive for me, so I knew I wasn’t competing with other writers and took the time needed to build it right.
Producers and studio exec wanted a Big Movie, so I pitched them a Big Movie, four times with revisions, until they loved it without reservation. Which they did. Exec actually said, “You’re gonna win us an Oscar with this script!” Clearly, he jinxed it. Because when I pitched to the studio head, he was totally silent the entire time (again, this was over the phone so I couldn’t see his expression—which was probably a merciful thing), and at the end after a pause that felt a day long, he simply asked me why the story was so big. Then with nothing more after my awkward and totally unprepared answer, he said he couldn’t see them making that movie. And we were done. The exec clearly had no clue whatsoever what the studio head was looking for, and I was the one who paid the price in wasted time. Well actually, that exec did end up getting fired not too long after that, after more than a decade in that position. So I guess he paid a price, too. Apparently, he never did figure out what his boss wanted.
JAY KOGEN: One of my worst pitch stories was when a significant star, as an uncredited and unpaid favor, asked me to help write up a show idea he had. He has a vague situation in mind, so I offer him choices to fill in the details. Is the character successful or struggling? Single or relationship? He picks his preferences and I get more specific with each choice. He adds ideas sometimes. But mostly picks from my varied suggestions. I write it up and give it to him. He makes changes which I incorporate. I say, "make it what you want. This is your show." After a bunch of back and forth I say, it seems done. I give it to him. He says he loves it. I say I'm done. Turn it into the studio with his name on it and see what they say. And I wish him luck. He says he loved the experience so much he wants me to do the show. He tells the network/studio to consider me for the showrunner. The studio asks if I have a pitch. The star wants me to submit his idea. So I do. And the studio says they love it but the star hates it. When I do some digging I discover the star really did tell the studio he hates it. He hated his own pilot pitch. But now the studio wants me involved and is willing to pay me to collaborate with the star to get what he wants. I froze. This star is crazy and scared. Do I say yes and hope I can get him to approve the next one? Do I tell the studio this WAS his idea? Or just walk away? I chose to try again. Then again. And again. Each time the star killed the show. Eventually I gave up. And that was how I wasted a solid six months of my life.
CHAP TAYLOR: The theme of a lot of these seems to be the disaster of pitching a studio or executive that don’t know what they want. Here’s one about a studio that absolutely DID know what they wanted… My friend and I took out our very first TV pitch. We were feature writers but we thought we had a great idea for a series; a one-hour drama like LAW & ORDER but instead of half with cops and half with prosecutors, we would do the first half of the hour with the criminals as they prepped the crime and the second half with the cops trying to catch them. We even had a catchy title. We called it PROS AND CONS.
The first network we pitched was NBC. We did our thing and the executives all seemed pretty happy. Then we found out why. The senior executive said, “Guys, that’s a great idea… It’s such a great idea that we ordered 13 episodes from Dick Wolf yesterday. We’re calling it LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT.”
AB: Wow. I keep wondering why I can’t even come up with something to contribute, and I’m pretty sure it’s because my worst pitch is a tie between all of them.
That’s it for this week’s blogcast. We’ll be off for the holidays. Thank you all for contributing and thank you readers for making this thing grow in popularity each week! We will be back in 2023 with more topics, including “Why is Development Hell?” “Can Anything Stop Mini-Rooms?” “What’s With All the Non-Writing EPs?” “How Do You Define The Dream?” and more stories of how we broke in. If you’d like to contribute to any of those topics, or if you have a topic to suggest, respond to this email or write us at writerscollectivesubstack@gmail.com. See you next year.