Pitching Hollywood

How to Sell Your TV Show and Movie Ideas

Jonathan Koch, Robert Kosberg

• Publisher: Quill Driver Books
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781610350952
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film Screenwriting

Two successful movie and TV producers provide the reader with the tools needed to create, develop, and sell ideas to Hollywood. Producers Jonathan Koch (""Beyond the Glory"") and Robert Kosberg (Deep Blue Sea) are known as the ""Kings of Pitch."" They currently have more than a dozen projects in development at major studios, including projects with Josh Lucas, Tobey Maguire, and Katherine Heigl.

Chapter 1

Who We Are

We are known as Hollywood “pitchmen.” Our job is to create and find interesting TV shows and movie ideas and then produce them. We make appointments with studios and production companies, and we sell ideas to them. We do this in L.A., full-time, and make a very nice income and lead enjoyable lives.

To us, it’s the best job on earth.

Bob:

I’m a producer. By selling your ideas and carefully negotiating your deal, you can become a producer too. It’s not hard.

When I went to UCLA, there was a screenwriting division, a filmmaking division, and an editing division. I couldn’t hold a camera. I couldn’t edit. By default, I picked screenwriting, which was great. The trouble came after graduation, when I couldn’t get a job, and I had no way to make a living.

So I wrote a script. You know, after you’re through writing it, you put in a drawer and then tell people you’re a writer. In turn they ask, “And how do you make a living?”

I bounced from job to job. I worked in public relations. I was a script reader for a prestigious Hollywood talent agency. I was a celebrity assistant. Anything to learn about the business and pay bills.

I eventually worked in Malibu for an A-list actress who was going through emotional upheaval. My first day with her, I heard a shriek coming from the upstairs bedroom. She was practicing her primal scream therapy, and she told me that she had neither the time nor the presence of mind to meet with me. My interview ended up being with her 7-year-old daughter. I took this daughter to lunch and was promptly arrested on the Pacific Coast Highway, accused of kidnapping.

And that’s how you get jobs in Hollywood.

After reading scripts for the actress, I went to New York and read for a producer, and here’s what happened: I learned how easy it is to be a producer. My New York producer-boss was off in Europe making a movie. One day, I was sitting behind the absent boss’ desk, and I saw an article in the New York Times about a boy who graduated college and went back to high school. For a year he pretended to be a senior. He wanted to meet girls; he wanted to be on the gymnastics team; he wanted to make good grades and do all the things that he hadn’t done the first time around. It was the old going-back-in-time plot, but this kid did it without time travel. This kid actually went back and pretended to be a high school student. So I picked up the phone, and I tracked him down.

I found him in Wichita, Kansas. Now remember: My boss was away, and I was behind his desk. I told the kid, “I’m a producer, and I want to buy the rights to your story. I will to pay you $500.” He agreed.

Later, when the contract had been drawn up, I asked him which other producers had called him. He said, “You were the only one.”

That’s my point. There are incredible stories every day in the newspaper, which can become fabulous films. You should never assume that everybody in Hollywood is smarter than you or faster than you or has more money than you. This erroneous assumption shouldn’t stop you from acquiring material. I bought the rights to that story, and I pitched it around New York and L.A. I sold it. It never got made into a movie, but it was my first producing deal. It started my career, first as a writer and later as a producer. Within a year I had my first writing/producing deal at Disney Studios. I look back now and realize that it all started by making a photocopy of an article. So, my first suggestion is: Start reading and photocopying.

The L.A. Times ran a story about the “Woo-Woo Kid”: A fourteen-year-old boy who had been touted as America’s greatest lover in the 1940s. Fourteen-years-old and the world’s greatest lover?! I looked it up in the UCLA archives, and there he was. My parents were from the same generation, and they remembered him. Sure enough, he was a real, live person with a legendary reputation as a teenage ladies’ man.

I tracked him down and found him living in Las Vegas. He was 60-years old at the time and driving a tour bus, but at 14-years-old, back in the forties he was the famous Woo-Woo Kid. I bought the rights and pitched the story. My writing partner David Simon and I were hired to write the first draft. Ultimately it was produced as In the Mood. It was Field of Dreams writer/ director Phil Robinson’s first project and starred Patrick Dempsey.

I went on to secure more producer credits, including such films as Commando, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and more recently, Twelve Monkeys with Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis. I’ve produced a spate of TV shows and movies. All of these projects began with that one photocopied newspaper article, the rights to which I bought for $500.

PHOTOCOPYING

Now I am based at Nash Entertainment and I am still photocopying. I spend my days pitching stories on the phone and in studio production development offices. I have working relationships with key creative executives at all of the major studios in Hollywood. I also work with dozens of independent production companies. I pitch to all of them and continue to sell them all sorts of stories and ideas. To date, I have approximately 30 feature projects sold, and they are in active development at various studios.

It comes down to material. If you can find the material (whether it’s an idea that you dream up tonight, an idea your mother tells you on the telephone, or an idea from an article in the newspaper), if you can effectively pitch that material to Hollywood, you are a pitchman. When you make a sale, you can become a writer or producer, too.

Jonathan:

My journey has been a wild one. Thirty-one hours after graduating from Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, I arrived in Los Angeles with a duffel bag full of clothes, $300, and a half eaten Hostess pudding pie. I knew nearly nobody and even less about what I wanted to do.

Two weeks later: My car had been stolen, I’d been fired from my job as a waiter, and had been booed off stage at a local comedy club. It was a bit overwhelming, but I knew that easier times lay ahead.

I credit my first boss, Rich Moran, with much of my early success. Rich was one of the most successful commercial real estate agents in town when I started working as his assistant. He was decidedly difficult to work for, but he hammered home the critical value of tenacity, cold calling, and the idea that nobody in business is doing you a favor. It is all about the deal, and that’s it. I have never forgotten his “if you want a friend, buy a dog” approach to business. Of course, I have great relationships and friendships in (and out) of the showbiz, but I learned from his basic business elements: a strong work ethic, originality, and a lot of luck.

At twenty-three years old, I left real estate at the urging of my then business partner and extraordinary friend, Bill Schumer. One day, he sat me down and asked me what my passions were. He must have sensed my discomfort with such an odd question, and he carefully clarified that he was talking about my business life. Whew! He knew that my heart wasn’t really in real estate and that entertainment was my true passion. We had a lucrative partnership and both felt we were destined for amazing success, but Bill, without my asking, picked up the phone and called some entertainment friends to set up interviews for me. He went on to enjoy phenomenal success in real estate, but he gave me the opportunity to compete in the field of my true passion. We are still good friends, and he continues to inspire me.

Before tackling the rigors of pitching and selling ideas and projects, I was the worst nonworking actor in this town. To this day, when casting directors suffer through particularly bad auditions, they call each other and say, “I just saw a Jonathan.” The truth hurts sometimes, but I’m over it now.

The list goes on and on. I worked as an agent, manager, pseudo-lawyer, and in various entertainment related fields.

Now, I am an entertainment entrepreneur. I will consider and often attack any size or type of deal within the entertainment field. Aside from producing, I’ve had an Internet business, a NFL license for women’s apparel and lingerie, a concert venue in Anaheim, and other commercial ventures. I love the hunt. It’s down and dirty, a high stakes poker game that’s played out in the world’s most scrutinized and publicized pit.

As an independent producer, deal making is how I spend my day. I love it. I love making money with my brain. I love the people. I love succeeding and failing on my own terms. When things go well, I have many people to thank. When things go wrong, I can usually look to myself for the reasons, learn from them, and move forward.

It is a unique business, a business which supports fearless, creative warriors who are willing to risk rejection, endure sporadic paydays, and subject themselves to personal ridicule.

I love it.

Bob and I met when he was working for Merv Griffin Entertainment and I was an agent. He was pitching an idea to my client, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, at the “Home Improvement” set. One day, I told Bob about a game show concept, which we ended up taking to Mr. Griffin. Two months later I found myself working for Griffin’s company. Bob and I became a team and began our pitching days there, selling movies to television.

I am currently based at Asylum Entertainment at Fox in Los Angeles. I spend my days collecting/creating, pitching, and selling ideas to Hollywood. I watch TV. I read. I listen to people. Material is everywhere.

Chapter 2

Who You Are

(and Why You Are Reading This Book)

We are writing this book for everyone, since it’s possible for anyone to have an idea that could be made into a TV show or film. Maybe you are reading this book because you are a film student, and this book is on your required reading list. Maybe you work in the entertainment industry and want some tips on handling pitch meetings.

Or, maybe you are a stockbroker in New York, or you day-trade as a day job or you are a new mom, a high school student, a retired Army officer, the sheriff in a small Midwestern town or you teach Sunday school, tend bar, clean houses, build race cars.

Whatever it is that you do, if you’ve picked up this book and plan to read it, you most likely are an idea person.

IDEA PEOPLE

Idea people are creative types, people who can watch world events and see them for their most fundamental elements. As an idea person, you can distance yourself from the event and view the individuals involved more like characters than actual people. You possess the ability to strip away the emotions of a disaster and process the news story as a plotline.

While this might sound cold and mean on paper, it’s really not. Some of the best ideas in Hollywood are born this way.

For instance, if a ship sinks in a faraway sea, those who have no personal connection to the people who died in the tragedy can, with minimal effort, dismiss it. Being interested in disasters that only directly effect us is more common than not. What’s not common is the detached processing of an event with the goal of generating a storyline.

Idea people look for sad, interesting, funny, ironic, pitiful, uplifting, and tragic storylines. These storylines might serve as a backdrop for characters completely unrelated to the actual event. That sinking ship might be moved to the Texas Gulf Coast and be a mere subplot for a bigger story. Maybe the sinking ship is the entire story. Maybe the story begins with an escape from the ship. The ship might become part of a reality game show. Idea people will mentally file that sinking ship and save it for later use.

No friend, no family member is safe from the idea person. Even acquaintances and strangers are fair game. They can be used as characters or c...