Get this: Reboots, remakes, and adaptations are all the rage, so why not create a premium channel dedicated to them?
How would that work? It would take an aspect of what other networks already do, and specialize in it.
Working title: RePlay
Discussion: Continue reading
Awful sitcom pitch:
A struggling young comic has to move back in with his non-nonsense dad, who runs a lumber yard. Working title: “Building Material”
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By the way, this would be a fantastic (as in fantastically bad) pitch to include in the film Baltimore, MD.
The other day I made an argument for follow-up material to elevator pitches. My real point was about what makes stories actually work, and that it has nothing to do with a high-concept premise, an engaging summary, or a captivating elevator pitch.
But, as part of this, I was defending my practice of including follow-up material, including episode-by-episode or scene-by-scene outlines, with elevator pitches I feel really passionate about like Ocean City and Golem.
Recently, though, I’ve been working on a pitch for a period drama, and want to interweave the fictional character dynamics with real-world characters and events in a way that’s reminiscent of Black Sails and Downton Abbey. Noting how well the latter series has been building up to the historical crisis point of Nazi Germany, I want to do a full episodic outline of the first series with projected sketches for the subsequent four seasons leading to the well-known incident in American history.
An incident that shall remain nameless until I post the pitch. No spoilers! (As Doc Holliday said in Tombstone, my hypocrisy knows no bounds.)
The experience is giving me a real appreciation for the teamwork that goes into writing for a real television series, and the engrossing nature of doing this sort of work for a living. I have an editorial “day job” after all, and just trying to find the right threads to weave together has taken a surprising amount of time and research, even at the mere outline level of development.
New Girl creator Elizabeth Meriweather confessed on an episode of The Writers’ Room that she struggled with the need to leave a lot of the writing to others. I feel I’ve been pre-inocculated against that.
“Why do you bother with the follow-up material in some of your elevator pitches? An elevator pitch is supposed to be succinct and easy to take in quickly.”
Well, because elevator pitches alone are worthless, really. Elevator pitches, plot summaries, high-concept narratives, all of these conventional keys-through-the-gateways of publishing and Hollywood? They’re total bullshit measures of the worth (and success potential) of a story.
A really brief elevator pitch for this morning.
In the early 1960s, the Hanna-Barbera animation studio produced a pair of wildly successful cartoon series that still resonate in American culture today. The Flintstones projected modern-day issues onto an imaginary prehistoric past, while The Jetsons did the same for the future.
In a post-Simpsons, post-South Park, post-Family Guy world, even your average animation consumer is far more sophisticated and cynical than viewers were in 1963. Moreover, to reboot the future-past anachronism concept, we’d need to update the tropes of the two shows to match modern tastes.
Business Insider recently published a map showing the most popular television show set in each state of the US. (Sorry again, DC!) As you can imagine, some states’ shows were more recognizable than others.
The most popular television show set in Delaware is The Pretender? That won’t do. How about we get Ocean City in front of someone who can do something about it?
And, I know West Virginia isn’t the most well-respected state in the Union (how do you win a war and still have to pick a new name?) but it’s most popular program is Hawkins, a show that ran for one season every third week in the 1970s?!* I think I might try to come up with an Elevator Pitch for West Virginia, too.
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* “Reality” shows like Buckwild weren’t considered.
Get this: A monster from Jewish legend, made of clay and brought to life with an ancient ritual, fights the Nazi war machine.
What is it? A horror/revenge fantasy (feature film) about a rabbi who, after his community flees Nazi Germany, decides he must stay behind so he can undermine the Third Reich from within using a magically animated creature.
Working title: Golem.
FOLLOW-ON STUFF
Get this: A grumpy “Gregory House + Sheldon Cooper” guy and his spirited, socialite classmate start a detective agency in a quirky, mid-Atlantic beach town.
What is it? A weekly TV drama—set in a fictional Ocean City, Delaware—about Ethan McKean, a cynical but obsessively ethical college kid with Asperger syndrome, and Emma Rodney, a popular daughter of Ocean City aristocracy who partners with him to solve a local cold case. In the wake of their success, Emma sees analytical genius in Ethan and convinces him to open a detective agency.
Working Title: Ocean City.
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FOLLOW-UP STUFF
Including characters, a sketch of the setting, and plot summaries for an 11-episode first season.
Get this: An awful pitch for a TV show based on a joke about the screenwriter’s hometown becomes a winner after she learns to love where she came from.
What is it? A film about a television screenwriter who is very negative about her (or his) childhood in Baltimore, Maryland. She pitches a medical comedy called Baltimore, MD about a doctor with the last name Baltimore but who does not actually live in Baltimore. While struggling with producers about the limitations of the gag, she is forced to return to Baltimore on family business, where she rekindles an affection for the city and eventually reworks the series concept around her hometown.
Working title: Baltimore, MD … of course.
Get this: Antiques Roadshow meets Ghostbusters
What is it? A buddy comedy about a regional television show on which viewers present heirlooms to get psychic readings. One of the two leads believes in the spirit world but the other is just a cynical showman and a skeptic. Everything goes haywire when a fan brings on an ancient statuette that gives the skeptic actual spirit-reading powers, and they only learn after the broadcast that the artifact is being sought by an evil Illuminati cult. Can they find (and save!) their fan and stop the cult?
Working title: Vintage Spirits
Tagline: “Some things are better left in the attic.”
