2/24/2010

What a Pitch

Submitted by Andrew:

I'm a producer at a cable channel in a large city.  I had information similar to that statement in my online profile, and Nicole messaged me one day.  She came off as very nice and very creative, hinting that she was an aspiring writer.  We had a great few exchanges, and then she asked me if we could meet up.

We arranged our date and met up at a pub in the middle of town.  She showed up with a dozen scripts and show ideas, and she was ready to pitch them to me for inclusion on the network for which I work.

"Would you mind if I picked your brain?" were her exact words.

I told her that I'd be glad to take a look at a few of her ideas out of courtesy, but that I wasn't allowed to accept unsolicited queries for the channel, and that I didn't want most of the date to be a pitch meeting.  I had enough of those at work!

So she went on in great detail about her idea for a "children's show with attitude," about an alien who comes to earth to sell paper cups but is shooed away by people until he meets a squirrel/mongoose with a massive brood who wants revenge on humanity for lab experiments but then one (or both?) of them fall in love with a human who is an artist but also has secret world domination aspirations, and...

I gave her a few ideas on how to tighten it up, and then she went right into her next pitch without even so much as a thank you.  This next one was about a cockroach that walked on two legs that had a problem in which it would grow and grow and grow.  It lived in a housing complex in a low-income neighborhood and owned several small businesses.  This idea, by the way, she pitched as live action, as opposed to animated.

At this point, I tried to steer the conversation away from pitching.  After all, it was my hope that she was on the date to learn more about me, not to shove her foot in the door... but that's all it really turned out to be.  Whenever I talked about my non-job hobbies, she didn't seem too interested, and even when I asked her ab out herself, she answered anything non-pitch-related with something short and went back into, "So, do you think the roach thing is a good idea?  What would make it better?  When can it be on your channel?"

I was tired of talking with her after a short while, and brought the date to an end after a couple of drinks (my treat, and she never thanked me).

She contacted me the next day to ask if we could go out again and told me that I was a tremendous help to her.  I told her that I didn't think that we were going to work out, and she became really upset and threatened to sue me if I stole her ideas.  I told her that I wouldn't be stealing her ideas, and she hit back with, "Oh, so now you're saying they're not good enough?"

I said, "Yes.  That's exactly what I'm saying.  Bye," and hung up.

14 comments:

  1. How dumb do you have to be to think that making a kids' show take place in the inner city/housing project with a talking cockroach as the main character isn't racist? Lawdy...!

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  2. How is it racist, Anon 2:37? Does the "typical" inhabitant of a housing project appear like a cockroach to you?

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  3. Everyone knows that there are more cockroaches in housing projects than there are in non-housing projects, and to think some little kids wanna watch a show about cockroaches they have to see every day is just racist!

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  4. I might steal the cockroach idea, I kind of liked it.

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  5. Squirrel / mongoose?

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  6. Anon 4:34, what is a 'non-housing project'?

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  7. As long as the OP didn't sign a Nondisclosure Agreement form, he's free to talk about any ideas he learned on his "date."

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  8. what part of hinting as an "aspiring writer" did you not understand?

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  9. Agree with 11:47. You should have slept with her and told her that you'd get her screenplays produced at your station. Then, of course, never called her again and reworked her ideas so they weren't terrible and made thousands off them. Duh.

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  10. Common Nikki, we expect a little more from you. That's just not your style.

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  11. ... you called her "common", when you meant to say "come on". You did it wrong.

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  12. "A producer at a cable channel, and that is noted in my online profile" Some writer chic hits on you anonymously, and you think its because of your great charm and wit? LOL. You baited a gold digger and got one. This should be posted in "I got what I asked for".

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  13. Sorry my sarcasm didn't come through, 8:58. I'll try better next time. ;P

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  14. ...you're a producer and you let someone give you an unsolicited idea? That seems like a bad idea, given that I'm to understand she can now try to sue if she sees even the most trivial similarity between any of her ideas and anything you produce in the future...? I'm not in the industry, so I might be wrong, and I hope I am, but from my understanding this is not a good situation for you...

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