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"Everyone thinks that in The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch dies at
the end of the story - melted. And we remember her famous last words "I'm
melting! I'm melting! What a world. What a world." "The pitch I
liked," he says with the excitement of a child on his birthday, "was
based on that setup. What if the Witch didn't die? What if it was all an act?
And now it's the year 2000 and the Wicked Witch is still alive and well and mean
and green and she's broken out of Oz Jail and she's on her way to New York to
get those damn red slippers once and for all."
That is a "pitch"
- short for sales pitch ~ and it's one of the many ways films start in
Hollywood. A writer or producer meets with studio executives and in the shortest
amount of time possible, usually two to five minutes, a sale is made or lost. In
the fast-paced world of Hollywood, where dreams are fleeting at best, careers
soar and dive, and box office fluctuates more violently than Wall Street, there
resides a man named Robert
Kosberg. Amid the hurly-burly, he practices and hones his art ~
The Pitch: the Hollywood equivalent of the one hundred mile-per-hour fastball.
He's a pitcher, an idea man, and a devotee of high concept: that elusive,
lightning in a bottle that dares to spark the brushfire of buzz through the
underbrush of spec scripts and dead properties. Admittedly, he prefers his own
ideas to most he's heard, and "Surrender Dorothy" is one of his ideas.
To take liberties with Shakespeare - The pitch is
the thing. But, the man is the vehicle. As one might expect, our
schedules crissed and crossed before settling down for a couple of days' worth
of conversation with Bob and what I found wasn't surprising. He's an engaging,
affable, open fellow, very excited about what he does, with clear-cut opinions
about his work and ideas. Bob has turned the notion that a picture paints a
thousand words upside down. He walks into studio meetings to do exactly the
opposite: run a movie through the studios with one sentence and as I found out,
sometimes, one word is enough. Does selling a pitch mean the movie will get
made? Absolutely not. But it's a start.
The movie industry is analogous to an oyster making a
pearl, there's a little grain of sand - a screenplay or perhaps an idea - that
forces the oyster to do something about it and eventually it becomes a pearl.
Then, everybody talks about what it's become and they forget about the process.
The finished product dazzles them because that's more glamorous. A lone guy in
his apartment who comes up with the idea isn't nearly as glamorous as an actress
being interviewed about her fabulous new movie.
Many people assume that because they can write letters, they're writers, and
writing in general must not be that difficult. No one would dare tell a
cinematographer how to do his job. But almost everybody assumes they can tell
writers what's good and what's bad because they think they?re writers too. Now
imagine how a person with ideas is thought of, because everybody assumes,
"How valuable can an idea be?" They have ideas all the time too. They
just don't want to admit that someone else came up with a great idea, something
really terrific. It looks deceptively easy, so people don't respect it.
If they did come up with an idea, chances are it
wouldn't hold together for the length of a script.
That's right. A lot of ideas are a good set-up and then you find when you
discuss it that it has no place to go. The really great high concept stories are
the ones that the minute you hear the idea expressed; you know it because one
scene inevitably flows from the one before.
As much as I love a good idea, I'm equally respectful of how valuable all the
other parts of the puzzle are. People think I overrate "the idea" to
the exclusion of everything else. I would love for people to submit screenplays
to me. The truth of the matter is that it's much easier to find a great idea
than to find a great screenplay. Writing talent is even harder than idea talent.
Screenwriting is an incredibly difficult task to master and that's why there are
so few good screenwriters.
Do you find that new screenwriters' expectations are
far too high?
When people bring me ideas, their first goal is usually the opportunity to break
into the business, to get into the game. Having a great idea can often lead to
getting a lawyer, an agent, a studio deal, or a writing deal, because if you
have a great idea, you can demand to be the first draft screenwriter and often
times get that. If you can't write you can still make money selling the story
rights and receiving story bonus money. You can sometimes attach yourself as an
associate producer or a co-producer even without having any credits prior to
that. All of those reasons are reasons to do it, so the expectations financially
should not be to sell an idea for a million dollars. That's not going to happen.
But you can make anywhere from $25,000 to $150,000 off an idea. They need to
recognize that their first efforts are a way into the business, which leads to
bigger and better deals, because studios are built on precedent. Careers are
built on precedent.
That's precisely where their expectations fall apart,
because they don't want it to be the beginning of a process -
They want it to be the end.
Exactly.
People who are looking to strike gold on the very first idea and
retire are trying to win the lottery, and unless they write a screenplay on spec
that gets into a bidding war and sells for a million dollars and that's probably
only happened a dozen times, then they're looking at Vegas or lottery odds and
that's a foolish way to perceive any business, even the movie business.
Why do you think there is such a misconception about
overnight successes?
Because they read in the trades - waitress sells script for $500,000. Those
stories make headlines because they are so rare. The Hollywood system is hard
working people making a living, step by step, building the long-term.
Most of the new writers I've talked to over the years -
not the veterans - are under the impression that a script is a collaborative
effort. Unless you have a writing partner you're working alongside, there really
is no collaboration involved, is there?
No. You're in a room by yourself. Writing is a hard, lonely profession. I would
never tell anyone to be a writer. I tell them to bring me good ideas because
many of them need to admit to themselves they don't have the staying power or
discipline to be screenwriters.
What would you tell a screenwriter who is trying to
break into Hollywood?
The biggest mistake screenwriters make is - they come up with an idea on a
Monday and decide that's going to be the script they're going to spend the next
three to six months working on, rather than spending an equal amount of time
going through lots of ideas and making sure the one they're going to write is
tested, critically received by lots of people and then, when they know they
really have something strong, they sit down and spend the time writing it. They
work and sweat and bleed on screenplays that are wrong-headed to begin with. It
may have good writing, but the idea, story, and concept aren't that commercial
or strong and thus, will never sell.
On your website, you discuss High Concept. What
is truly meant by that?
It started out when Barry Diller and Michael Eisner and other executives were at
ABC doing television movies and they realized that 40 million people were tuning
in to watch TV movies on any given night, based on one or two sentences that
were written in TV Guide that boiled down the entire plot.
For instance, the movie SPLASH is a man meets a woman and the woman turns out to
be a mermaid. That's a very high concept because that plot drives the whole
movie. There are other movies that are just as good or better than SPLASH, like
Barry Levinson's DINER. But that's six guys sitting around a restaurant having
conversations. You can describe it in one sentence, but it's not high concept
because the plot is so minimal.
You may have to think back on this, but what is the one
thing you wish you had learned early on in your career?
Oh, you're right. There are a lot of things. The most creative people in the
movie business probably make the mistake, as I did, of spending all of their
time, because it's more fun, working on the creative side and not really
spending any time evaluating the business value of their career, and the
possibilities of their career. Like the old line - "Show business is not
just show. It's also a business." I think most creative people get caught
up in the "Show," the entertainment side of it and we don't really
spend enough time thinking about the business side. The people who are creative
tend not to be the number crunching kind of people or the ones who want to spend
time sitting with lawyers and agents, masterminding their own fates and careers.
I think it's very easy to fall into that trap. Every day, you should spend 75
percent of the time doing what you love to do, if it's being a writer, but I
think at least 25 percent of that time you need to have a hand in how to advance
your own career. In other words, be your own agent, lawyer, and manager for a
few minutes every day.
What do you think of the Internet and its impact on
Hollywood?
The Internet has opened up what is being called "The Wild Wild West"
of TV and movies again. It's almost like the old hay-day of movie studios where
anything goes. For all of us who missed our chance the first time around, by not
being financially conscious of the possibilities, the Internet reminds all of us
that everyday there are new possibilities and new opportunities.
What movies have you seen and say to yourself,
"What a brilliant idea for a movie, I wish I had thought of that"?
I would go all the way back to Billy Wilder and SOME LIKE IT HOT or THE
APARTMENT. Those are two older movies I would say I wish I had thought of those.
TOOTSIE, THE GRADUATE, MIDNIGHT COWBOY are the middle 70s and 80s kind of movies
I have the same feelings about. In the 90s, probably the most important movie
I've seen recently would be SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE and that was a wonderful idea
and most people give credit to Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman who co-wrote
Shakespeare in Love ~ but the real genius was Marc's son who said to him -
"What if Shakespeare had writer's block? And tell the story of how Romeo
and Juliet really came to be created." That exemplifies what I like to do
with movies: Being the one who comes up with that original concept and
everything comes from that.
It appears from what I've learned about you that your
favorite genre is comedy.
Not true. I tend to like comedies as a moviegoer but I like all kinds of movies.
The reason I get categorized like that - I'm glad you brought it up - is because
comedy probably lends itself to pitching better than any other genre. It's much
easier to walk into a room and throw out a couple of funny, high concept,
one-or-two liners and get a great reaction than any other genre. But if someone
comes to me with great concepts - science fiction, fantasy, or a thriller, I
love those just as much as I love comedies. It's just that dramas have to be
more worked-out. You can't just tell them in one sentence. They have to be a
great story, because people are not going to jump at it unless they understand
the whole story. With a comedy, you can pretty much understand the whole story
even though it isn't worked out. That's why I've sold more comedies than
anything else. Pitching and comedies go together better.
What is the root of your success with pitching?
I'd say, determining before I go into a room, what ideas I'm going to pitch and
what ideas I'm not going to pitch. A lot of writers and producers make the
mistake of pitching things they should never pitch in the first place - because
they're not going to tell well in a room. It has nothing to do with whether it
will be a good movie; the idea itself just doesn't pitch well.
Do your pitches fit into a standard formula?
They're similar. Most of my pitches are high concept. Most pitches I
keep short - anywhere from two minutes to five or six minutes. A long, long
pitch for me would be ten minutes. Most are two to five minutes. Most pitches
are very simple to understand. Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. Pitching is not re-inventing
the wheel; it's giving the studio the structure they're used to. Most people
make the mistake of going into way too much detail. The rest of pitching is
cosmetic. Of course, a pitch also depends on being articulate, enthusiastic,
humorous, being a good storyteller, all of which you can't really learn, anymore
than you can learn to be a professional comedian. Some people are just naturally
better on stage. I like "performing" in a room and I pitch the movie I
saw last night. The only difference is it hasn't been written yet. The movie
hasn't been made. That's how I feel about it when I walk into the room. I've
already seen the movie in my head.
It must make it much easier to pitch then.
Actually, it's a good hint for people who want to pitch. If you haven't seen the
movie in your head - if you can't replay it in your head, at least the basic
beginning, middle, and end with the key big scenes and set pieces, you shouldn't
pitch it, because you won't be able to relate it well or explain it well. You're
talking about a Ferrari going a hundred miles an hour and spiraling off a cliff
and bursting into flames. That scene is very visual and you paint a picture for
them and it helps them understand your pitch because they're seeing the movie
too. A pitch not only has the plot but a few big scenes. You want the plot and
those few images to linger so that they can go down the hall and say to their
boss, I heard this great pitch today. Here's what it's about and there's this
great scene and they can quickly recall and retell the simple premise and a few
big set pieces, the kind of things you would see in a trailer, then that's going
to be repeated well down the hall and that's the truth about pitching that
people don't want to admit. No matter how good a pitcher you are, you tend not
to be the one who pitches it everywhere. You're back on the highway traveling
home and someone else is now pitching your story to someone else, so people want
to say I'm a terrific pitcher, but with all due modesty, I have to be very
honest about the fact - How good a pitcher can I be, if I'm not even the one in
the room? The truth is self-evident. It's the pitch! (He laughs) It's the pitch,
stupid! If the idea is that good, then other people will be able to repeat it
almost as well as you, but it won't matter. If you have to explain it or it's
confusing, if you have to go into too much detail, it's not a good pitch.
Much like a joke.
Right. It should be as simple to tell as a good joke.
Assume for a moment, that I'm not familiar with your
work or reputation. What's to prevent you from stealing my pitch?
This question comes up in every lecture. Take me out of the equation for a
moment. Let's start with anybody who has an idea and wants to take it into the
world of the movie business. The moment you start to live in fear that your idea
is going to be stolen or ripped-off, you're never going to be able to do
anything for a very simple, logical reason - the best way to be 100% sure that
no one will ever steal your idea is to never tell it to anyone. If you simply
stay in your house and never tell your story to a single person, including your
wife, no one will ever steal it. Once you step outside your house and approach
anyone in any business related to the movies, you are in danger of that story
getting out into the public consciousness and you're in danger of that story
being re-pitched by somebody else to someone else, to someone else. Even if the
person you first told it to isn't intentionally stealing it, just like a good
joke, your story is going to be talked about and gossiped about and mentioned
because it's going to be provocative and interesting. The fifth or eighth person
down the line, three weeks later, may have heard half of your idea, and probably
never heard your name attached to it, and may subconsciously remember half of
what he heard and it may wind up on the screen and you'll think to yourself,
"That first producer I talked to stole it from me."
There's absolutely no, 100% legal way to stop that, so all I can tell people is,
use all the methods you can to protect yourself. Register your story with the
Writer's Guild and/or copyright it. Bring it to people you have heard of, people
who don't need to steal ideas because they're making a good living. I've been in
the movie business for 15 years, and I have a good, solid reputation and have
never had a lawsuit.
The studios don't want to screw writers or steal from them. They want to buy the
project and make millions of dollars. If you want to feel like you're getting
screwed, just look at some of the language in contracts. That's when you feel
like you're being treated unfairly.
As a producer, I would be killing the golden goose that has supported me for
years, which is people knowing that I'm a producer who loves to find great
ideas. If I got the reputation for plagiarizing or stealing or not being fair, I
would lose the base I have of people recommending me to other people as one who
is willing to listen to a pitch.
In an industry that thrives on rumor, conjecture, on
buzz, reputation has a lot to do with who you do business with in the future.
That's exactly right. You want to keep your reputation as "up-there"
as possible.
Now, given that, how many new writers do you work with
each year?
Oh, I guess 25 to 50 new writers work with me in any given year.
Out of that, how many actually turn into movies?
Once you find something good, you get it into the studio system and then it's in
the hands of the gods, because of the intangibles. Is the script good enough? Is
the studio exec who bought it going to keep his job? Is someone going to get
divorced or wake up in the morning with a bad cold? Is there something else too
similar? Is there something like yours that didn't do well at the box office, so
they don't want to do your project anymore? So many things can happen to ruin
your project.
Sometimes it's like pushing a huge boulder up a hill and it rolls back on top of
you. You have to be willing to get up every morning and start pushing the
boulder again.
A producer named Dan Grodnik [co-founder of Itasca Pictures] asked me if he
could pitch me a one-word story, as opposed to a one-line story. He knew I sold
a lot of one-line pitches and I was impressed that he could come in and pitch me
one word. And the one word was Monopoly. We sold that to Disney - MONOPOLY - THE
MOVIE. It never got made, but the point is well taken that a good idea can
sometimes be expressed not only in one line, but sometimes even in one word.
Assuming that what they say is true, and to be honest,
I don't believe it, that every story has been told...
I don't believe it either.
What's your biggest challenge walking into a pitch
meeting?
To deal with that perception. When they've heard millions of pitches and read as
many screenplays, they're jaded. Whether they say it or not, they think they've
heard everything. So, I want to be able to walk into a room with an idea that's
exciting, intriguing, funny, and outrageous and the minute you say it, their
eyes light up. The biggest challenge is to walk into a room and cause that
reaction.
There is a certain way to tell a story, three acts -
Right. Set-up, complication, and the resolution. I don't think the Hollywood
studios are particularly looking to re-invent the wheel. There is a satisfaction
that comes from a story that has that inherent beginning, middle and end that
goes all the way back to fairy tales and Greek tragedies, they all had that
structure. I don't think we're going to get away from that in the near future.
There's nothing wrong with that. It works. At the same time, there will always
be people like Quentin Tarentino who shake things up with movies like Pulp
Fiction.
With the position you're in - somewhere between the
studios and the writers, though certainly closer to the studios - how can you
hope to have the writer's best interests at heart?
It's very simple. We both want to get the same project ultimately to the screen.
So, when a writer brings me a project and I become a producer on it, especially
when I'm involved in helping him/her set it up with the studio, we're not in any
kind of competition, we're allies or partners. As a producer, the writer will
enjoy my participation because I'm going to be the one raising his hand in the
meeting, saying, "Hey. Remember why we sold this project in the first
place? Remember what we all liked about it?" The one thing I can do in
studio meetings is cheerlead to remind all the executives and others who come
onto the project later in the development that the reason we're all sitting
there and are all excited is because of the various things in the story that now
they're talking about changing. The reason it's called development hell is
because so many people want to change things and put their opinions in. The
writer and I, we both want to get the movie made.
A lot of people out there think that the only way
you can get an idea to Bob Kosberg is to buy his CD.
I'm wide open to ideas from anyone and everyone. A certain percentage of people
buy the CD. Terrific. People want to get to me without the CD? Just as terrific,
and I take their ideas just as seriously as any idea that comes in the door. It
doesn't matter to me where an idea comes from, I'm going to try and develop it
and get it to the studios. The CD is a peripheral business for me. It's not the
only business I'm in. Yes, I want to make a profit and I want to make a good
living, but the most important thing is to find a good story and hopefully get
it made into a movie.
I appreciate your asking that question though. I'm listed in the Hollywood
Creative Directory, and anyone who calls me is never asked to buy a CD. I'm not
an elitist or trying to make so much money off something like that, that I would
exclude people who don't want to pay for a CD.
What is your proudest moment?
Oh, there's probably a couple. Family, a good marriage, which I do
have, a son getting good grades.
On a professional level, I remember my first film project that got made was with
Phil Robinson (writer/director of Sneakers, Field of Dreams, and others) - he
had gotten a hold of one of my earlier projects called THE WOO WOO KID (released
as IN THE MOOD), based on the true story of Sonny Wisecarver, a young man who,
when he was 14 years old, he got a reputation for running off and marrying older
women. My partner at the time, David Simon and I teamed up, went to Vegas, got
the rights and came back and wrote the first draft script. My proudest moment
was to walk into a screening and the curtain parts, the lights go down, the
credits role and for the first time in my life after the years of dreaming about
being in the business, I saw my name on the credits for a film for the first
time. And now people can rent the movie and there's my name and David Simon's
and Phil Robinson's, not that the film was going to win an Academy Award, but it
was a good solid movie, entertaining, with Patrick Dempsey starring. When I
walked out of the theater, I thought, "This is what it's all about."
Later on, I was executive producing 12 MONKEYS, the Brad Pitt / Bruce Willis
film, and Terry Gilliam being the director, now suddenly, I was in the movie
business with people who were literally, the biggest stars in the world and
Terry Gilliam is a true film genius. To be making a movie with Bruce, Brad and
Terry, you feel like you can die and go to heaven, because you've gone almost as
far as you'll ever want to go. You're making a big studio commercial movie with
great talent and then the movie comes out and it's great. David Peoples who
wrote the screenplay with his wife Jan, wrote a brilliant script. Chuck Rovin
produced the movie. All of these people are so talented and did such a great job
and then the movie gets rave reviews, turns into a science fiction classic, the
most successful movie I was involved in and is referred to in all the science
fiction books as one of the great science fiction films of all time. My
satisfaction also comes from knowing that 12 Monkeys started with a man named
Chris Marker, who made the original French film LA JETEE, and that I had a part
to play in making this whole thing happen in terms of the American film because
I went after the rights to do a remake. By my pushing that boulder up the hill,
that boulder got all the way to the top because of years of hard work. That is a
long answer to your question regarding my proudest moments.
The new project I'm developing is with Drew Barrymore attached is SURRENDER
DOROTHY. Because it's based on my original idea, I can't say it's my proudest
moment because the movie hasn't been yet, but even watching it go through the
process of being written, having Drew Barrymore attached to star, watching
Warner Bros. spending lots of time and money to develop it and knowing that it
all started with a whim of an idea in the back of my brain is another proud
moment, but of course it will be much more fulfilling and satisfying when it
complete the journey from idea to summer blockbuster. That's still months away,
but I want the right to amend my proudest moment.
I'd be happy to help you with that. What would you be
compelled to say to someone who feels the desire to follow in your footsteps as
a pitchman?
I would warn them that you can't follow in anyone's footsteps. Everybody
makes his or her own road. I got very lucky by being a writer who fell into
becoming a successful pitching producer because it complemented what I naturally
was good at. I found that I was doing something in the business that I had a
natural ability to do well. I wasn't copying anybody. I just found by trial and
error that it was the area in which I was strongest. Other people who decide
it's a good way to make a living are generally going to fail, not because I'm so
good and they're not, but because what I do dovetails well with my abilities.
If you try to be an independent producer with no studio backing, there's more
likelihood that you're going to starve, and I would never say to anyone they
shouldn't follow their dream, but they should be aware of the economic reality.
I was only able to make a living because of a unique reputation that I
accidentally got and studios began allowing me to do this that afforded me a way
to make a living. I don't think that's because I'm anything special, but because
a lot of things had to come together in the right time and the right place. A
lot of luck. A lot of persistence and a little bit of talent.
Michael Gill is a screenwriter, freelance writer, poet, and artist. His articles have appeared in
Hollywood Scriptwriter, American Accolades newsletter, Scuttlebuzz.com, and Absolutewrite.com. If you wish to
contact him, send e-mails to boshent2001@yahoo.com.
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