If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not talk about the cake disaster.
Over the weekend, I attended I Can Pitch, a place where people with a screenplay or television series can get the complete and undivided attention from four industry professionals for five minutes. Assuming the person before you actually leaves when they’re supposed to. And, the person you’re supposed to pitch to doesn’t have to go to the bathroom, which is a real undivided attention killer. And, assuming you can actually pitch.
That’s where my experience fell down. I Can Pitch? I Can Sux, more like. But, I think this is better expressed in a LOLCat:
Yes, I know it’s more of a LOLSquirrel, but there were no cats in the area. And, isn’t that just like cats not to be around when you need them!
Since part of the event revolved around meeting other writers, I met some other writers. There was the comedy writer from Newfoundland who mentioned her screenplay about flatulence. I don’t mean to be mean by mentioning this: I love east coast humour, and if anybody can make flatulence funny, a Newfoundland comedy writer can.
There was the woman who had come with her illustrator and a couple of mentors. It was amazing! She was an entourage looking for a career in film! She told me that she was hoping to have Steven Spielberg direct her film…as we rode the streetcar to the event. I thought her expectations might be a bit high, but I didn’t say anything because why would I alienate my only hope of connecting to Spielberg?
Besides, their pitches undoubtedly went – no, really, I don’t want to talk about the cake disaster. Their pitches undoubtedly went better than mine. I had to show up at 9:45 (meaning I had to be up at 8:00 – yes! – in the morning! – I had to be awoken with defibrillators – you know, the paddles doctors use to revive cardiac arrest patients – come on, you’ve watched House, I know you know what I’m talking a – okay, forget it) to negotiate who I would pitch to even though it turned out that my first pitch wasn’t until 2:15. This guaranteed that I was mental pond scum when I needed to be at my best.
At the best of times, five minutes isn’t a lot of time to communicate your brilliance to another person; in my first pitch, I spoke faster than Alvin (of Chipmunks fame). Because he was loosely booked, I actually got 10 minutes with my second pitch, which allowed me to slow down a bit. I knew that one wasn’t going well when the man I was pitching to said, “I understand the concept very clearly, but how is it funny?”
Ouch.
Because I spent more time with my second pitch person, I was late for my third pitch and ended up with only three and a half minutes or so. I thought that this was a problem until my final pitch, which was at 4:10. I was told things were running late, so I didn’t have to worry, but when I went down to enquire about exactly when I would be pitching, I was told that my time had already started. I had just enough time to get my name and the name of my project out before the gong went and my time was up.
No excuses. I really suck at this. Didn’t the LOLSquirrel give it away?
On the second floor, away from the pitching area, was the fun room. We knew it was a fun room because the signs pointing to it said: “Fun Room.” It had some comfortable chairs, a computer set up to show videos and a pool table; despite this, nobody seemed to be having much fun.
Early in the pitch sessions, the best way to describe the atmosphere in the room would be staring. People were either staring at pieces of paper, some mouthing words to themselves like silent prayers, or staring at an imaginary point in the middle distance, the point, perhaps, where the limousine comes to take them to sign their three picture deal with Dreamworks.
Writers are dreamers. What are you gonna do?
Later in the afternoon, the packed fun room started to thin out as people completed their rounds of pitching and left. Those who remained had the glassy stare of the walking wounded, responding to any question with, “It went well. It…went…well…” We joked that as long as they didn’t scream that we should go back to scrubbing toilets because that’s all we were good for, the pitch was a success. As if the professionals we were pitching to would ever raise their voices…
Writing for film and television is a uniquely schizophrenic experience. On the one hand, writing is a lonely, solitary occupation. However, selling your writing to the industry requires vast reservoirs of gregariousness. It’s no wonder that – you just won’t let the cake disaster go, will you? Fine. If I was to sum it up simply, it would look something like the following equation:
I wish I could report that it was a memorable film comedy moment, but it wasn’t. When gravity did its inevitable dirty work, the cake didn’t fly in a graceful arc across the room to land in an inconvenient spot in front of the person I had waited for a month to pitch to. It simply slid off the paper plate and plopped onto the floor. As I knelt to pick it up, I looked around to see if anybody had noticed, but nobody appeared to be looking in my direction.
As I got a replacement piece, I should have been grateful for small mercies. But, I was furious. It may not have been classic, but I had just had a comic moment AND NOBODY APPEARED TO BE LOOKING IN MY DIRECTION. It was the story of my life, really.
The cake was good, though.