Back on the Pitching Horse

Had a pretty good day today. We had a pitch meeting at a studio this afternoon. It's a project we've been working on that we hope to sell without writing a script first.

For those of you who don't know what a pitch meeting is, basically, the writer or writers go in and outline the potential script to executives. Then, the execs decide if they want to pay you to write it.

Oh, but it's nowhere near as simple as reading an outline from a page. Boring! Executives expect writers to entertain them. I mean, if you can't hold their interest for 10 minutes, how the hell can you entertain a movie audience for 90-120 minutes?


So, since we write comedy, we're expected to actually be funny in the room. And that's the killer. While we write funny, we're not stand up comics, so if we try to tell jokes, we look like morons.

Our strategy is to pretend we're telling a friend about a hilarious movie we just saw. That seems to work pretty well for us.

This pitch was one of our better ones. The exec laughed in all the right places, asked some great questions which we luckily had answers to, compared it to some really successful recent movies, and seemed very interested.

Unfortunately, that could all mean squat. We've had the same reaction before but no checks written.

Still, it felt really good to get out there with something new. It's been a while since we've thrown some ideas out into the ether.

In a celebratory mood, the fam went out for Thai food in Thai Town, which is one of our favorite places. We had Pad Thai and pineapple fried rice and green papaya salad and left with take-out Rad Na and sticky rice with mango. Yum!

On the way home, Baby Girl was signing and saying Daddy. I said, "How about saying mommy," showing her the sign for mommy. She looked at me, signed and said, "dog," and laughed.

I said, "No, no, mommy," making the sign again. So she immediately signs and says, "dog."

Great. My kid thinks I'm a dog. I have no idea why...


I think I'm quite attractive. But, you know, there's nothing like a baby to make you realize what's truly important in life.

Getting her to say mommy! I'm mommy, not doggie! Mommmm-meeeee!