My Mom, God love her! She is my idol! A stock market genius! The most tasteful, brilliant, and insightful person I’ve ever known, and the one person whose opinion I really trust.
But she can’t pitch a movie to save her coupons.
One of the reasons for this is how she comes at telling a story. Getting to “what’s it about?” is often a long road. And as her patient son, I often must wait for the punchline.
As I now tell audiences all over the world (having gotten permission from my Mom), this is how she would break the news of the Titanic sinking…
“You know the Astors,” she would begin.
Yes.
“Well, they’re having marital problems, so they go on vacation in France…”
Yes…
“And they decide to come home, so they book passage on this wonderful ship…”
Yes!?
“And everyone on board is so nice to them, all their friends are there too….”
YES!!??!
By the time we get to the part that’s the headline of the story, I am at wit’s end trying to figure out what she’s trying to tell me… and by the time she gets to the part about the ship hitting the iceberg, I’m confused by all the details. Mom falls into a storytelling no-no we all must fight, called “burying the lead.”
Iceberg! Iceberg! Mom I want to say. Get to the part that’s the reason you’re telling this story.
I bring this up because I hear a lot of movie pitches that fall into this category, too. What is it? I want to ask. Tell me the headline! I want to know. So get to the point! Pleeeeeezzzeee. And for friends of mine who’ve heard me tell the story of my Mom and the Titanic, I now say: Iceberg! Iceberg!
It’s a little reminder to get us all to the point.
Are you pitching your movie like my dear, sweet Mom? Are you telling us details up front that aren’t germane to the essence of the story, and avoiding the headline, the grabber that makes us stay interested? If so, before you go into that pitch meeting or agent confab, think of my Mom, and remember:
Iceberg! Iceberg!!
Mom can tell me the story any way she wants to, by the way! So these days when she says “Did you hear about the_____,” I just smile, grab a seat, and listen to every detail. I love you, Mom!!
p.s. I want to thank writer Demetria Dixon for this excellent article about all things Cat!
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Whoa Blake… are you reading your blog or something? Geeze, I just discussed this in the LAST post.
I hate to say this (mainly because I look terrible in a dress) but Blake… I AM YOU MOTHER!!
I too was getting sidetracked by the “Great Lemon Seed” reveal in the middle of act 2 which my whole story hinges on.
Do I tell you up front what the twist is thus ruining the surprise, but explaining everyone’s actions, or do I just tell you he story as it unfolds (assuming that I can keep you captive for 7 minutes).
Then “Sarah” came to my rescue, told me I was an idiot and gave a great example of how you SHOULD pitch a film.
So here goes… (if this sucks it’s Sarah’s fault):
“David possesses a secret that forced him into hiding thirty years ago.
When a mysterious package surfaces, a trail of suspicious deaths follows and leads to the murder of the only man who knows that David is still alive.
The package is the last chance that David has to get his life back, but if he exposes himself he risks the one thing that still matters to him.
The life of his daughter.”
Am I on the right track here? Do I need to reveal more?
LOVE this site Blake. Hoping one day to save enough pennies to go all “West Side” and take a workshop from you.
Jamie
Blake:
I LOVE YOUR MOM!!
Yes, what a vivid object lesson she provides, and lets you tell her story too.
This is one of the first lessons a writer needs to learn BEFORE ever writing the story.
Writing Workshops always produce a group of manuscripts where the story actually starts on page 50, and all that went before was what my teachers called “throat clearing and pencil sharpening.”
Writers feel you must understand all this background before you get to the story because otherwise you won’t understand the story.
The reason for feeling like this is simple.
Writers “have” their stories just like having a baby — whole, complete, and totally loveable at birth but with a huge future stretching ahead.
The typical new writer won’t give you a photo of the bottom of their baby’s foot FIRST — the identifying individual characteristic, the footprint.
They want to show you the baby’s college graduation photo or wedding album before they show you the red wrinkled face that’s just like Uncle Blake’s because you won’t understand who this baby will become without seeing his wedding album.
As a new mother sees “My Son The Doctor” in the blue blanketed bundle in her arms — a new writer sees “My Movie The Blockbuster” in their idea. It’s not even a concept yet, and it’s a blockbuster.
Learning to go from movie-goer to film writer is learning to think backwards from normal people.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com
Jamie:
May I intrude on your exchange with Blake?
I’m not on the receiving end of pitches, I don’t buy movie scripts. I’m a novelist learning the screenwriting trade. At the moment, I’ve been fooling around on triggerstreet.com (as JLichtenberg )in my spare time writing analyses of student screenplays. After I did 6 of them, the computer started handing me screenplays by their Advanced members and by a Reviewer of the Month. I was just told by an advanced member Reviewer of the Month fellow that my review of his screenplay had been super helpful.
From picking out a screenplay to read from the ones their computer dishes up, I’m beginning to spot amateurism in the very PITCH SENTENCE before my eyes. This is serious learning going on with me. I have learned to see something –now I have to try to explain what I see to those who don’t.
So I see two major problems with the opening sentence of your pitch.
“30-years-ago”
That “ago” loops the reader (hear-er?) backwards, reversing the momentum of the story you’re telling. It’s history. It doesn’t launch your action forward in time. It’s not a springboard sentence, it’s an obilette.
#2: PASSIVE VERB. David “was forced” — that passive voice phrasing is a real interest killer. Who wants to read about a shmuck who gets pushed around?
Now, I don’t know your story. This pitch is the first I’ve heard of it.
But let me jigger the words around a little to be something I might read if the triggerstreet.com computer tossed it at me.
“David Tyler drops off the face of the earth to protect his (yr-old) daughter, Melody from those trying to kill him. Now the killer takes down the one man who knows David’s new identity. But before he dies, David’s friend mails David a package — proof that David Tyler is really Dovid Abramovitch. And the mob will stop at nothing to get that package.”
No, that’s really no good. Violates all the rules. But that story, I would read.
The ICEBURG here is the package, the football they are fighting over, and the secret (which you didn’t tell so I don’t know).
How about:
David Tyler’s life story with all its darkest secrets has been consigned to UPS in a blue package addressed to Melody Shaw, his daughter, and forwarded through three of her addresses. At each address the package touches, a corpse shot through the head is found – none of them Melody’s, yet. David must get that package before (whoever) does or Melody dies.
OK, that’s not the story you wrote, which I haven’t read.
But do you see what I’m trying to do? ICEBURG = PACKAGE + SECRET. Put that up front, forget HISTORY. Few producers are as patient as Blake is with his mother.
I’d like to see what pitch you end up with. I have to learn to write these things myself.
You can follow me on twitter as JLichtenberg.
Blake, no surprise that you just told us how to tell our story by . . . telling a story! Tell your gracious mother “thanks” for giving you permission to share it with us. And, thanks to YOU for continuing to offer quality instruction on this site. If your lessons were automobiles, they’d be Cat!illacs! :)
Blake it seems like your mom speaks like our Pastor.I want to write a book about it for the people of congregations to give their Pastors on their birthdays. My Mama was a really cool bird ,she said,”son if you gona chew tobacco,you got to learn how to spit like a man.” She also said, when we were taking a test drive in my first car.I was fourteen years old ,”Rev. it up and dump the clutch son ,If It can’t lay down at least a hundred feet of rubber, we ain’t buying it .”It was 1960. It was a different time and place.
Captain
Blake, just the last few seeks I wanted to tell you a story about my mom. I hope you realize that STC 1 & 2 are read and carried with us Cats in the most unusual places.
My dear mom is in a nursing home and has dimentia. She enjoys when I visit to read her children’s books that have bright colorful illustrations. I read with much enthusiasm and inflection hoping to entertain her and just maybe she’ll understand what the story is about.
The other day I ran out of books before she fell asleep, so I read from STC Goes to the Movies. Being as expressive as I could be, I told her all about Out of the Bottle genre. It was comforting trying to relate to her what I was working on. And was my screenplay leaning toward thing, surreal or angel OTB? She smiled at my animation and antics.
How many of our characters we write about have our family traits and characteristics? My mom is definitely has been an inspiration in whatever I do…as it seems your mom has been too. Aren’t we lucky? Thanks for your story about your mom.
:D I once heard someone say that we Southerners can drag the story of going to the mail box out for at least half an hour. But I suspect this may be because, when you live in the holler, the driveway is about half a mile long . . .
Jamie, I think this version is better, but Jacqueline is right, you need to make it more active. But you are getting there! Don’t give up yet.
Blake! Love this story. I have some dear friends who do this! Writers, no less. I keep hoping they are not doing it in meetings the way they do at the screenwriters group we belong to. :D