Pitching Benny + Gus

Want to get this down to reference for next time. 

We pitched Benny and Gus to Angela, Stephanie and Mike at Nick yesterday. 

Here's the brief run down (with both spoken and submission pitch attached).

We emailed Angela April 3 to say "let's do another thing together."

She sent her needs document over. We all agreed on three things for us to pitch...

1) JiffPom tv movie.
2) Operation Unicorn (tv movie backdoor pilot)
3) Benny + Gus

Both TV movies were submitted written-only. No in person pitch. That's why this will focus on B + G.

OK.

We spent a couple months locking in the pitch with Angela. 

june 11 - We scheduled the pitch for July 11 based on a pitch doc. At that time Angela suggested that we also write a detailed pilot story.

June 28 - We locked the pilot AND pitch with Angela (the pitched form of both). Time to start memorizing...

July 1-3: We started by just reading the document over separately. Then we rewrote sections and created a document for the spoken pitch. (had to make it natural and had to eliminate redundancies b/w the pilot doc and the pitch doc we had written with Angela's help)

July 8:  We pitched to Jason and Ayla. Matt flubbed and got tongue tied but it was still fine. They suggested that we say "He was like" instead of the more formal "he said" etc. They also suggested we make the character descriptions more visual (great ideas, both). They also suggested we make the b + g character descriptions more of a back and forth but we just streamlined instead to address that note.

July 9: Pitched to Austin and Greg. They suggested we stop hitting the GUS IS AWKWARD point so many times. Note: the memorization was totally fine by this point. Never even really got THAT much better over the next week.

PITCH DELAYS: Was pushed once, then another time. Rescheduled from July 11 to July 16. In that time we basically just ran it 1-3 times a day. 

Last prep note: it helped me (matt) to have a couple of parts in the pitch that were jokes that I felt I could improvise on in the room. Like sub in new details or whatever to surprise chelsea and myself and the execs. We should plant that stuff for other pitches (for CH too).

July 16: We got there early. Went to Olive park where people were balling to use the bathroom. Parked on the street which was GREAT. Went in. Played Ninja Turtles video game but it was too loud. Sat at the table.

Talked to Caitlin Fein assistant about how she lives in Glendale and loves it and is from the deep valley. 

Sat in the glass conference room for 10 minutes waiting. 

We had a contest of saying really dirty stuff before the Nick people came in to get it out of our systems. Chelsea won with "horse penis" probably.

They came in.

Small talk: they have Nychos in their lobby. We have a piece by him in our house. I thanked them again for working with us on Swipe. Mike said, "Alright we're not here to talk about that, I heard you've got something new for us."

Angela: "Yeah Mike hasn't heard anything about this, so he's coming in knowing nothing."

Matt: "OK, let's roll."

Chelsea: "OK we're rolling. We're rolling now."

Something like that.

Then Chelsea began.

And I immediately began to sweat.

They probably didn't see. But it was flop sweat (which is something I have been getting lately, just lots of forehead sweat). I wiped it off a bunch, that was probably the most obvious. 

Generally I flubbed a couple things and Chelsea was great (maybe slightly too smiley at the end??)

One good thing: After Chelsea had a big silly moment where she said SABOTAGE! I was like "That's our favorite part. That's as good as this is gonna get."

And CH chimed in with something else and they laughed.

There were a few times an unplanned remark made them laugh. We should always try to pepper that in.

we should also think through -- WHERE ARE THOSE SPOTS? HOW CAN WE CALL THEM OUT AND JOKE ABOUT THEM TO LIGTHEN THE MOOD?

Totally worked when Chelsea's line was "Gus made a joke. And no one laughed." And no one laughed in the room. And I said "Just like right now, except for Stephanie, she's laughing a little." 

OK. That's all I've got. Then we left and sat in the little Nick patio and talked. Tried to call Greg but the phone cut out. Went to McD's and got a DC. Went to that smart and final place where Fresh and Easy used to be on Olive. Bought some groceries. Came home. Bike ride (after conflict of yoga or no yoga).

Celebration at Mama's Lu. Always good to celebrate the small things. Whether or not they but it is not the accomplishment. Everything above is! (We'll celebrate again when they buy it.)

​: )