————————15————————

SELLING AN ORIGINAL IDEA

In television, there is nothing quite as exciting as selling a pilot. It doesn’t matter whether you are just starting out as a writer – or if you already have several successful series under your belt. Selling a pilot is what most television writers strive for. The possibility of having your idea developed, produced, and then beamed into every living room across America is, quite simply, the ultimate dream.

A year or so ago, I had the extreme good fortune to sell an idea for a pilot to Warner Bros. and NBC. It was an incredible journey. I learned so much along the way. I am anxious to share every moment with you in hopes that when your time comes you will be all the more prepared. Let me tell you, it was a long and winding road to get to that network “yes.” There were many highs and lows along the way. As with most new ventures, there are things I look back on with enormous pride. There are other things I look back on with the slightest tinge of regret and wish I’d done differently. In any case, I am going to lay it all out for you as honestly as I can. I will walk you through the entire process step by step and you can decide for yourself what the takeaway is.

THE BIG IDEA

A great idea for a TV series can come at any time and literally from anywhere. It can drop from the sky, out of the clear blue… which is what happened to me. One day, while in my office at Emerson College, my email dinged. The message, which I will never forget, came from halfway around the globe. It was from two childhood friends who were now serving together on the same NATO base in Afghanistan. They had an idea for a TV series based on their experiences in the war. The soldiers, God bless them, had read the first edition of Write to TV. They’d written a script and wanted to know if I’d look at it. I should mention, in my job, I hear many ideas and get asked to read lots of scripts and treatments. Usually, much as I want to, I don’t have the time. But, since these guys were overseas, away from their families, risking their lives for our freedom, I figured looking at their script was the very least I could do.

As I have said before, writing a great spec script is hard… writing a great pilot is downright difficult. This is especially true for first time writers. I read the soldiers’ work and it was, unfortunately, not even close to being ready to show to agents or producers. They had the germ of an idea which was not fleshed out. It was neither a comedy nor a drama. I had set up a Skype call with the soldiers to critique their script. I knew I was going to have to be brutally honest and suggest they throw out what they had and start fresh. I felt horrible about this, but I knew that to not tell a writer the truth about his/her work equals not being at all helpful. Needless to say, I was not looking forward to the call.

A few days later my phone rang right on schedule. I picked it up and at the other end were these two energetic and eager guys who were passionate about their pilot and excited to hear my opinion. In my Day Planner, I had set aside a half hour for this conversation. Three hours later, we were still yapping away. What these two soldiers had to say about their lives on a twenty-first-century military base set smack in the middle of a dangerous desert was fascinating. The tales they told hit every human emotion; some stories were hilariously funny, others completely heart-breaking. It became immediately clear to me that while they may not have executed a perfect pilot script, these two buddies had the seeds of something that could be a real interesting TV series. So, I gave them the best advice I could about how to move forward… which included the dreaded but necessary “Tear it all up and start again” speech. Harsh as this may sound, sometimes it truly is the best way to proceed. Thankfully, they took it well. We hung up. My head was spinning.

Five minutes later, I called the soldiers back and told them I’d love to work on the pilot with them. To my surprise, they said, “We thought you’d never ask.”

And just like that, I formed an unlikely writing partnership with two perfect strangers who were living on an air base 6650.9 miles away.

DEVELOPING THE BIG IDEA

The first order of business for our team was to zero in on what our idea actually was. Were we going to write a comedy or a drama? What was the actual premise? Most importantly, what was our take on it? The soldiers wanted to write a show that exposed the reality of the war. That seemed to lend itself more naturally to drama than comedy.

So off we went into the wild blue yonder, working day and night via Skype to develop a drama about the war in Afghanistan. For the next seven months, we worked whenever we could. (Note: The process of developing our idea took longer than usual because of the time zone factor. Afghanistan is nine-and-a-half hours ahead of Boston.) I picked the soldiers’ brains. They had a treasure chest of information and stories tucked away in their heads that needed to find their way onto the page.

We decided that our characters would be part of a unit known as the Provincial Reconstruction Team, commonly refered to in the military as the P.R.T. Their job — as in real life — was to rebuild a country (that was still being bombed) and to infuse Western culture.

We fleshed out characters, some of which were fictionalized versions of people the soldiers had worked with. For example, Colonel Baker, the commanding officer who hates to have his authority questioned. Then there was Cowboy, an Afghan teen who hangs around the base and supplies the soldiers with all of their “vices.” And Camille, a starving cow found wondering around the base that the soldiers nursed back to health. Personally, I was hellbent on adding a strong female character to honor the many brave women serving our country. And so we created Rosie Chavez, a Hispanic single mother who was second in command on the base and could soldier as well as any of the guys. Sometimes even better than the guys.

Once we had our characters/character relationships in place, we began to think of the pilot stories for our script. Since it was a drama, we needed an A-Story, a B-story, and a C-story. I pushed and pushed the soldiers, who told me one wonderful story after another. But remember, for a pilot, it’s not enough to just have good stories. They had to be the absolute right stories. Stories that were fresh and new, that would introduce our characters in the best way possible and jumpstart an entire series. Finally, we settled on three. It was time to bite the bullet (so to speak), and write a detailed scene by scene outline.

We finished the outline and titled our series The 51^st State. We were tremendously excited. We knew instinctively that we had an idea that was fresh and original. We could also boast that our idea was indeed groundbreaking. If we were successful at getting this show up and running, it would be the first time ever that a network would be airing a drama series about a war while that war was still actually being fought.

Finally, after seven long months, we were ready to write our pilot script.

DISAPPOINTMENT KNOCKS

Before we could sit down at our computers to begin the script, we got some rather jolting news. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, ABC was promoting a new, exciting drama series called Combat Hospital. The series was about a team of doctors and nurses working in a military hospital on a base in — you got it —Afghanistan. Youch. One 30 second promo, and I knew all of our hard work was to no avail; our idea was all but dead. There was no way now that we would be able to get our show up and running as it was. If Combat Hospital became a hit, our series would create what’s known as “brand confusion” (meaning the concept is so close to another show already on the air, that viewers can’t easily differentiate.). On the other hand, if the series bombed (which it ultimately did), then no other network would want to develop a show that’s in any way similar.

This is where, when it comes to writing, I can’t overemphasize the importance of having a support system of people you can just let it all out with. Once I broke the news to the soldiers, who felt as down and as disappointed as I did, I called Anne Zeiser — one of my closest girlfriends — to do a combination whine/rant. Anne is a brilliant media strategist, and so I knew she’d be a great sounding board. If there were any next steps to saving this project, I was certain Anne would help me find them. I was right. In a matter of seconds, the magic words rolled off her tongue, “Why don’t you just make it a comedy?” To which I replied that she had to be kidding — or completely nuts. How could we ever do a comedy about the war in Afghanistan while the war is actually going on and people are dying… for real? Anne argued that if my soldiers really wanted to make a statement about the war as they said they did, comedy was the absolute best platform. We talked about the brilliant writing behind the hit comedy series M.A.S.H. and how the writers often slipped in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) commentary about the horribly unpopular Vietnam War. (The show was set against the backdrop of the Korean War, but it was well-known that the writers were really talking about Vietnam.) Suddenly, it all clicked. The soldiers and I needed to switch gears. We needed to abandon the idea of a drama and embrace the idea of a comedy. Before we hung up, Anne announced that, given the new direction the show was taking, she had the perfect title for us: FUBAR … especially if the show was going to be snarky and find a risky home on cable. If you aren’t familiar with this acronym, it was born in the military during the Second World War. It means “fouled up beyond all recognition.” Of course in the twenty-first century “fouled” has been replaced by another, more modern choice word. ☺

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

The soldiers liked the idea of a comedy. So back to work we went on a new show called FUBAR. While we could salvage some of the characters we had originally created, we now needed to make them funny. To our great surprise, this concept lent itself much more to comedy than it did to drama. There was something inherently funny (not to mention ironic) about a Provincial Reconstruction Team trying to rebuild a country while NATO bombed it. And the P.R.T. attempting to infuse modern-day Western values and products into an ancient, Eastern tribal country brought out this culture clash that had the potential to be hysterically funny.

For another six months, we worked. This time is was more difficult. For one thing, it was summer and the soldiers were busier. There was more action on the base. As the guys explained to me, the Taliban is much more active in the summer than in the winter. So, there would be nights when we would be working via Skype and I’d hear the sound of distant sirens. Finally, one of the guys would say something like, “The sirens have been going off (indicating incoming enemy fire) for the last two hours. We should probably go to the bunker.” I remember thinking, “Really? Are you kidding me?” It blew my mind that these guys were so passionate about this project that they were literally risking their lives to create a sitcom. (By the way, this may be stating the obvious… but let me tell you here and now: there isn’t a TV show on this planet that’s worth risking your life for.) There were other nights we’d be working and laughing, when suddenly I’d hear loud music blaring in the background. “It’s Taps,” one of my partners explained. Apparently, when a soldier on the base is killed no matter if it’s 2 p.m. or 2 a.m., Taps is immediately played to mark that soldier’s passing. Those were the days that what we were doing really hit home. And of course, there were other nights when we were supposed to work, but the Skype call never came through. I found myself feeling the angst that I’m sure those who have loved ones in the military feel every day. My mind swirled with questions and fear. Where are they? Why haven’t they called? What if something happened to them?

Thankfully, nothing did. Before we knew it, that long, crazy summer spilled into fall. As September arrived, we had finished our outline. Once again, it was time to start writing the script. Then, something unexpected happened. I got one of those so-called “gut feelings.” It was screaming at me that we should not write the script. Instead we should take what we had and try to pitch it. In retrospect, I think I was getting this feeling because I instinctively knew that the time for this show was now. Deep down, I was also worried that since Combat Hospital had already come out, it would only be a matter of time before someone came up with the idea for a comedy about the war. I didn’t want to risk being almost finished with the script, only to find someone else was already doing our show. I was also secretly worried about how long it would take the three of us to write a really funny pilot. Considering our time zone difference, the fact that I hadn’t written a comedy script in while, and the two soldiers were newbies, I knew it would take a while to pump out something worthy.

But, going to production companies and studios without a solid script was risky. It’s much harder to sell an idea, especially if you don’t have a track record. With a script, if they read it and like it, then it’s very hard to make you disappear. If you sell an idea off of a pitch without a script, then in all probability, they will hire showrunners with tons of experience to write the script. Taking all of that into consideration, my gut was still screaming that it was time to sell this project now.

TIME TO PUT IT OUT THERE

It’s fair to say that all of the stars aligned with our pilot. As luck would have it, one of the soldier’s tour of duty was coming to an end. He decided not to re-up. He wanted to come home and put all his energy into selling the project with me. As he prepared to leave Afghanistan, I began putting together a plan of attack to get our pilot into the hands of someone who could get it up and running and on the air. I went through my Rolodex and made a list of as many industry people I could think of to approach. Then, I called people. I emailed people. I asked people to read our treatment. I asked people if they knew people who would read our treatment.

Now, this is where things can get a tad uncomfortable-making. When you put yourself and/or your work out there, you risk rejection. You risk hearing things you don’t necessarily want to hear. And the inevitable happens: you hear things that make you feel bad — or worse still, things that make you question your ability as a writer. Just so you understand this is all part of the process. Let me give you a sampling of some of the things people said to me: “You’re wasting your time. No one is ever going to buy your pitch. ” Here’s another: “A comedy about the war? Eeew. No one’s gonna touch that with a ten foot pole.” And then my absolute favorite: “Why would you bother people with this?”

Let me point something out that’s really important here. None of what those people said was technically wrong. The odds of selling a pilot off of a pitch were slim to none. Some executives might be nervous about doing a comedy about a war that’s still being fought. But, again, it all came down to my gut. I just had a strong feeling that we could sell this show. That the time was now. So right then and there, I made a commitment to myself that no matter what — come hell or high water, I was going to sell this. If it meant banging on a thousand doors, I’d bang on a thousand doors. I wouldn’t stop until someone said “yes.” I reminded myself, as you should with your pilot, that all it takes is one person who gets it. You just have to find that one person who will say, “I want to do this project.” So if ten thousand other people say “no,” who cares? All you need is one “yes.” Somehow, if you think of it that way, it feels less daunting.

Okay. I promised up front that I would tell you honestly everything about how this pilot came to be. So now I am going to let you in on something that feels like a dirty, little secret. The next step I took will probably have some people rolling their eyes. But I am going to defend it and tell you that for our project, it turned out to be one of the smartest moves I made.

As I was thinking of places to pitch our idea, it suddenly occurred to me that my stateside partner had never pitched before. Thus, he wouldn’t know what to expect if we were lucky enough to get some meetings. Not to mention, he and I had yet to even meet each other. If we were going to pitch a show together, we had to be in harmony. It goes without saying that a pitch has to be perfect. You don’t get a second bite at the apple. Literally, one person can say the wrong thing and kill the idea. Thus, you can’t just wing a pitch, especially when there are two people involved. Going in, you really need to have it down pat who is going to say what and when. A pitch needs to be rehearsed, but the key is, it can’t look rehearsed. It should sound like a natural conversation.

So the question for me was, how was I going to get both the soldier and myself prepared for our pitch? Once again, out of the blue, as if dropped from heaven, came an email about a pitchfest in Los Angeles the following week. If you don’t know what a pitchfest is, think of it as a big cattle call where agents, managers, production companies, etc. gather and tons of writers come and pitch ideas in hopes of making a sale. Bingo. The timing was perfect. The pitchfest was happening two days after the soldier returned from Afghanistan. While I didn’t expect to sell our show at this pitchfest (in my opinion, this rarely happens), I knew that it was the ideal place for the soldier and me to practice. It was also the perfect place for us to get feedback. We would hear firsthand from people in the industry whether our idea actually had legs — and what parts of our pitch needed fixing.

So, I packed my bags for L.A. Since I was making the trek out to the West Coast, I figured it was a good time to set up some meetings to pitch our show. While this is the exciting part, it’s also the scary part because it means contacting people — everyone you can think of — and asking them to help get you in the door. With this in mind, I made a list of people to contact. One of the people on my list was a woman who went to Emerson College, my alma mater, as well as the place I currently teach. I had never met this woman, but I remembered reading somewhere that she had an extremely high-powered job at Warner Bros. I decided to take a chance and send her an email. In the email, I told her very briefly that I had developed a pilot with two soldiers about the war in Afghanistan and that I would be in L.A. and would love to meet with her about it. She wrote back and said that she didn’t think she was the right person for us to meet with. But, she would ask the executive vice president of development if she would take a meeting and hear our pitch. Talk about a big favor from a perfect stranger. Needless to say, the soldier and I were totally stoked.

A few days went by. I didn’t hear back from the Warner Bros. executive. Because we writers are all cut from the same insecure mold, I assumed that meant that the answer was a “no.” Sitting in the lounge at Logan Airport about to take off for Los Angeles, I was on the phone once again with my friend Anne. I mentioned that I had not heard back from the Warner Bros. executive. Anne said, “Email her again.” No way, I thought. The last thing I wanted to be was a pest. Anne said, “People are busy. Maybe she just didn’t have time to get back to you. Try her once more. You have nothing to lose.” Perfect advice. How do I know? Because it’s the exact advice I would give to you. But, the thing is, when you are the person putting yourself out there, it’s easier said than done. I hung up the phone. A few moments later, sitting on the plane, I thought about the soldiers and all the work we had done and how I didn’t want to let them down. I thought about the promise I made to myself that I would sell this show no matter what. Moments before take-off, I grabbed my cell phone and sent the Warner Bros. executive another email, reminding her that I was on my way to Los Angeles and wondered if she’d had any luck getting someone to hear our pitch.

Six hours later I landed in L.A. and pulled out my phone. The executive had emailed me back. The meeting at Warner Bros. was on.

PREPARING THE PITCH

The following morning, I drove to a Beverly Hills Hotel where the pitchfest was taking place. Who was waiting for me, but one of my partners. Looking tanned and tired, he’d returned from Afghanistan only two days before. I don’t mind telling you it was an emotional meeting. All this time we’d spent on Skype, pouring endless hours into this project and now here we were a year later meeting face-to-face for the very first time. We were jazzed. And that set the tone for a productive day.

Before going into the pitchfest, we ducked into a coffee shop and rehearsed our pitch for about an hour. Again, it’s so important to say it out loud so you can actually hear the words. Even if you are a single writer you should practice your pitch out loud. There is a definite difference in actually hearing your words vs. what they sound like dancing silently in your head.

Going to the pitchfest was one of the best things we could have done. First of all, it gave the soldier and me the chance to really get our rhythm down in front of other people. Second, we got great feedback. Getting feedback on your pitch is so important. And you really need to listen — not only to people’s words, but also to their body language. How do they react when hearing your pitch? Are they making eye contact, nodding, smiling, and looking truly engaged? Or are they shifting uncomfortably in their chair with sort of a blank, unenthused stare? If the latter is true, then you know your pitch isn’t quite working. For us, we got a lot of what seemed like genuine enthusiasm. One agent told us to write the script and he would totally sell it. Another agent gave us some tips for how to improve our pitch. He suggested the soldier start off by saying, “I’ve just come back from Afghanistan where I did three tours of duty. And I gotta tell ya, the war is funny.” Interesting approach… only we weren’t brave enough to be quite that bold. Though we did take some of the agent’s advice. From that point on, our pitch began with the soldier saying, “I’ve just come back from Afghanistan where I did three tours of duty. And that’s where the idea for this show came from.” Those two simple sentences gave an immediate personal connection to our show.

The next day we were scheduled to pitch our idea at Warner Bros. Unfortunately, the meeting got canceled and rescheduled for the following week. That was a bit of a bummer as I had to return to Boston and wouldn’t be able to attend in person. We worked it out so that the soldier (who lives in California) would be in the room with the Warner Bros. executives and I would attend via speaker phone. While not an ideal way to pitch, it was the best we could do. Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow.

PITCHING TO THE STUDIO

Our pitch to the Warner Bros. executives was short and sweet. We talked about our idea and how it came about. We gave interesting details about modern day war that most people don’t readily know. For example, the military base has an actual “boardwalk” with chain restaurants like Fridays, Dairy Queen, and Nathan’s Hotdogs. So in the middle of a war zone you can actually go out on a date…it’s just that the date could be cut short at any moment due to incoming enemy fire. We talked about some of the characters we envisioned. The soldier told a few funny stories that got the executives laughing. We closed with an old-fashioned sales pitch telling them point blank why they should do our show. We said it was gound-breaking; no one had done a comedy about the war while the war was actually being fought. We said there hadn’t been a good military comedy in quite a while, and we felt confident someone was going to do this show. The executives told us they would talk amongst themselves and get back to us very soon. Two days later, I received the email we had long been hoping for: Warner Bros. wanted to develop our show.

I felt like the luckiest writer on the planet. I can only imagine how great the news must have been for the soldiers. Not only was our project now at a studio…it was at the studio. Warner Bros. has a reputation for being the best in the business; a place that’s known as being extremely writer-friendly. And, that was only the beginning. A few days later, one of the Warner Bros. executives called to say they had been talking about our show and the best way to proceed in developing it. She said the studio had a deal with Jerry Bruckheimer Television. They thought he might be interested in doing a military comedy. She told me if that sounded good to us, I should come out to L.A. and meet with Bruckheimer’s development team.

In January, I flew back to the West Coast. The soldier and I met with the Bruckheimer executives. We re-pitched the show. It seemed to go well. They, too, asked a lot of questions. Then, something wild happened. Somewhere in the conversation, either the soldier or I mentioned that the title of our show was FUBAR. The room became suddenly quiet. Naturally, with Bruckheimer’s military connections, the execs all knew what “FUBAR” meant. Finally one of them spoke up and announced that the Bruckheimer brand is about heroes, and that Jerry would never want to make any kind of political statement, especially one that could ever be construed as negative toward the military. Immediately, a three-letter acronym and a three-letter word collided in my head: “OMG” and “duh.” The OMG part meant, of course Bruckheimer wouldn’t want to make any snarky statements. He has too many valuable connections in that arena. The “duh” part was of course his brand is heroes — that’s obvious by the kinds of TV shows and movies he does. From our end, we got so caught up in the excitement of possibly attaching a producer of Jerry Bruckheimer’s calibre that we raced in without thinking. We should have taken a moment and really looked at his company. If we had, I guarantee you we wouldn’t have been telling his execs that the title of our show was FUBAR.

The execs asked if it would be a problem if the show took a different approach. Obviously we said it wouldn’t. The most important thing you can do in a pitch is to stay open to other people’s thoughts and ideas. Had we been married to the snarky FUBAR approach, we would have left that day without Jerry Bruckheimer being attached to our project. Instead, we stayed and listened to how his execs wanted to develop it. They wanted to keep it a workplace comedy. They saw it more as a Friends meets The Office, only in this case the “office” was a military base. Rather than criticizing the war, they wanted to celebrate the men and women who were fighting the war. After I had a moment to think about it, I could totally see where they were going. And I genuinely liked the new direction.

That day, we went into Brukheimer’s office with a show called FUBAR. We came out with a show called Outpost. (The new working title.) We also came out with Bruckheimer’s company attached to our show.

THE DEAL

In order to start developing Outpost, the executives at Warner Bros. informed us we needed to make a deal and so we would need to get either an agent or an entertainment attorney. I’m not going to talk about this much except for a few small things that are worth bringing to your attention. First off, you might think that when a writer has a deal on the table with a producer as big as Jerry Bruckheimer and well-respected studio like Warner Bros., getting an agent would be a piece of cake. It was not. The reason is, as a writing team, we were unknowns, and most agents probably quietly assumed that the pilot would never get off the ground. (You will understand momentarily when I talk about pitching to the networks why they might feel this way.) Another reason agents weren’t chomping at the bit is that as I mentioned, we had no script. That gave us considerably less bargaining power. Had we gone in with a script, we easily would have been in line for the coveted “created by” credit — and we also would have likely been considered for some kind of executive producer credit, all of which would have carried more weight with agents. I stand by our decision to sell this idea as a pitch. It was, for the reasons I have stated, unquestionably the right thing to do. But, I want to be clear this doesn’t mean that it would be the right decision for you. If you can write a really great script then definitely do so. You will have considerably more bargaining power.

We ended up with both a wonderful agent and a terrific entertainment attorney. Both fought hard, looked out for our interests and negotiated a more than fair deal for which we are extremely grateful. While showrunners would be brought in to write the actual pilot script, we would serve as consulting producers. If the show went to series, there was a script commitment in our deal, meaning we would actually get to write an episode.

ATTACHING SHOWRUNNERS

The first step to getting Outpost ready to pitch to networks was to attach showrunners. As we discussed, these are producers with enormous industry clout because of their hard-earned track records. The executives at Warner Bros. and Jerry Bruckheimer Television came up with a list of potential showrunners that they thought would be good for the project and that networks would find equally exciting. They then contacted the showrunners, told them about our show and asked if they had any interest in working on it.

From there, each showrunner (or team of showrunners) met with the Bruckheimer executives, myself, and the soldiers to give us their take on the show. The meetings took place on the Warner Bros. lot and were especially cool as one soldier attended in person while I was Skyped in from Boston, and the other soldier was Skyped in from Afghanistan. On occasion, we’d be in the middle of a meeting and the soldier from Afghanistan would fade in and out due to a sand storm on the base…not funny per se, but sort of funny — and definitely gave potential showrunners the flavor of our show.

These meetings were particularly interesting on a couple of levels. After all the time we had spent developing this idea on our own, it was fascinating to hear top-level producers pitch their take on how they would develop the show if given the opportunity. It became immediately clear that choosing the right showrunner(s) was key. This was the person/team who would be leading the charge. Under the wing of each potential showrunner, it would be a slightly different show, as each came to the table with a slightly different approach. As with all shows, chemistry was key. The showrunners would be spending a lot of time with us, so it was important that we all really liked each other and clicked.

After meeting many potential showrunners and hearing their creative takes on how they would proceed, the Warner Bros. execs along with the Bruckheimer execs decided on a showrunner team that we all loved. These two guys were currently executive producers on ABC’s Happy Endings, and had a huge track record, having worked on a long list of successful comedies. Their take on the show was that it was The Office meets M.A.S.H with a little Scrubs thrown in. They saw the show as a single-camera mockumentary (a technique that allows the characters to speak directly into the camera) comedy. We were thrilled to have them in the driver’s seat.

WORKING WITH THE SHOWRUNNERS

With two talented showrunners on board, things were looking bright. As luck would have it, the other soldier’s tour ended. He decided to come home and join the party. His timing was perfect. Still, we needed to get on the stick. There was lots of work to be done. It was already mid-July. The Warner Bros. and Bruckheimer execs wanted us in the door at networks by mid-September.

Over the next two months, the soldiers and I worked with the showrunners to help develop a pitch. We supplied them with any info they needed that would help them understand the ins and outs of living on a NATO military base. The soldiers fed them lots of real-life funny stories. We also tossed out some ideas for characters that we had developed in the early days.

Somewhere along the line, the showrunners changed the title of the show from Outpost to At Ease. While your first reaction might be LOL — another title change…really? Yes, really. Just so you know…show titles are key. Not only should they be clever, they should convey in a word or two what your show is about at its very core. Personally, I was never a fan of the title Outpost. For me, it was too reminiscent of a recent show on NBC called Outsourced. That show, which was set in India, lasted one season. I feared that if our show got on the air, the titles were similar enough that people might mix them up. I also feared that in a pitch, just hearing a title similar to a recently failed show might have subliminal negative connotations.

The showrunners expanded the premise and described the base as sort of a dangerous summer camp. As expected, they created new characters to fit their vision of the show. Some of their additions were totally funny, such as Victor Chung, a guy who was brave enough to be openly gay in the military, but too chicken to tell his strict Korean parents. So Victor spent the last 20 years in the military, hiding out from his family. Another character the showrunners created which was my absolute favorite was The Prince. They based it off of Prince Harry who actually served in Afghanistan. In our show, everybody followed The Prince everywhere including to the bathroom, fearing he might get a scratch — and if he did, heads would roll. Still, we were thrilled to see that the showrunners kept some of our core ideas for characters. Though their names may have changed, Rosie, Cowboy, and Camille all found their way into the show. We were also happy that in the showrunners’ version, the characters still worked as part of a Provincial Reconstruction Team whose main job was to rebuild a country, while at the same time inserting Western culture. This is what I so love about working in television. It’s wonderfully collaborative. You start with an idea and everyone adds to it. Before you know it, the idea totally rocks!

The week before we were scheduled to pitch to the networks, we huddled in a Warner Bros. conference room to practice the pitch in front of the Warner Bros. and Brukheimer execs. (Remember when I told you how important it is to practice the pitch? This is proof positive that even professionals at the highest level do likewise.) For the network pitches, the showrunners needed to be able to clearly articulate the premise, the characters, the world the characters lived in, and the style of the show. And because this was a comedy, they needed to do it in a way that would get big laughs in the room. They also needed to describe a few stories that might be in the pilot episode.

The executives listened enthusiastically, and then critiqued the pitch. They pointed out places they thought needed clarifying and made some minor tweaks. With the idea that “A picture is worth a thousand words,” there was discussion about visuals. The execs wondered if it would be beneficial to have the Marketing Department put together some photos of the base in Afghanistan so that network executives would get a better sense of what we were talking about. The soldiers had some truly incredible pictures. The execs decided we should use them.

NETWORK PITCHES

Let me describe the chaotic time at networks during pitch season. Picture this scenario: it’s ten o’clock in the morning, at CBS. The network executives gather in an office and a writer enters and pitches an idea for a pilot. Approximately a half hour later, the door opens and the writer exits as another writer enters. Now, picture the exact same scenario playing out simultaneously at ABC, NBC, and FOX. This happens all day long, five days a week from roughly July to September with some spill-over into October. Do the math, and you will get a rough estimate of how many pilot pitches these networks hear per season. Keep in mind that relatively speaking there are usually only a handful of slots on network schedules for new shows. This is why agents and other industry insiders feel that the odds of a writer actually getting a pilot on the air are about the same as winning the lottery at the exact same time you get struck by lightning.

Warner Bros. set up meetings at all four networks in the same week. The strategy being, that hopefully more than one network will want the show, the project will get some heat and the networks will have to bid against each other in order to make the deal with the studio.

I must admit, I think the pitch for At Ease was absolutely brilliant. Let me walk you through it and see if you agree. The pitch officially began with an executive from Warner Bros. explaining about how the soldiers and I met, and how we came to Warner Bros., which was through an executive in their Marketing Department (my alumni connection), and how unusual that was. Next, one of the executives from Bruckheimer Television briefly talked about how they had done so many things with the military that they thought every angle had been covered…until they heard our pitch. In a nutshell, what they were doing is subtly saying to the network executives, “You’re about to hear something exciting and fresh…something you haven’t heard before.”

Then, the showrunners jumped in and began to pitch the actual pilot. One of them started with his own personal story about the military. He talked about being on a trip in Africa when one of his friends got ill and so they had to be airlifted to a military base. He said the base was nothing like he expected and went onto describe some of the modern day amenities. He said ever since that day, he’d wanted to do a military comedy. This is important because by starting with a personal story, he was letting the network executives know why this show resonated with him. A personal connection to a pilot is really key because it tells executives that the writers have an emotional connection, which is something executives absolutely seek.

From there, the showrunners talked about the setting and the style of the show. They saw it as single-cam, documentary style. They then went right into the characters. Because they were pitching a comedy, they had to make the pitch funny. They did this in a really creative way. One of them would talk about a character and then, they would set up an example of something funny the character might do. But instead of giving the actual example themselves, they would turn to the soldiers and let them tell a funny, reallife story of something that happened on the base that could easily be incorporated into the show. This not only added two extra voices to the pitch, it reiterated the fact that we had two guys just back from Afghanistan who had lots of funny, original stories to tell. I can pretty much guarantee with all of the other pitches the network executives heard that day, they didn’t hear any like that.

The showrunners broad-stroked the stories they envisioned for the pilot episode. They ended the pitch by stating that there are many brave men and women serving our country around the world and the time to honor them is now. A rather smart way to end a pitch, I thought, because who, in their right mind, is going to argue that point?

We went into network pitches, fingers crossed, hoping that one network would say “yes.” By week’s end, CBS, NBC, and ABC all said “yes,” with FOX being the only one to pass. It was then up to the execs at Warner Bros. and Jerry Bruckheimer Television to decide which network that they thought overall would be the best fit. In our role as producers we didn’t have a say in this decision, but we were secretly rooting for NBC. While the other networks were enthusiastic, NBC was over the top enthusiastic. During the pitch, they stopped the showrunners part way through and said, “We just want you to know, you don’t have to continue. We want to do this show” (i.e. “You had us at ‘A comedy about the war in Afghanistan’”). Then, knowing that they weren’t the only network competing for our show, the NBC execs actually sent us these really creative gifts bags which contained various items from some of the stories in our pitch. The attached note said they loved the show and wanted us to make NBC our “Home Base.” It wasn’t the gift bags that sold us on the peacock network, but rather the fact that these busy executives were so jazzed about our show and went out of their way to convey that to us. Again, choosing the network was not our decision. But we sure were happy when a day or so later, Jerry Bruckheimer’s office sent us an email letting us know we were officially in business with NBC.

THE ALL-IMPORTANT SCRIPT

The next three months were devoted to further developing the show and writing the script. We worked closely with the showrunners to feed them as much information about military life as we could. In general pilot scripts are hard to execute. Ours was trickier than most because the showrunners had to create a world they weren’t necessarily familiar with. You might think three months is ample time to get the show down and to write the script. Not necessarily. It’s much harder than it looks. Keep in mind, the showrunners had to do several drafts of the script, each one bringing a flurry of notes and changes from NBC, Warner Bros. and Jerry Bruckheimer Television.

October through mid-January is extremely busy (and stressful) for both writers and executives. With each draft, you can feel the clock working against you as the deadline for the final draft — due at the network around mid-January — looms. To give you an idea of how under the gun people are (and how hard they work on this stuff)…on Christmas morning, I received a new version of the script. On New Year’s Day there were notes from an executive at NBC.

Two weeks into the New Year, the showrunners turned in the final draft of the script to NBC. Those roughly 35 pages contained what the network would use to evaluate whether or not our pilot would move forward.

GREEN LIGHT, RED LIGHT… WHAT’S IT GONNA BE?

January is a nail-biting month for writers who have a pilot script under consideration at a network. This is generally the time when networks look at all of the scripts they have ordered and make hard choices as to which pilots will be produced. Needless to say, there’s a lot at stake. If a pilot gets picked up for production, the writers are one step closer to getting the series on the air. And if the series gets on the air and becomes a mega hit, the writer’s life will be forever changed.

The decision to greenlight a pilot is usually made by the network’s top brass. The development executives who ordered the pilot script and worked to shape it can certainly make a case to the higher-ups as to why the pilot would be a great series. But whether the pilot is ordered into production is ultimately not their call. It really all comes down to the pilot script. And this is the difficult part. Because writing is so subjective, what resonated with the development executives may fall just a tad short with their bosses. Also, a script can be good, but is it as good as some of the other scripts are under consideration?

During this angst-making time, all writers can do is hang tight and keep their fingers crossed. While waiting for the phone to ring or the email to ding, I’d regularly jump onto Deadline Hollywood and see that NBC was greenlighting comedy pilots every day. But still no word on ours. I was getting nervous. Periodically, the execs would check in and let us know the show was still a contender. We would be hearing any day. Finally, as January was coming to a close we got the news. NBC had passed on At Ease. After all of the hard work, after all we’d been through — in one phone call, it was over just like that. We never found out why. Welcome to Hollywood.

MY TAKEAWAY

So, what did I learn from this experience? I’ve already harped on the importance of selling your show with a script vs. a pitch. So I’m not going to go down that road again because we already know you’re going to do that. But what I am about to tell you is, perhaps, the most important thing I have to say in this entire book. It’s one word: passion. Passion can put you on the road to success faster than anything else. You must believe in your projects, and be willing to put them out there and stand firmly behind them, no matter what. You must think of yourself as The Little Engine That Could. When naysayers tell you that you’re crazy…that your show will never happen, you must walk away with a secret smile in your heart knowing that they are wrong. Because you can make it happen if you work real hard. Just be sure before you venture out that you’ve done an honest check-in with yourself. Ask yourself, do you really have a big idea? Can you easily differentiate this idea from everything else that’s out there? Is the work the absolute best it can be? If so, then put it out there, and don’t be afraid to show the fire burning bright in your belly. Passion is contagious. It moves mountains. It gets TV shows made.

People ask me if I’m disappointed that our show didn’t go to series. The answer, of course, is yes. Am I devastated? No. Far from it. I look at all of the great people I got to meet and work with on this project. There are doors open to me that weren’t before. The glass is half full. I now know that I can sell a pilot. If I did it once, I can do it again. And here’s the most important part: If I can do it, so can you…and maybe you will get even further than I did.