He Who Hesitates is Poor

Yesterday I had a job interview, for which I took one week off from blogging and one day off from my day job to prepare. The job was staff writer on a FX Network show. In the past week I watched every episode of its 4 seasons (52 hours), read the short story on which the show is based, read half a dozen of their scripts, watched interviews and read articles about the producers, and even spoke with a former writer on the show. So how did it go?

Meh.

I wish I could say “It went great! Best interview of my life!” but that wouldn’t be genuine. It felt like it went just okay. I said some right things. I don’t think I said any wrong things. Maybe it was my imagination but there seemed to be too many pauses. Maybe the producers were tired? It was the end of the day. I was also a nervous wreck. Is it possible to over-prepare? I put so much pressure on myself, I literally forgot some of what I wanted to say. Plus, it started about 20 minutes late because the producers ran into Mel Brooks in the parking lot beforehand. Mel Brooks!!!! Tell me, how does one follow Mel Brooks? The man is a comical genius! The high of meeting him must have been exhilerating. And they came down from it while interviewing me.

Oh well. Rather than dwell on this so-so interview, I’m going to chalk it up to a learning experience. It was my first interview in 3 years, the first for a TV show. Now I know what these types of meetings are like, so I’ll be more relaxed on the next one. And I’m confident there will be more because the producers liked my writing. Whether they liked me enough is yet to be seen.

In the meantime, to lift our spirits, here are some life quotes from one of my all-time heroes, the man behind Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, The History of the World – Part 1 and The Producers (among others), Mr. Melvin James Kaminsky aka MEL BROOKS:

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”

“As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes.”

“The only thing we don’t have a god for is premature ejaculation… but I hear that it’s coming quickly.”

“Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We’re unrehearsed.”

“Look, I really don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive, you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you’re quiet, you’re not living. You’ve got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy, colorful and lively.”

“Humor is just another defense against the universe.”

“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.”

“Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.”

“My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.”

“Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.”

“It’s good to be the king.”

“He who hesitates is poor.”

When it Rains it Pours

A few minutes before the end of the work day, a colleague of my boss handed me two 3-ring binders, each 4 inches thick, about 1000 pages. “I’m so sorry, but we need 5 copies of these binders.” My boss shows up behind the colleague and frowns. “Sorry…” After they apologized some more, they finally left me alone with the binders, at which I stared for a solid five minutes, speechless. Then I logged off my computer and left. (They don’t expect them tonight.)

On the way home after picking up Ruby from daycare my phone rings. My manager, calling me at 7:15pm.

“I just pulled a Hail Mary,” she tells me.

Remember the pilot I sent her a few weeks ago? It was meant as a writing sample for a TV show that’s looking to hire a new writer. But the pilot wasn’t ready. I thought we’d have to wait until next year to submit something. Unbeknownst to me, my manager (G-d bless her) sent them a couple of older scripts.

“And now they want to meet with you.”
“You’re a miracle worker!” I tell her.
“On Monday afternoon,” she continues.
“Fuck me.”
“Yeah. So, drop everything you’re doing and prepare.”

The Good News I have a meeting on Monday for a potential gig which could change my life if land it.

The Bad News is I have to spend the next however-long-it-takes making these fucking gargantuan binders. And the rest of the time watching 4 seasons of a television show (48 hours), reading up on the executives, and figuring out what I’m going to wear on Monday. Luckily, tomorrow I get my new bridge from the dentist, the final chapter of the loose tooth saga, so at the very least I’ll have a brand new smile.

I’m afraid the only way to get everything done is to take a blogging break for a few days (no Industry Friday either). I hate to do this, especially since there are so many new readers but hopefully you understand. I’ll be back on Monday to let you know how the meeting went, or before then to let you know it was cancelled (happens all the time).

Until then, think of me either sweating over a xerox machine, getting paper cuts or training my eyeballs on the computer/TV screen watching ____ . Oh, and Saturday afternoon is the table read for the play with the Two Actors.

Have a good rest of the week!

Anatomy of a Television Pilot

For those unfamiliar, a “spec” television script is written for an established show. A “pilot” is written to sell an original, new show, be it comedy or drama. I’ve written mostly film screenplays to date, and one spec television script (for the show HUNG). These days I’m writing my first ever television pilot, and I gave it to my manager two weeks ago for notes. She sent me back three television pilot scripts to read, all being produced this year on major networks, all similar in tone to mine and to each other, but with distinctly different plots.

Reading these scripts was incredibly helpful and inspiring. They were all great scripts, easy to read and compelling. I will watch these shows. More importantly, they were very well structured and well-developed… both areas in which my own script needs improvement.

The following are some things I picked up from these scripts:

They were all one-hour dramas, one clearly meant for cable, the other two meant for network. How could I tell? Because of the controversial subject matter, curse words, nudity, etc.

They were 62, 67 and 69 pages long, respectively.

They all had 5 acts. An Act is basically how the show is divided (like chapters). On channels with commercials, the commercial breaks separate the Acts.

Each Act ended with a twist that made me want to know what happened in the next Act. Put another way, each twist propelled the plot in a different (forward) direction. And the Really Big Twist was on the last page of Act 5, the last-minute or two of the pilot. This is what gets viewers hungry to know what happens in the next episode.

I’m going to focus the rest of my analysis on Script A because it had the clearest structure.

Script A was 62 pages long and had a total of 79 scenes:

Act 1 – 17 pages, 16 scenes
Act 2 – 8 pages, 4 scenes
Act 3 – 15 pages, 28 scenes
Act 4 – 11 pages, 10 scenes
Act 5 – 11 pages, 21 scenes

You can tell from this that Acts 3 and 5 had a lot of very short scenes, indicating perhaps a chase sequence. In general, scenes are no longer than 2 or 3 pages (most are shorter).

The narrative set up of Script A was established in Act 1. So, basically by the first commercial break you have an idea of the show’s main dilemma and the main characters.

The characters were established as follows:
5 main characters were introduced in Act 1
1 main character was introduced at the top of Act 2
1 main character was introduced at the top of Act 3
1 minor character was introduced in Act 5

The title of script was explained in Act 4.

The location of the story shifted dramatically in Act 5. It’s hard to say if the whole show was going to move there or if it was just for the pilot (me thinks the latter).

Without knowing anything further, you basically now have a rough structural guide to a one-hour dramatic television pilot script. Obviously, these numbers are not set in stone and you can deviate from them. Personally, I don’t plan to deviate from them that much because I want my pilot to resemble the pace of Script A.

But you need more than a rough guide. You need to read some scripts for yourself, preferably scripts that are similar in tone to yours.

Here are three sites for free scripts you can download:

https://sites.google.com/site/tvwriting/us-drama/pilot-scriptshttp://www.simplyscripts.com/tv.html
http://www.dailyscript.com/

Try breaking a couple down like I did and see what you come up with. If you have more tips and/or advice, by all means chime in.

Happy creating!