29 movies were made through InkTip in 2011 alone!!! And hundreds more writers have sold/optioned their screenplays by having their scripts on InkTip.com. Go here to register. Go here to list your scripts.
---
Wouldn't it be great if you could go back in time and hear how some of your favorite movies were pitched? Imagine being a fly on the wall in these meetings:
Spielberg: "...so an alien crash lands on earth, and these kids save it from the government so it can get home..."
Lucas: "...they're like the Knights Templar, priests with swords, except these priests are in another galaxy and they have laser swords..."
Landis: "...we take those two cokeheads from Saturday Night Live, you know the musical act between sketches, and we make a movie about them turning over a new leaf and saving the orphanage where they were raised..."
And how great would it be if you could travel back in time and hear how some of these stinkers were pitched?
Anonymous: "...forget Superman, forget Batman, forget Aquaman, forget ‘em all. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Howard the Duck..."
Anonymous: "...you know that guy who humped a dead moose on MTV, well he's got a doozy of a script about this kid named Freddie who got fingered..."
Anonymous: "...I figure Ghostbusters made a lot of bank, so let's gets the boys together and do another one..."
Now how many times have you seen a bad movie and asked "how did that get made?" Must've been a great pitch, huh?
I've heard more theories about pitching than I've eaten donuts, and I've eaten a lot of donuts. Thing is, most of what I've heard is correct yet fundamentally useless, like the theory that pitching is akin to hitting on girls in bars; it's just a numbers game. Or the notion that it's all about presentation, meaning your personal appearance or your ability to use spell check. I've heard it described as a pyramid, where you build your foundation and then work your way up into the details. Then there's the one-two approach of connecting character with story. Someone else once told me that pitching is about conveying character, a premise, and irony.
These are all great theories, but they all operate on the misunderstanding that, since so many bad movies have been made, there must be some Jedi-like technique to pitching which, if you can master it, will enable you to sell anything. So while they're all useful to some extent, they're still missing a fundamental understanding about what pitching really is.
In fact, pitching is probably the most misleading term we use in this business because it isn't about throwing out ideas at all; it's about luring people to a story. So it's really more like fishing than baseball. You don't throw your story at producers; you set your hook and reel them in.
Now this all begs the question: what's a hook?
The hook is the idea that sells the story. It isn't the story itself, because the hook doesn't tell you what happens - in fact, the hook just begs that question: "what happens next?"
When you think about it, we all know what the hook is: it's how we describe a movie to someone who hasn't seen it yet. We don't want to ruin the ending, so we just tell them enough to get them interested. We never tell them the whole plot, right?
The plot can be confused as the hook, but they aren't the same thing. Go back and re-watch "Liar Liar" sometime and try and figure out what that one was all about. Is it about a lawyer who can't lie? No, that's the premise. Is it about a kid who wishes his dad couldn't tell a lie? No, that's the main subplot, and though it drives the story, "Liar Liar" is actually about a lawyer who has an opportunity to get a major promotion by winning a court case. The subplot where the kid makes his wish is crucial to the main story, which would otherwise just be a bad lawyer joke, but the hook is the part of the story that makes the audience want to see the movie: "After a father lies about missing his son's birthday party, the son makes a wish while blowing out the candles: I wish my dad couldn't tell a lie. Only problem is, the dad is a lawyer, and lying is how he makes his living..."
So it begs the question: if he lies for a living, and if all of a sudden he can't tell a lie, how does he make a living? What happens next?
Now pick a couple of your favorite movies. What's the story? What's the subplot that drives the story? What's the premise, the principle that allows the audience to suspend disbelief for two hours? And where's the hook that begs that question: what happens next?
Then try writing out the hook for your favorite movies like so:
The Matrix: Imagine the world we live in is a computer generated dream, and in the real world, we're all asleep in vats. Then imagine waking up.
Saving Private Ryan: After three of the four Ryan brothers are killed in combat, a special operations team is dispatched to find the sole survivor and bring him home.
Now try it with your own script. What makes your story unique? How are you going to describe it in an elevator when you have fifteen seconds to get your point across? How is your logline going to grab a reader? How is it going to be remembered after you walk away from the table? When it gets made into a movie, how are people going to describe it to their friends and family?
Before you write a logline, before you step into a meeting, figure out what your hook is and then run it by a few people. If they ask "what happens next," congratulations, you nailed it. If they say "that's very nice, thank you," go back to the drawing board.
Remember that the goal, when pitching, is just to get someone interested in your script. That's it, that's all it's about. But pitching is just as important as writing because, as the saying goes, a writer who can't sell a story probably can't write one either. It's a stupid saying, but let's face it, even Shakespeare had to sell his stories before they got produced.
I asked an agent over the phone recently to tell me what a hook is, and this was his reply:
"Writers are so invested in their own story they don't know what it's about anymore, they can't tell what their own hook is, they make assumptions about their inner world which an outsider can't get or comprehend, they focus on salesmanship and not the hook.
"A hook is whatever stands out, makes the story different, like a bridezilla who puts a hit out on the best man then has to stop the hit from getting carried out at the wedding, or a vampire who falls in love with a girl and protects her when he really wants to drink the life out of her. In 40 year old virgin, the hook is the character. Forgetting sarah marshall is a romcom about falling out of love instead of into love, that's the hook. The hook is what about your story hasn't been done before. Like Cowboys vs. Aliens. So a hook should be that point in the story distilled into two sentences, and if you can't define what's different about the idea, start coming up with more ideas because you ain't selling the one you got."
Figure out what your hook is, and in another week or two, time permitting, I'll post an article about the logline and synopsis.
Jared Wynn Questions? Comments? Connect with me on Linkedin!
Jared Wynn has interviewed thousands of producers, agents and managers about what they're looking for in a script or writer, and he happens to know a thing or two about marketing your screenplay.
Jared Wynn
