Yesterday, I went my my friend Russ and his friend Jed, and had my first official “pitch” meeting. It’s sort of like an audition, but instead of taking some producers a character that I’ve developed for a show that already exists, we take the concept for a show, and tell network executives why they’d like to produce it.
I hope it is the only pitch I ever have to go through, because it was awesome. We met with four execs at Sci-Fi Channel, and they were all cool. They totally got what our show is about, and they seemed pretty excited about it.
More importantly, I had a lot of fun when I was up there, because the people we met with let us have fun. They totally made me feel like we were all on the same team, working out this cool idea, making big plans for big fun, like they were happy to spend some of their morning with us. It was veyr different from most meetings I go into, where the person across the desk makes me feel like I’m a burden on their life for even walking in the door.
We joked about lots of stuff. My favorite moment went like this:
Jed, one of the creators of this idea, said, “Wil is going to host the show, but he’ll be more of a character than he is right now.”
I had no idea WTF that meant, and I think it sort of confused everyone in the room, so I said, “Yes, I’ll be exactly like I am now, but funner, smarter, more charming, and better looking.”
I paused for just a second, and said, “Yeah, I’ll be just like me, but better.”
We all laughed, and I gave Jed lots of shit about it when we were done. He told me that he was trying to compliment me, but it just didn’t come out the way he intended. Sort of like me and Jonathan Frakes, when I told him “I can totally tell that you used to be cool.”