From Manuscript to Movie: Pitching Your Book to Film/TV Producers

EmpoweredAuthorS01E31Harris

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

pitch, book, people, story, audience, writing, big, movie, author, producer, sold, nonfiction, screenplay, idea, thinking, podcast, synopsis, documentary, nonfiction book, script

Introduction (various voices) 00:03

Welcome to the Empowered Author podcast.

Discussion, tips, insights and advice from those who’ve been there, done that, helping you write, publish and market your nonfiction book.

Being an author is something that you’ve got to take seriously. 

I’m proud 

I’ve written a book.

What does the reader need, first? What does the reader need, second?

What 

happens if you start writing your book before you identify your “why”? What’s the problem with that?

If you’re an indie author, you take the risk, you reap the rewards. You are in charge of the decisions. You’re the head of that business.

Know that every emotion you’re feeling when you’re writing is felt by every other writer.

The Empowered Author podcast. Your podcast hosts are Boni and John Wagner-Stafford of Ingenium Books.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 00:53

Who hasn’t thought their story – whether fiction or nonfiction – might translate well onto the screen, either as a made-for-TV series, documentary or Hollywood movie? Many authors have seen their manuscripts make that leap. But how did they do it? And what do you need to consider if you think you’re ready to get pitching. That’s the specialty of today’s podcast guest. Charles Harris is an award-winning filmmaker and award-nominated author. He has written two nonfiction books: “Complete Screenwriting Course” and “Jaws in Space: Powerful Pitching”, both of which are recommended reading and international film schools and university courses. Charles, welcome.

Charles Harris 01:36

Thank you. Hi, Boni.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 01:37

Hi. So I’m fascinated by this idea: you know, it seems like in the world we live in today with HBO and Netflix and Apple and Amazon Prime and all these places delivering streaming video content, that there should be a huge appetite for new stories. Is that, in fact, the case?

Charles Harris 02:03

There certainly is an appetite. I mean, there’s always – I mean, we’re humans: stories are how we work. So there’s no doubt about it, there’s an appetite: we want more and more stories. The problem from our point of view is that what’s disappeared is the middle. In other words, you get the very big, expensive Marvel-style blockbusters and you get the low-budget, indie movies, TV. It’s – the same thing’s happened in books to a large extent: you have the big, big-name books, and then the long tail. So what you have to be careful of is working out where in the market you fit, if indeed you do fit, because there’s lots of people who have what they think are good ideas and there’s, you know, an enormously high bar to get over to get your idea onto the screen.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 02:55

Right, which – that feeds right into a question that I had related to … So when we’re working with an author – and we work almost exclusively with nonfiction – we spent quite a bit of time, at the beginning of the project, digging into both their motivation for writing the book, which we’ll come back to in a moment, but also the audience. So who the reader is. And we work to get them as specifically drilled down as possible to, if possible, an individual avatar so they can picture a single person. I was fascinated to read in “Jaws in Space” that it is different when we’re talking film and TV: you essentially articulated four kind of big audience groups. Can you talk about that?

Charles Harris 03:43

Yes. And I mean, it works in film and TV. Film is clear; it’s clearer in film. There’s the same basic, what they call the four quadrants, that you’ve got and it’s been this way for, for a long time now. You’ve got men under 24. This is excluding children’s material, of course.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 04:04

Right. Yeah. 

Charles Harris 04:06

So men from 14 to 20, 24, roughly, who will go to the latest big movie, they’ll go to the theatres when they’re open. Nowadays, a lot of people are starting drive-ins, for obvious reasons. And they will get the DVDs and they’ll get their friends together with a six-pack and they’ll – you know, and they’re very easy to sell to. They go, I think – I’m not sure if I say this in the book; I certainly say this in my workshops – they like big bangs and big tits.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 04:37

Right.

Charles Harris 04:38

You know, they’re easy to please and easy to sell to. And of course, because they go a lot, they see a lot of the trailers. In order of increasing difficulty to get to, there’s women between 14 and 24, who are more discerning, who – they will go with their friends or sometimes go with their boyfriends or male friends. They are harder to please but still will go quite a lot. Back in the day of – and that was a way of getting away from home, you could do this and getting out, going to the theatre. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 05:10

Right. 

Charles Harris 05:13

The next, going up the quadrant, is males over 25. And the depressing thing for some people is to realize that that is basically everyone. You know, there’s no more – you know, we talk about the silver dollar, silver pound and all of that but the reality is, once you’re over 25, you are difficult to please, you’re probably in a relationship, you’re probably going to have to find a babysitter if you go out. You’re more discerning when it comes to paying money. You read reviews. It’s – you’re into the a very different kind of market: not really the blockbuster market. And then finally, you’ve got the women of 25, because they don’t even believe the reviews.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 05:58

Yeah.

 So the most difficult audience to reach: women over 25.

Charles Harris 06:02

Yes. Which often is the one that’s the most interesting, who’s going to go … You know, we very often – the stories that are the most interesting are going to appeal to that sort of audience. Now in cinema speak, essentially that first – the younger audience – is the blockbuster multiplex audience. These are the people, like I say, who will go to – you know, they’ll buy the two most profitable things on the planet, which are Coca-Cola and popcorn. Which is where most of the – where the cinemas make most of their money as well. They make very little money out of actually selling the movie. Certainly the movie doesn’t make very much money from there: the money comes from when it gets onto television. And onto DVD. But having been in the cinema is the big advertising: hoarding, if you like. Then the older – the 25 and over – is the more arthouse audience. And the equivalent in TV is very much – it’s very visible in primetime broadcast TV and non primetime TV. Now Netflix – HBO is very much in the more indie area. Netflix and Amazon Prime are a little bit more straddling: they will do a lot of bigger movies too or bigger shows with a bigger audience. And so those distinguishing marks are dissolving a little bit in that you don’t – you know, you go into Netflix, you probably won’t necessarily be able to see a division between the big names and the little names. But it will be there in terms of financing, because you’ll still find that the big names or the ones, the big ideas, the big TV series that they feel are going to be bringing the big audiences – whether it’s on streaming or broadcast or indeed cable – they’re the ones who will get the finance and the other ones will be scrambling around to make them their series for as little as they can manage.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 07:59

Right. So the author then needs to think about their story, their manuscript, in terms of those first: those four chunks. And if they’re unsure of where it falls, a) that’s a sign, first of all, they haven’t done very good reader identification then, so that’s one sign but needs to kind of fit into one of those four buckets, which will affect the pitch, which we’re going to get to in a second. Let’s pause for a moment for a message from our sponsor.

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Boni Wagner-Stafford 09:00

So we know that many of the, you know, popular TV series and movies, they either say, “based on a true story,” or, “based on the book” – and I’m thinking “Outlander”, based on the books by Diana Gabaldon; “Game of Thrones”, based on “A Song of Ice and Fire” by George R.R. Martin. So they come from books. What are the common denominators with this …?

Charles Harris 09:24

Money.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 09:25

Money?

Charles Harris 09:26

They sold. Basically, the common denominator is they sold. It’s not – you know, you’re going to have enormous difficulty selling a book to cinema or TV that didn’t sell very well. The first question going to be is – because what you’re basically selling them is an audience. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 09:42

Right. 

Charles Harris 09:43

You’re saying there are people who want to see this. So for example, books do get picked up in galley form; they get picked up before they’re published. I mean, “Harry Potter” is the prime example. Yeah, you know, a very astute assistant saw the proofs of “Harry Potter” on her office desk and told her boss, “You must buy this.” But they didn’t get it financed, didn’t go to a studio until the first three books have been out and made massive amounts of money and made – and had a big, big readership. So you go to the studio, and you say, “Look,” you know, “there’s this, this guy’s kid who goes to magician school. Then, and, you know, and there are millions of people who are reading this, who are ready to come and see a movie when it’s made.” So, you know, that’s more of a problem if you’ve got a small book. It could be a very nice book but if you can’t say you’ve sold a lot of copies, you then got to say, have you got a really, really good hook of a story that will convince them even so.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 10:50

So if we’re talking nonfiction, then – so we’re into the, whether it’s a documentary, or it’s a, you know, true crime exposé – which I think there’s a fairly active audience for the true crime type of thing, so that that’s one thing to think about. But are you suggesting that an author who has a nonfiction book that has not necessarily sold well – which could be for a whole bunch of reasons – doesn’t bother expending energy into trying to go a pitching route?

Charles Harris 11:23

Not necessarily. Not necessarily. If it is a popular genre – and as you say, true crime is very popular at the moment – or if it’s got a really strong hook in getting an audience, it may be that that hook was wasn’t the right hook for a book. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 11:37

Right.

Charles Harris 11:38

Or didn’t get marketed well. Those …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 11:40

Current social trends or something like that: you know, if it’s tied into, you know, fairly significant current social trends or something, might work.

Charles Harris 11:49

Yep, yeah. Or something that I want, a niche that no one has really seen before but actually, you know, exists, that you think, “Wow, yes.” And it’s that wow factor. It’s that: when somebody comes to you and says, “Yeah, that could really work.” And, and because they are different mediums, and you may want to translate it: there’s been good examples of, you know, books of a certain sort that got translated into a completely different kind of series that just took off.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 12:18

Right. So let’s talk about the process now. So let’s say you’ve got your defined audience; you think, “Okay, I’ve got a story that’s going to work for the screen, either because it’s sold and I already have an audience and I’m delivering, you know, viewers, if you like, in my script,” or because you think you’ve got something that’s unique and relevant. So process: I was interested that you talk about in your book, “Jaws to Space” – “Jaws in Space”, which is a fascinating story all on its own – but you talk about you need to figure out what your needs and values are first. What is your “why”? Why are you doing this? Tell me about that. 

Charles Harris 13:00

The one is where it starts, certainly for yourself: why are you going to expend time, because you are, you know, you’re the first producer, basically. You’re drawing yourself to do it. So you wouldn’t know – you wouldn’t have a very strong – because there’s a lot of ups and downs: it’s a roller coaster. Not as easy to even writing the book, let alone moving, getting onto screen, which as I said before, is a much more unforgiving area to work. So you’re going to have to have a pretty tough skin to get through. It’s a strange mix: you’ve got to have a thin skin to do the work because otherwise you’re not going to listen to useful, constructive criticism.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 13:35

Right. 

Charles Harris 13:36

A thick skin to keep on going. Banging your head against that brick wall until it finally gives way. So you do need to know why you’re doing it the first place and I always think in terms of, you’ve got something – and I don’t know if you know Seth Godin: Seth Godin is very good at this. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 13:57

Yeah.

Charles Harris 13:58

You know, you got to find your unique – your niche, your audience, your – the people like you who do things like you do, who are interested in what you’re doing. And you’re going to be – and the generosity: you’ve got something to bring to them that’s going to change them in some way, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, where they laugh, they cry, or they improve, or they learn something important that they are … You got something that you feel is going to help them. And that could be a horror story. That can be anything. I mean, it can be something they’ll get something from. So that’s your first “why”. So that – go all the way down the line. If you imagine a chain from you to the book to the person, the producer you’re pitching to or whoever, all the way down to the distributor to the thing, the TV series – let’s say for the moment – coming out to the fact you’re now being interviewed on “Oprah” or whatever you’re being interviewed on, saying, “I’ve got this coming out.” 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 15:00

Of course, yes. “Oprah.” Yes.

Charles Harris 15:01

Coming out. 

Yeah. And they say, “Tell me about it.” That’s when the wire is going to come in again because that wire is going to be the thing that sells the TV series. That’s why the “why” is so important. Because you’ve got to be giving that when you first pitch instead of the producers listening for that. You know, they’re listening for that, because they’re thinking in terms of being on “Oprah”, on being on, in the newspapers and magazines, where you’re saying, “This is the drive,” or, “This is my story”: not just the story you’re telling but the story of you telling the story. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 15:36

Yeah.

Charles Harris 15:37

One of the things I learned – one most valuable lessons I ever learned about selling is it’s about stories. It’s about the story you tell. It could be an honest, authentic story. You know, it’s not something you make up; it’s got to be part of you. And it is a story that’s – that’s what we buy: we buy people’s stories, whether it’s, you know, Elon Musk making, you know, the best ever electric car or whether it’s, you know, sort of, you know, making a show of the Holocaust ... 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 16:08

Yeah.

Charles Harris 16:09

You know, documentaries: it’s, you know, it’s something – you know, there’s a story behind the story. So that’s the “why”.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 16:17

So then once you have your “why” and that’s going to tell you – and we’re probably not going to have time in our 30 minutes this morning to get into how your “why” matches who you pitch to but there is a direct connection between once you figure out what your “why” is, why you’re doing this, into who you’re – who is going to be appropriate for you to make your pitch. But let’s get down to the pitch process. I was interested in: one of the differences from publishing is, for example, with nonfiction, and you’re approaching an agent, in general, you write your book proposal before you’ve written the manuscript. But when you’re pitching for a screen treatment – whether it’s cinema or made-for-TV, movies or a documentary – you want to have your screen – your script written first. Tell me why that is.

Charles Harris 17:11

I slightly disagree with you. You’re absolutely right when it comes to fiction but if you’re pitching documentary, it’s quite likely you won’t have a script written. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 17:21

Got it.

Charles Harris 17:22

You know, because – I mean, unless (indiscernible) that you’re doing a reconstruction, which is almost fiction, to essentially a true story, what you’re going to be doing is you’re going to be saying, “I’ve got this great idea: we’re going to – you know, I’ve done this book about, you know, sort of people giving away their money to charity. I’ve got these people.” So what you do is you create a package where you say, “I’ve got these people; they’re really exciting. I’ve got these, you know, these ideas. Here’s some possibilities for the series.” You will want to do for documentary – almost invariably, you need to have some kind of video, show reel to show of it, show for it. And that is a major difference. Which is tricky. Because it’s got to be of top quality. And it doesn’t need to be more than a few minutes but you do need a trailer to give some kind of idea: a visual idea of, “This is the kind of things I’ll look at.” And it also shows you’ve got the expertise and you’re – or you or the production company you’re working with have got the expertise and the access. Now, for someone – for an author, you may be thinking – you know, and I think you probably should be thinking if you’re not done that sort of thing before – to tie up with somebody who can do that sort of thing. So stepping back, you’re then pitching your idea to someone who’s going to help you make the trailer: essentially a co-producer. Because you are a producer, essentially: when you start pitching something, you are a producer. And so you need then – what you will then need is a treatment, some kind of outline, synopsis that shows how you’re going to approach it, what your audience is, what you’re going to do, as a package like that. And you then go and pitch to a producer and say “Okay,” you know, sort of, “let’s get together and do this.”

Boni Wagner-Stafford 19:10

Which takes some funding.

Charles Harris 19:13

Not necessarily the author side of it. The author side of it is you’re working on paper, which should be your expertise. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 19:21

So somebody else.

Charles Harris 19:22

(Crosstalk) in terms of your time, but you’re …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 19:23

Right.

Charles Harris 19:24

What you’re doing is a similar thing as you would do actually to what, if you were pitching a nonfiction book: you create something on paper that – a proposal – that gives a clearer idea of what it’s going to be like so that the producer can look at it and say, “Okay, I get this. I get the core idea. I’m excited by it. I get why you’re doing it,” because part of that proposal will be your “why”. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 19:46

Yeah.

Charles Harris 19:48

I can, you know – and then what you’ll be essentially pitching for is someone then to bring the money to do the expensive bits.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 19:56

Right. So other than documentary, do you suggest that authors have a full screenplay, if you like, before they start pitching?

Charles Harris 20:08

If you’ve got a book, it might not be so necessary. It depends on whether your expertise is one in screenplay writing anyway, because screenplay writing is very different from writing a novel.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 20:20

Right.

Charles Harris 20:21

Indeed, it is – I would say it’s the hardest kind of writing there is. Because there’s – it’s mostly your 99 pages of most of – you know, if you’re talking about a feature film – of mostly blank space: maybe 5,000 words at the most. And there’s nowhere to hide. You can’t hide in a bit of flowery prose or a, you know, or have a little subplot that goes off in a different direction. Obviously, there’s a limit to what you can do in a novel but a novel is much more forgiving. A screenplay, essentially, it’s, you know, sort of very, very – I say it’s like writing haiku: haiku for 99 pages.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 20:58

So it’s the story laid bare, in a sense: you need to be able to suggest what the imagery is that is going to show the development of the story, as opposed to, “Here’s my paragraph that tells you everything I want you to think.”

Charles Harris 21:12

Yes. With all the subtext and the subtlety and the fact that you’re translating into a different medium. And that’s a whole other thing itself. It’s an old kind of paradigm in – if you’d like, almost a cliché in the industry, that good books make bad movies and bad books make good movies. There’s a famous story of Ernest Hemingway and Howard Hawks at a party in Hollywood. And Hawks said – Hemingway dared Hawks to make a movie of his worst book. And Hawks – I can’t remember which one selected the book: it was “To Have and Have Not”, which was the one which Bacall and Bogart first met in, and it’s one of the greatest movies ever made. And, you know, but it was to all – and both parties agreed – Hemingway’s worst ever book. So because you’re – it’s almost like a carpet. You know, you’ve got this beautifully woven tapestry of fibres, and you made the movie, you turn the carpet over. And you see all the bits that make it work. All the bits are tied together but it doesn’t look very good. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 22:17

Yeah.

Charles Harris 22:18

So you have to make those rework. You know, so the things that people don’t say in the book, suddenly start getting said in the movie, and you’re thinking, “Actually, I don’t want this person to say … I don’t want to see that scene; I want it suggested.” But actually, in the movie, you have to have the scene. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 22:36

Right. 

Charles Harris 22:37

So it’s, you know – so there’s all of that that’s been thought of. So I would say, if you’re not a screenwriter, you know, you might want to start by – you definitely will need to have some sort of synopsis and pitch – but you might want to try and find a producer who will then hire a screenwriter to work with you on it. Or you learn how to write screenplays.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 22:55

Yeah. And I was just going to say, so how do you – so somebody who comes from the author world, the written word world, wants to explore this. What would your recommendation be on, you know, how do they get somebody to get eyeballs on their book to say, “Don’t waste your time,” or, you know, “Maybe this has promise and here’s what I think you do next.”?

Charles Harris 23:18

You can get the – certainly you can get people who will give you reports on scripts and people who can advise. This organization I have worked with in the past, it’s called Euroscript: I was a director of; I’m no longer director of it. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 23:33

Euroscript?

Charles Harris 23:34

Euroscript as in …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 23:35

Euroscript. Got it. 

Charles Harris 23:37

Euroscript. And they’re excellent. They will give feedback, have all kinds. You can essentially ask them what you want. And I’m not saying they would read a whole book. That’s a bit of a commitment to time. But they would read – certainly read a synopsis and say, “Is there something behind this that would work?” And there’s other organizations too, who will do that. There’s also free places where we – on the internet, where you can exchange ideas and read each other’s work. Of course, you get what you pay for. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 24:04

Yeah, right. Exactly. 

Charles Harris 24:06

And you have to judge whether people know what they’re talking about. You can be loved to death by people like that. Or hated to death, come to that.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 24:11

Yeah. 

Charles Harris 24:12

But you do need feedback, without a doubt. Because it’s a collaborative art. And what you think works may, you know, other people may say, “No, it doesn’t.” They may be right; they may be wrong. And that’s a whole other art: knowing how to take feedback is a whole other art in itself. Because I always say, “Listen to the criticisms people make; not necessarily the suggestions,” because they, you know – people can generally know if something’s working or not working.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 24:39

Or they won’t always know why. 

Charles Harris 24:40

But what they suggest may or may not be something you can use. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 24:40

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if somebody gets to the point where they’re, okay, they’re going to prepare their pitch: what are the elements of a strong pitch?

Charles Harris 24:54

I’m tempted to say, “Read my book.” So I’ll give I’ll give you a synopsis because …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 24:58

Yeah, and I’ll put links to your book in the show notes. So where people will be able to find your book. 

Charles Harris 25:01

I mean, I do – I have done it in the past; I’ve got too busy writing my novels now but I have a two-day workshop on all of that, which you can imagine how much you get through in two days. Briefly, the first question is, what do you mean by “pitch”? Because there’s two meanings of “pitch”. There’s the overall, “I’m going to pitch to you” project proposal, have a pitch meeting, talk. And then there’s the nugget, sometimes called a logline, or you know, sort of a derivative word: logline or pitch, which is the sentence the core boils down to. So the first thing you have to have absolutely is that sentence. And there’s a lot of rubbish talked about that. But essentially – some people say it has to be this; it must be that – but what is the most important thing has to be conversational. And the reason has to be conversational and natural to say, is back to that line, going all the way from the producer back to the thing that sells movies and TV: because the one thing that sells movies and TV is word of mouth. You can spend as much as you like on advertising; you can spend your whole, you know, sort of your whole budget on big-name stars. Ultimately, it comes down to two people talking over the water cooler or on Zoom, saying, “I saw that great series last night,” or, “I went to that great movie last night. You’ve got to go and see it.” And the friend says, “Okay, tell me about it.” You don’t have 90 minutes. You don’t have that mythical, you know, sort of, “The sun rises over Mexico, as,” you know, sort of … You don’t have that. You’ve basically got a sentence before the friend suddenly has something else to do. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 26:48

Yeah.

Charles Harris 26:49

Yeah. So you need that. You need to somehow – and it’s a horrible thing to say that you boil down your maybe, you know, 90,000 words to 5,000 words in your screenplay to one page of A4 in a synopsis. And I’m saying, “It’s got to be a sentence.”

Boni Wagner-Stafford 27:05

Yeah.

Charles Harris 27:06

You know, for which you probably hate me. But the truth is, that’s what it has to be. It has to be it, say – and I always start with the genre because that’s, the genre is the most important thing. And the reason that genre is most important thing is because we go to movies for emotion. And we watch TV programs for emotion. Even nonfiction. Is it curiosity? Is it frustration? Is it the desire for justice, which it usually – is it a crime story? Is it, “I want to laugh,” in a comedy? So the moment you’ve said the genre, you’ve told the person what emotion to listen to and you’ve also told them whether it’s suitable for them. Because remember, you were saying, “How do I find someone who’s suitable?” You do your research, you go online, you get – there’s an enormous amount nowadays that you can get through Google. And you find out what they’ve done in the past. It doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what they’re doing now. So the moment you say, “Well, it’s a horror story set in Sechuan,” you know, and they’re thinking, “Yeah, okay, I like that. I like the idea of horror stories. That’s the kind of thing I do,” or, “I don’t want to ever do another horror story again.”

Boni Wagner-Stafford 28:17

Yeah. 

Charles Harris 28:18

And there’s this one story I tell in “Jaws in Space” about somebody who’s pitching something and they say, “Don’t,” you know, “I hope it’s not AI.” And, you know, not – it’s not artificial intelligence, and I can’t remember whatever the other thing was, and of course it was both of those things. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 28:34

Right. 

Charles Harris 28:35

So that point, you start thinking on your feet desperately. And you hopefully have other ideas in your pocket. If, well, what this guy did was he, while he was desperately thinking what he was going to say, he started talking about – because think about pitch meetings, you’re having a conversation: like I say, it’s your – you know, it becomes conversational. So he just talked about the dreadful experience he had moving house. And so for about five minutes, he kind of filled space while he was definitely thinking what he was going to say next. He finally finished talking about what – the awful experience he had. And he was about to say, “Well, I’m sorry. My idea is AI plus this other thing,” when they stood up, shook his hand and said, “You must send in the screenplay of the movie of the house movers from hell.” And he found he’d done his pitch. And then he had to go off and desperately write it, of course. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 29:26

Right. 

Charles Harris 29:27

But so pitching is very much about thinking on your feet, but you’ve got to have that core sentence. So you start off with a genre, which tells them whether it’s right for them. And then you say basically, who it’s about – because almost certainly it’s going to be a protagonist or protagonists. What they, you know, what they’re trying to do; what their flaw is – because if there’s a journey involved, there’s almost invariably going to be some kind of flaw or weakness in them that they’re dealing with. 

And what their, you know – and what their main goal is. So you might say it’s a action-adventure story about a woman who’s not very good at standing up for herself, who’s trying to escape the indestructible homicidal robot who’s trying to kill all the people with her name, which of course is “The Terminator”.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 30:20

Yeah. 

Charles Harris 30:21

And that’s how you’d pitch “The Terminator”, basically, except you – the neat way to do that is a little bit more, to tie a little bow on it, is to give the ending: not the actual total ending – because you haven’t got time to do that – but a sense of where she moves to. And if you can do that in a nice, ironic way, then all the better. So you might say, “And by the end, she becomes a better killing machine than the robot himself.”

Boni Wagner-Stafford 30:50

Right.

Charles Harris 30:51

Which is how it ends. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 30:52

Yeah. 

Charles Harris 30:53

Or you might say, “It’s a romantic comedy about a bolshie actor who is impossible to employ, who finds the only way he can get a job is by dressing up as a woman and getting a job on a soap as an actress.” Which of course is “Tootsie”. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 31:13

Yeah.

Charles Harris 31:14

It’s not strictly speaking a romantic comedy but that’s the genre you’d probably pitch it at because it’s easy and simple to say. And then you’d end up saying, you know, “And at the end, he finds he’s a better man as a woman than he ever was as a man.” Which is a line from the movie.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 31:38

Yeah. Fascinating. Oh, there’s so many – I have so many roads I could go down here. And we’ll have to have you back another time. But I would like to honour your time and our 32 minutes here, although we did have some stuff off the top. But maybe I can do one last question for you, which is, how do you find the people to pitch to?

Charles Harris 32:11

There’s a number of answers. They obviously get to pitch to – so they try to hide away as much they can but they have to come out, emerge into the light occasionally. I’ve already given part of the answer: you go to Google. I would say, I mean, agents, producers – same as publishers, you know, there are lists you could look at. Look at things that are like what you want to do and see who made them. There’s lists like IMDb, for example, which have all the names of the producers. And if you pay for IMDb Pro – and there’s other paid services as well – can get contact details. I would – before contacting them, I check them out, see what interviews they’ve given. They also will appear from time to time at festivals when they’re promoting their own films. Obviously, that’s a little – networking is going to be more difficult. It’s very much a networking industry: much more than publishing. You do want to meet people face to face as much as possible, so go to markets and festivals. Every locality nowadays has one close by just about everywhere in the world. Sometimes more than one. I mean, there’s certainly more – across the world, there’s more than one festival a day now. In …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 33:32

Wow. 

Charles Harris 33:33

I mean, they’re just all over the place.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 33:36

Toronto International Film Festival. Cannes. Vancouver International Film Festival. It doesn’t have to be an international film festival, necessarily, but – interesting.

Charles Harris 33:45

You know, I’m sure there’s a number in Mexico. You know, everyone’s doing it because it partly the attracts trade, and it’s …

Boni Wagner-Stafford 33:53

Yeah. 

Charles Harris 33:54

So try and get to them. Try to get to panel events where they’re on. Try to get where they’re speaking. Go and talk – don’t hassle them. Don’t stalk them. But just introduce – don’t pitch on the spot. But if you, you know, offer to help: people like to be helped. Offer to get them a drink. They’ve probably been talking for a long – long ages. And then you might say, “Well, look, are you interested in me coming in, pitching? How – what’s the best way to contact you?” Or you can email or you can phone. People very rarely use the phone but phone can be quite good. Talk to – very often, it’s the assistant you want to talk to or the reader or someone like that. It may not be the big person themselves. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 34:32

Yeah. 

Charles Harris 33:33

And there’s a lot of good advice on the internet as well as how to do that.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 34:36

And in your book. 

Charles Harris 34:37

And in my book. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 34:39

Yeah, so “Jaws in Space”. Now I was just looking around to see if I had – because I’m notorious for getting the …

Charles Harris 34:47

I have a copy here. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford 34:48

Oh good! “Jaws in Space: Powerful Pitching for Film and TV Screenwriters”.

Charles Harris 34:53

Yeah, they’ve done a good job with it.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 34:55

Excellent. Lovely cover. I’ll put I’ll put a link …

Charles Harris 35:00

It’s a very snazzy cover. They’ve been – it stands out. Definitely. Yeah.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 35:03

Yeah. Very nice. Very nice. Well, I’m going to refer people to get your book because there’s, you know – goodness, I’ve just, you know, I printed out the first 40 pages. And I’ve got notes and circles and questions. So there’s a ton of good stuff in there. 

Charles Harris 35:17

Thank you.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 35:18

Very, yeah, really resourceful and lots of food for thought. And just in case you didn’t have enough to do as an author – you know, writing and promoting and doing all this stuff that’s running your other business – here’s a whole bunch of new things you can learn how to do: pitch your work for the screen. So Charles, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today. And we’ll have you back to continue the conversation.

Charles Harris 35:42

That will be great. Thanks, Boni. It’s been great being on.

Boni Wagner-Stafford 35:47

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