This is the one that tipped the balance on whether I would take the time off work to come down to the Expo. This man can write and he can run a show. If you do carry on, be warned that the man drops the occasional swear word and I have quoted him and they are in a couple of the videos. I don’t have a problem with it but if you are one of those folk who do then consider yourself forewarned so if you continue on… well it’s your own {beeep} fault and so quick {beep} crying you {beep} {beeeeep} baby.
Continuing on to the main text for this entry and you will be treated to a blurry photo and a few short snippets of video I took with my cheap little digital camera. I have uploaded copies in Windows Media, Quicktime and one for the iPod Video. I don’t yet have the iPod Video yet so if you try that option give me a shout to let me know how it works.
Screenwriting Expo had video cameras set up so if you want a copy of this excellent session you will have to insist to them that they are made available. They have several of the sessions available here, but Tim ain’t one of them.

I’m just going to drop the video links in at random through the page. The best way to view them is to download them to your own computer (I simply detest streaming video but feel free to stream it if you can). For Windows, just right click and select "Save Link As…" or "Save Target As…". With the Mac, if memory serves, you option+click and select "Download to Disk…".

First off, Tim is one funny man. I’m sure that he has spoken in front of a crowd many times and has been able to hone his shtick, but he has really good stage presence and has a good repertoire of anecdotes, answers and comebacks. He has a lot to say and he says it rather quickly so a lot of this will just be bullets points to the session.
Since this is “Breaking the Story” session , he asks for a show of hands to find out which show we would break. There was only a smattering of hands for Wonderfalls, which I’m sure he was expecting, and about even for Firefly and Angel. He jokes that since Angel is immortal then it is possible to do a crossover of Angel and Firefly.
Too bad he was joking because that would be a fun episode. The way I would run it out is – we start the episode by introducing an Angel who has found peace within himself and is a happy, contented man. And then he crosses paths with the crew of a disreputable smuggling ship who put him in a world of trouble where he has to do some nasty, nasty things… and ends up the angst ridden Angel that we know and love. 
But alas, it is not to be and he falls back on Angel. The first thing he establishes is that it will be set before the “mistake” of the Angel/Cordelia affair. It will be season two. He lets a few people pitch ideas and kindly shoots them down. Some of them don’t fit the series and some fit too well – “That is a really good idea and that is why we did it in season one.”.
I’m figuring that he had to come into this with a bag full of ideas that he could dip into as the situation warranted. He wouldn’t want to spend too much time just getting an idea for the session to break so he pulled a Dennis the ghost idea out of the bag. Denise sacrifices his quasi-corporeal existence to spend one day with Cordy as a flesh and blood man.
He said that Mutant Enemy liked to start the show with a fake ‘A’ story in the teaser and put the heart of the episode into what seems to be the ‘B’ story. A few people make suggestions and a couple of his stock responses are “That’s good… I don’t love it yet” and “I like it… I don’t love it.”

One woman wants to work the story around a vampire wedding and Tim runs with that. After taking it in a few different directions and then discarding them, the teaser starts to take form. He sees Cordy getting ready for a big date, when they are called out to break up a gathering of vampires. Cordy and the rest of the fang gang barge in on a wedding and they mostly stand in shock as Cordy slams her way through the wedding party with single minded purpose until she gets to the bride – and catches the bouquet as it flies from the brides dusted fingers.
After all that, she still fails to make the date and with resignation she heads back to her apartment where she laments not having a normal man in her life. She realizes she is still carrying the wedding bouquet and tosses it aside. Dennis, her personal poltergeist, catches it out of the air and carefully places it into a vase.
One person from the crowd suggests a curse that causes Angel and Cordy to switch bodies as the ‘A’ story. Tim grins and shakes his head – “Cause Angel isn’t gay enough. Maybe we should do the Angel Firefly crossover where Angel fucks Mel.”
He talks a bit about the reason behind some episodes being based on budget and actor availability. ‘Out of Gas’ was done because Gina Torez was only available for a limited time due to the getting married thing. He had to get he out of the story quickly and keep her out of it until the very end. That writing to restrictions resulted in what I consider the best of the Firefly episodes. Damn fine televisioin.
To help hear the feedback and questions from the crowd, there is a young guy with a mic and Tim is sending him from one side of the room to the other just to see him run. When Tim sends him on one particularly long jaunt from the front right side of the seating all the way to the left back, the young man whispers into the mic “I hate you.” and got a laugh.
Tim starts setting down the parameters of the show. Cordelia must give up something by the end of the episode without knowing it and Dennis has to give up his new corporeal state AND his ghost state to save Cordelia.
Tim talks about working the room on Angel and Firefly and any time they’d hit a stumbling block they would look around and ask themselves “Where’s Joss?”
Anyway, back to the story we’re breaking here. Coming back in from the teaser, we conclude that Xander shows up with Anya, looking all happy and in love. Cordelia makes up a story about how great her new boyfriend is and how happy she is.
Tim seems to be enjoying himself and wistfully says that he wishes they could start up Angel again. Someone yells from the crowd that he should try to get a Cordelia show on the air. Tim nods sagely and laments “But then I would have to use Charisma.” He paused at the ohhh that comment draws from the crowd. “Who I love of course.” He looked back at the video camera covering the event and mouths the words “Cut that part out.” to the videographer. Like I said, funny man.

So back to the story, where he figures that the point where Cordy is lying about her boyfriend is where the newly corporeal Dennis should make his appearance and be very much the man Cordy has just finished describing. He reiterates that we are breaking the story out and that the particulars would be figured out by the writer who get the assignment to take the story to script.
I’m thinking there will be a rash of bad fan scripts turned out over the next six months, all based on what is done here tonight. It might even make for an interesting contest if it weren’t for Fox and its legions of lawyers.
Someone comes out with a less than stellar idea and Tim responds “That’s not stupid…” and this pronouncement seems to be Tim’s stock no. Some of the ideas are getting rather complex and he tries to shut that down by saying he likes to concentrate on servicing the six plus two actors with a simple story.
We move on to act two where Xander/Anya and Cordy/Dennis go on a double date. The act out on this one is Angel coming in to pull Cordy aside and tell her that her date isn’t perfect… unless her definition of perfect includes dead. I figure that is a good place for her to slip in a jab at dead boy himself.
Falling back to how Dennis gains his day of life, Tim bandies about the idea of Xander bringing a “phleboten” to Angel which covers his own appearance and brings in the means of reanimation to Los Angeles. Phleboton is their made up word for any device that is used to get things moving or introduce some event or person. The item itself isn’t important, it is just there to move the story. I don’t know if that is the correct spelling for their word but that is what I’m going with.
I figure it should be the Monkey’s Paw and it interprets Cordelia’s lies (correctly) as a wish and grants it by way of bringing Dennis back to life. I’d go with dropping hints that Dennis follows her that morning and then have him amazed to find himself becoming physical. He learns about what price would have to be paid for him to stay real – Cordy’s happiness would be something that he would have to sacrifice for himself to stay alive.
But back to Tim and our really big writing room. He moves on to act three and says that this is where we find out the who, what and why of the dead guy… who isn’t Angel. He figures that it should come as somewhat of a surprise midway through act three that the new guy is Dennis… which means that I would have to revise my idea from the paragraph above.
Act four would need Dennis to solve the ‘A’ story, which we haven’t actually decided on yet. He would solve it and sacrifice himself to save Cordy. Tim figures that Angel should almost kill Dennis at this point as well. He points out that “We need to find the Angel of it since – show not called Cordelia.” but we are running out of time and he figures that we could wrap it up here. The established theme of the show is love and sacrifice so the Angel storyline should reflect that as well.

He takes a slew of questions from the crowd.

• He says that it is usually better to know the end of the story before it is assigned to the writer.
• Out of Gas was written over the weekend.
• Inside cost about $2.4 million per episode.
• A writer to watch is Craig Silverstein, he is going to be big.
• He has a new show in development with Fox that he can’t talk about yet but it is a big, sprawling show and he is hoping to announce something soon.
• An outline from breaking a story is usually 5-10 pages of sluglines with descriptions and five to seven scenes per act.
• What show would be a good spec right now? Not one more Sopranos, he is sick of reading Sopranos scripts. Something different, a one hour spec of I Love Lucy where she has an abortion… he’d read that.
• On how he learned that Wonderfalls was canceled – “You know how it says your show is on the air tonight? Well it’s not.”

When asked for an embarrassing story about Joss Whedon, he thinks for a second.
“Embarrassing story about Joss? Let’s see, well we would come into the writing room and find him fucking the couch.”
And I think I will just leave there… how can I top that?

I’ve decided to use a single initial, and the type of company they represent, for anyone who shows interest in what I pitch – so as to protect the guilty and all that. I think it would help people a little more to know who the pitch was to but I don’t want to step on any toes. On the other hand, if they are not interested in my pitch then I don’t think it will do any harm to name names, and it might help someone else who is looking to pitch to them.
Anyway, I made sure that I showed up twenty minutes early for the 15:45 time slot… and so of course they were running fifteen minutes late.
With the extra time, I decide to re-write the pitch instead of re-reading my notes on it. I dig out my notebook (read the John August post for more on notebooks) and I give myself half the page to write out the story for Monster Makers.
Monster Makers is just the working title for the project, I checked on IMDB and found that there was already movie made in 1944 called The Monster Maker, a 1989 TV movie called Monster Maker and another TV movie from 2003 called Monster Makers. I will have to give it another name before I send anything out but I’m hoping a good title will come to me while I’m writing it – and I don’t want to expend a lot of time mulling it over now. The point is that when you are thinking up a title, it pays to IMDB it to make sure that there aren’t a slew of other projects with that name already. There have been so many films made over the last hundred years that it ain’t easy to come up one that hasn’t been used already. Then again, if the film that stole your title before you were even born isn’t a classic then I think you can be safe in using it for at least your pitching.
Anyway, back to the pre-pitch prepping. I find that writing the pitch out again helped me focus on the story rather than the fact that I’m very uncomfortable trying to sell myself – I’d sure that I would make a lousy whore… even if you don’t take into account my lack of quality merchandise for that market.
But I do believe that Monster Makers is quality merchandise and would be a great, dark comedy. I guess my belief shone through since J. was interested enough to request a treatment when I have finished the script. They (there was a woman at the table with him) said that over the whole day I was only the second one that had made them laugh… they had explicitly requested comedies and that was what had been pitched to them.
All day long.
Nothing but comedies.
Two laughs.
Tough crowd or just no funny material? I’ll work under the assumption that they were laughing with me and not at me so wohoo, my first real pitch gets a request for a treatment! I’m beginning to suspect that if I could learn to speak coherently in front of people… I might just have a chance in this business.
Then again, I know that it is human nature for most people to avoid hurting other folk’s feelings so I suspect that a lot of the pitches get some positive feedback no matter how horribly awry they go.
What can I say, I’m a glass half empty kind of guy.

I was walking along looking for John August’s room, flipping expired room designations, when a helpful gentleman asked what I was looking for. “John August” says I. “Oh, the Writing for Gays and Lesbian , that is the right room.” says he. Hmmm? I just wanted to hear John talk about the whole writing thing, not the gay and lesbian thing. Nothing against those who are attracted to a different gender than I am… or those who are attracted to the same gender… it just seemed too focused to me. But, what the hell, there have been both gay and lesbian characters in my writing so it certainly wouldn’t do my writing any harm to learn if there is something I should or shouldn’t do. Back in VFS, I had to re-assign the gender of a character overnight to match an actor change and the quickest way to do it was to make the college buddy a lesbian rather than a straight man. It was a sitcom and the character was one of the three leads and damn near every remark made was a sexual innuendo of one kind or another. Trying to make the character a straight woman would have taken too much rewriting and I would have delivered the show late… and in television that isn’t an option. I changed the name and gender pronouns, altered a few lines where it just didn’t work and added a few more lines that the situation uncovered. It actually worked surprisingly well and as a heterosexual male I didn’t mind the new dynamic at all.
But back to Johns August, it isn’t like this website is all about me – well actually it is but I’ll spare you and get back to something that you may find useful. So there I am sitting and wondering where the hell John is. It is now 14:12 and he is late. I have to cut and run early to get to the PitchXchange so a late start is really going to cut down the info grazing I can get done here.
Alright Mr. August, where are you?… oh, you’re sitting about eight feet to my right. Recognize you from the picture you have up on IMDB. You look younger in person. So it turns out that it is a technical problem and you are waiting just like I am. Hmm, I could start talking at you, bombard you with questions and pick your brain… but no. If I were to get all analytical on myself, I’d have to diagnose a borderline pathology in my inability to bother people. I have to learn to overcome that obstacle since it seems that a large part of success in this business revolves around self promotion and getting in peoples faces.
Ah, there we go, it was a sound system problem and John starts his speech twenty-five minutes late. It starts off with him receiving his Fantasy Screenwriter of the Year Award from Creative Screenwriter Magazine. Congratulations on that… and I wonder if it is one of the ways that they entice people to this gathering? Most everyone like validation.
John first points out that all fiction writing is fantasy since it is being made up in the mind of the person writing the script and none of it is real. Which makes sense but doesn’t make for an easy pigeon holing of the hard work people do and so will be dismissed out of hand by most people. Me, I figure that it is about the elements of the story… if things that take place in the script are fantastical in that they seem to be negated by the laws of physics – then it is a fantasy. Ghosts, psychic ability, gods and demons… therein is the fantasy. But that’s just me.
Oh, thanks John. He just blurted out a spoiler for Jarhead, which I haven’t seen yet. He should know better than that and I’m going to have the good grace not to repeat it here.
Like me, he is very big on writing down every idea he has and keeps a notebook by him at all times. I have to strongly endorse this. I’ve gone back into my stack of notebooks and found pages of stuff that I would have lost otherwise. There are literally hundreds of ideas that I couldn’t delve into at the time because I was too busy working on something else, but didn’t want to let fall by the wayside. If I delve into an idea and really dig at it, my retention is okay but if it just flits across my mind and I mull it over for fifteen or twenty minutes… the neurons and synapses don’t imprint and they are released for re-use in short term memory. Other people, normal people, call that “forgetting”. So always keep a notebook (or your Axim) handy so that this “forgetting” thing doesn’t rob you of a great idea.
He talks about adaptations and that fails to engage me. I have way to many ideas and the thought of taking someone else’s work from book to script doesn’t appeal to me at all. If I like the book I wouldn’t want to change it as much as everyone seems to feel needs to be changed. Tim Minear is adapting my favorite novel by my favorite author, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, and if I did it I would end up with a two hundred and eighty page script that had every scene and every line of dialog… and I would be fired post haste. It isn’t like I get my nickers in a knot over adaptations, I can even enjoy an egregious insult to the original work like Paul Vorhoevens adaptation of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Paul obviously disliked Heinlein and grossly misunderstood the novel. Maybe it was his inability to really understand English but he had no idea what the novel was actually about and his adaptation was basically an attack on what he though was Heinlein’s message. It was horribly inaccurate… but I still relaxed and enjoyed it for what it was, what Paul is good at, escapist bubblegum for the mind. So let me go back on what I just said above, I would someday like to go in there and do a proper adaptation of Starship Trooper, one that accurately portrays the novel and its core ideas of civic responsibility.
And Iron Man, I’d adapt Iron Man for Marvel. Of all the comic books that I read as a child, Iron Man made the biggest impression on me. Even at seven or eight years old, I got into Iron Man more than Superman, Batman or Spiderman… Iron Man felt more real to me. Tony Stark felt more real and the things he did felt like they were possible. Tony is a hard and troubled man who I am amazed has never made it to the big screen. The computer graphics have been good enough for over a decade and for a while the biggest star on the planet, Tom Cruise, was attached to play Tony. Say what you will about the couch jumping scientologist, but that man would have made a first class Tony Stark. How you can take one of the top level superheroes of Marvel Comics, the worlds biggest box office star… and fail to get a movie made? I guess the missing piece to the puzzle was a screenwriter from the mountains of British Columbia. You’d be amazed at how many script problems can be fixed by getting yourself a screenwriter from the mountains of British Columbia. Just sayin’.
Oh, and while we’re still on comic books, I’m thinking on doing a spec script for Smallville (now that it looks like it might get another year) with the introduction of Green Lantern.
So obviously we can forget what I said above about not doing adaptations. I’ll have to amend that to read – I’ll be very selective about any adaptation projects that I would do. I’d have to really think that I could do the project justice… or someone would have to offer to pay me. Okay, that doesn’t sound terribly selective but a guy has to eat.
John (yeah, I’m wandering back to the subject again, fancy that) tells about the first time that he walked onto the set of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He says that he walked in, was looking around, spies Hilary Swank off to the side and she starts waving at him. He thinks to himself “What is Hilary doing here – oh wait, that’s Johnny Depp !” He hadn’t seen Johnny in wardrobe and makeup before that point. That’s funny.
And ah hell, it is time for me to leave. Time is running up on my first pitch and I gotta go. Too bad, Mr. August is giving a good speech. I see a few others getting up to leave and I hope that he doesn’t think we’re out of interest rather than out of time.

Right out of the gate, she is pretty adamant that you have a body of work that has been verified as “ready” by an industry insider. If you don’t have access to such a person, then the next best thing would be to place well in a respected screen writing contest.

Feedback from an actual reader from within the industry would also be helpful in establishing the state of readiness for your script. She wasn’t terribly impressed by the online script services and said that the producers that she had talked to say that they only reason that they would go to one of them is if they had a pressing need for a specific style, type or genre of film. It was obvious that she was talking about the Script Sharks and Pimps of the world. She seemed to feel that they were trying to deliver a service to the screen writer but that the value was questionable. She did state that she saw these as a last resort.

Another thing she was pretty set on was that if you were serious about being a screenwriter, then you would be living in Los Angeles. Hey, if I were a US citizen, then obviously I would be dragging my carcass there in a heartbeat. Seeing as how I am a Canadian and don’t have a job waiting for me, the opportunity to move there is pretty slim. Maybe i should just become a snowback and slip across the border. Couldn’t you just see me out in the strawberry fields. picking with one hand and fielding calls on the cellphone with the other.

She did have an answer for those of us who couldn’t move to LA for whatever reason. It boiled down to writing from your specific socio- economic POV. Lady, I write to escape from my socio- economic POV! The advice is not terribly helpful for me but you might want to take that path… write what you know and all that. She figures that this would bring fresh perspectives that are lacking from the Hollywood sub culture (or is Hollywood an uber culture?). In other words, turn your handicap into an asset.  All well and good if you can do it, I can’t even turn it into a good parking space.

She also had a whole spiel about us trying to give the impression that we were local by way of local PO boxes with forwarding and cellphones with LA local numbers… it ain’t my bag since subterfuge isn’t my first nature but if white lies and misdirection are in your bag of tricks you might want to look into that.

What I can try is the suggested semi-regular trips to Los Angeles where I can try and schedule meetings into the three of four weeks that I would be here. This is, of course, subject to me actually getting a meeting of any kind. She felt that pitching was a skill that some could do well and some could not and that she actually has a client who may be able to pinch pitch for those who are very bad at it. My take is that this would work for feature films but when you are pitching for television, then you are trying to sell yourself more than the story so it has to be you doing the pitching. Hey, I’m a social misfit who was raised by wolves (more or less) and if I can force myself to learn to pitch than what the hell is your excuse?

She also stated that it was a waste of our time to pitch to agents since they are all looking for people who can make them money right now, not after a year of mentoring. Sell a script and then get an agent… of course it is almost impossible to sell a screenplay without an agent but like George Burns said, show business is a hideous bitch goddess who likes to make you dance – so slip on some comfortable shoes.

To help with this whole schmooze and connections game, she had a few tips. First, anyone who expresses interest in your work goes into a database and you keep them updated on what you do. She didn’t actually say it, but I’m thinking that advice comes with the caveat that you don’t spam them every time you need some emotional validation and get yourself black listed. Just send a little note when you finish a script or win a contest.

For those who can move to Los Angeles, she suggests you go the intern and assistant route so you can learn the ins and outs to the industry. She said that this was best for those under thirty… or at least those who looked under thirty. "And I’m hearing that fifty is the new thirty." Sweet, I’m not turning "thirty" for quite a while then and there is a chance that I can still try this when I get my finances straightened out… you do notice the optimistic “when” there don’t you?

She pointed out that most production companies will only accept material sent by way of an agent or entertainment lawyer. She said that the lawyer was easier one to get but make sure it was a bona fide entertainment lawyer. I take that to mean Uncle Louie, who took eight tries to pass the bar and who is now chasing ambulances… not as good an option as you’d think.