Film School (40 page)

Julie also asks how much money it's worth. Ummm, good question. I don't know. I ask Gold. I'm expecting he'll say, “That's why you need an agent.” But he's right up front: this is a zero-down option, he says. My heart sinks. I am already thinking of a big oversized check I can tout to Julie.
Here, honey, go buy yourself a pretty dress. We're going dancing tonight.
The fact that it's a zero-down option tempers my enthusiasm but only a bit.

When my friends hear the news, they invariably ask the same question as Julie:
How much is it worth?
They're disappointed to learn the truth. But I explain to them: “That's just the option. If the project gets developed, then I see money.”
How much?
“I don't know. I have to find an agent who will negotiate that.”

It's nice to have Krause on my speed dial. I call him pronto. I get his answering machine. He's on set. “Say, Pete, it's Steve. Hey, I got a television executive named Ted Gold who wants to option a television series I pitched him. I need an agent now. Know anyone?”

He calls during a break. He's got a good match, he tells me. We agree to meet for dinner the next night.

A
fter I give Pete the same pitch I gave Gold, he leans back in his chair at the Italian place where we're eating. “That's good,” he says. “That's really good.”

Pete puts me in touch with an agent who reps his friend. He's a partner at Endeavor, one of the blue-chip talent agencies in Hollywood. Sunday, The Agent calls. Sure, he'll do the deal, he says. Yes, The Agent says, he knows Ted very well. He calls him
Ted
. It feels like I've been admitted to a very exclusive high school.

Monday morning, I'm back at USC and the world has changed. I've got an agent repping my idea to Ted Gold, who once ran FOX's drama wing, and who now has a bungalow on a TV studio lot, and is in partnership with Curtis Hanson, the Academy Award–winning director. The semester is done. I've only told a handful of friends on campus the news, and almost everyone has left for the summer.

I stick around L.A. for a few days, delaying my trip home because I think The Agent will do my deal in the snap of a finger. How naïve I am! At the end of the week, I ask Ted (I'm calling him
Ted
now, too) how long it might take, and that I'm delaying my trip to Minneapolis so I can meet Hanson and his producing partner, Carol Fenelon. With what sounds like a touch of pity in his voice, Ted tells me not to wait. “These things can take time,” he says.

So I load up my Suburban and point it east but not before strapping a twenty-foot-long sea kayak on my roof. The kayak belongs to my brother, and Mikey had used it, but now I'm bringing it back to Minnesota. Unfortunately, it's May. I hit freezing rain and a near-blizzard in New Mexico and wild side winds in the Great Plains. With the kayak on my roof, I'm pushed around the road like I've got a sail on the truck. I'm waiting for it to disappear into the wind like Dorothy's house in the Kansas tornado, but it doesn't. I arrive home on a sunny, intensely windy spring day. I get home in time to meet Maria and Sophia walking back from elementary school. It feels so great to feel their hugs.

T
he Agent does indeed take his time. Weeks go by. More weeks. He says he's pushing CBS for a deal. It goes on long enough that I start to fret. I worry he's gonna lose the deal. The Agent doesn't ask me what I think I should get, he just tells me that CBS' offer was way too low. “Whatever they offered, I doubled it,” he says. “Don't worry, Steve; it will be a good deal for you.”

Ted calls me one day and says, “Whatever [Your Agent] is doing, he's making some people at CBS a little mad.”

I'm both heartened and nervous. Maybe he really is going to lose the deal. My Agent assures me that everything is going to be fine. He's treating this like a sport, it seems, and he's pushing the network just because he can.

Finally, at the end of June, there's an agreement. The money up front is indeed nonexistent. However, if CBS decides to extend the option—by just keeping it on the table—then they'll pay me $5,000. If they exercise the option, they owe me $15,000. If it goes to a pilot, they owe me another $20,000. And if it goes to series, I'll get about a quarter million. If it stays on all season, it's closer to $400,000. I also get additional pay for any writing I do for the show. And I own 3 percent of the show.

I fly back to Los Angeles. I'm meeting Ted, Curtis Hanson, and Carol Fenelon. I couldn't be more pleased. Ted is glad to see me, and we spend the morning talking over issues. We've spent a lot of time emailing and talking on the phone, and he's made one thing clear to me: I can demand to hold total power over this idea or I can share it. If I hold it to myself, there's little chance of it going forward, he says. “You can do whatever you want, but that's just how the world works. The chance of it going anywhere with only you and me pushing it is very slim,” he says. I'd faced the same issue with
GeezerJock
. Investors wanted in, but my partner Callahan and I had to give up power to get the money. It's not ideal, but it got the magazine published. I tell Ted I'm happy to bring in the best people we can. They, of course, will get the lion's share of the wealth if it goes forward. I'm reminded of that old saw:
better to have a small piece of something than all of nothing.

Ted and I walk to lunch by the studio and eat at a nice little white tablecloth restaurant. A hamburger is $24. When we sit down, a well-dressed guy comes over and shakes Ted's hand. It's all smiles and warmth. Everyone seems to know Ted. When the other guy leaves, Ted turns to me and says quietly he's an agent who's been a real jerk in the past.

As we walk back to the studio, Ted says he almost never works with anyone new to the industry. He explains the setup: CBS would like to get Curtis Hanson involved with television production, and Curtis Hanson would like the same. Ted is the matchmaker and the talent scout. If Curtis and Carol like my idea, the three of them will continue to push it forward. Today, I'm pitching my idea to Curtis and Carol.

We talk money. Ted knows my deal. For a first-timer, he says it's pretty impressive. He says my agent is a good one. He says the real money comes only after a few years of success, and it comes to those who own a percentage of the show. He cites a successful show, LOST, and estimates it is worth in the neighborhood of $400 million to $800 million to those who own the show. I do the math. If this class project blooms into a hit, my contract is potentially worth more than $25 million.

I roll the figure around in my head.
Twenty-five million dollars.
It beats working as a reporter in gritty urban areas for $35,000 a year. I try to appear cool and collected, like I'm used to contemplating multimillion-dollar payoffs. Ted, however, points out the extreme rarity of success. “Most shows fail. That's just the way it is, so get used to it,” he says. Besides, he says, we're still many hurdles away from even getting my idea onto the air.

But Ted is clearly having fun. At FOX, he was the guy listening to pitches, green-lighting the good ones, killing the duds. Now he's on the other side of the fence. He's an owner of my idea now, too, and its chief cheerleader. We walk back from lunch, talking like old college friends.

We spend so much time talking in Ted's office, we lose track of time. Ted calls ahead and warns them we're going to be late, and he tells me to follow him. I'm driving a low-budget rental car, and we're driving from Studio City in the San Fernando Valley down to Curtis Hanson's office south of Hollywood. We face a ten-mile drive through heavy traffic on the expressway. Ted is in his black BMW, and he's driving fast. I'm thrashing my little Kia to stay on his bumper. When we hit Hollywood, there are black BMWs everywhere. I'm careful not to lose him. We're racing through traffic, running yellow lights, and I'm thankful I've driven for years in congested cities. When we arrive at our destination, Ted is smiling. “That wasn't a problem staying with me, was it?”

“Naw,” I answer. “You didn't have to slow down just for me.”

This is way too much fun for work.

T
his is the first time I've had to repitch my material formally. My first meeting is with Carol Fenelon. She's a tall, elegant woman. Today, however, her hand is painful. She's suffering from gout apparently, and she's waiting for a doctor to call her back.

Ted tells me the floor is mine. I start into my pitch. It's going well and I'm right at a climactic moment when I rise out of my seat to talk about
life or death events
and . . . Carol's assistant rings. The doctor is on the phone. Carol excuses herself.

I sit back down. Ted looks at me and smiles. “Sorry about this. But this is how the real world works,” he says. Together, we make small talk for ten minutes, sitting alone in Carol's office.

Carol reenters. I spring back to my feet to restart my pitch at my high emotional moment . . . and she waves me off. She seems irritated. “I get it, just keep going,” she says. I do.

When I'm done with my material, it's hard to know if she likes it or not. Then Curtis Hanson enters. He, too, wants to hear my series idea. He's a thin, surprisingly tall man. His hair is wild. He's wearing old jeans and an old shirt.

In Hollywood, everyone wears a uniform. Agents and studio executives wear suits. The creative side goes for bohemian. Hanson is very bohemian.

Hanson shakes my hand. Then I go into my pitch again. It's a shortened version, just the high points of the series, how I see it structured, obstacles, story ideas, the potential for a long life on the network.

It's surreal. The meeting is very serious. I've got one of the greatest American filmmakers and his producing partner gathered in a room listening to me with attentive expressions. Ted sits back and lets me talk. He keeps smiling though.

After an hour, the pitch meeting is done. We all stand up, shake hands, and I'm walked to the door by a young assistant, probably a recent film school graduate. The word must be out that I'm
That Lucky Bastard in Film School
because the assistant shoots me a dirty look as I leave.

A few hours later, Ted calls me. “They both loved you. Really. They
love
the idea.”

Really, I ask, even Carol? She didn't seem to like me at all. “Oh, Carol thought you were the greatest. They're both on board with this. Very excited.”

T
he next step is to find a show-runner. That's the person who will, literally, run the show. In television, they're the big dog in charge of day-to-day production. They're almost always writers who oversee story development and shape the series.

And here's where the rubber meets the road about my decision to give up power for the potential of greater success. Ted has explained that if I write the pilot episode, or share in the writing of it, the top tier of show-runners will likely pass. This decision gives me great pause. It's very difficult. I know I can write one hell of a pilot—I've already got one sketched out, but it's the hard reality of television. There is no easy answer or right answer. I really want to push for writing the pilot. (And at the time I'm naïve about writing credits—the person who writes the pilot gets the
Created by
credit, with a corresponding financial windfall if the series becomes a success.) But I keep thinking of my family. What would be the best for them? Going to graduate school is an exceptionally high-risk financial decision already. Who am I to hold out for even higher risks?

I tell Ted I'm willing to pass on writing the pilot script. When Ted and Curtis and Carol go fishing for show-runners, they'll be able to dangle a great piece of bait: a developed show idea, with the pilot script a blank slate. The handoff makes me feel a bit queasy, but I think I understand the odds. And I'm still completely ignorant in the ways of television, for good and for bad. Only later do I realize the full value of writing the pilot script. It's huge. It means money and power and prestige and control. But at this point, I'm a newbie in TV land, and I don't realize the importance of my actions until I look back at them. The experience in the real world of Hollywood is like graduate school: the learning curve is steep, and I seem to discover important information only after the fact.

Back in Minnesota, it's life as usual. The kids are off from school, and there are a handful of house projects that have been deferred over the past year . . . and I'm officially a producer under contract to CBS/Paramount Network Television. I buy a DVR so I can record television shows and watch them. I watch as much network television as possible after the kids are in bed.

Not long after I'm back, I get a call from Ted. Great news, he says, there's a show-runner who wants in. “It all happened very quickly. She was our top pick. We heard she was interested and we had a meeting and she liked the idea a lot,” he says. She's Carol Barbee, under contract with CBS and, until very recently, the show-runner for JERICHO. Ted says she's leaving almost immediately for a monthlong vacation and said
yes
almost instantly. He's thrilled. Barbee is extremely well regarded at the network, he says, and it gives our show a huge push forward.

From that moment onward, I swallow my pride about writing the pilot and move forward. The month of August I become a producer. I'm going to give Barbee the best possible introduction to the world that I pitched. I call dozens of people involved with transplantation. Within a few days, I have the top heart doctor at the famous Cleveland Clinic offering to open the doors to Barbee when she comes back from vacation. The surgeon, Dr. Gonzalez-Stawinski, aka “Dr. Gonzo,” is surfing in Puerto Rico when I contact him. He's the perfect person to show Barbee the cowboy side of transplantation. He's one of the world's best transplant surgeons by night, a surfer by (vacation) day.