Film Courage: How many pitch meetings would you schedule a day?
Kelly Edwards, Staff Writer, Author, Producer: We had them every hour on the hour.
More than likely we would do, so a typical Network executive's day is usually a breakfast. These days
obviously not so much but I usually would start my day with a breakfast then I'd have a 10 a.m.
because I was in the office by 10. Every now and again like a Tuesday morning or Monday morning
we'd have a staff meeting at some point during that week probably Monday or Tuesday where we
go over weekend reads so we go through all of this material that it can't come in or it would
be a meeting so it would be a 10 a.m 11 a.m., a noon, then we go to lunch come back and we would
do either 2:30 or a three o'clock, four o'clock, five o'clock, sometimes a six. Sometimes those
six o'clocks would end up being…actually at UPN we had seven o'clock meetings as well so we had those
were usually within the company but it might have been a programming conversation with scheduling or
with you know it would be a budget conversation whatever it was it was but we were stacked every
single every single hour you had something and that's why I say when you got a chance to when
somebody canceled it was like because those every single lunch was was a was a meeting and that's
another meeting right it's not just lunch it's a meeting so when I when I had kids I would go home
I'd get home by eight and I usually had to lay down for at least a half hour before I could
even be sane enough to see my kids who were about to go to sleep if they hadn't already so it's a
it's a lot it's a lot and then there are also sometimes you have dinners so it's a constant
churn of activity and within all of that you are then the last 10 minutes before the end of the
last meeting or at the end of the last meeting you 10 minutes maybe you can go through some
of your emails and go through some of your phone calls and try to return calls and and
try to reply or read the next script or look at somebody's credits who's coming in to pitch you
so there's always something to do there's always something to fill your time it's exhausting
it's exhausting and then imagine you're managing then the projects that you have already bought
so let's just say I've already purchased and I'm going to say at at Fox we purchased 65
scripts to 85 scripts a year at UPN probably a little bit less maybe but still probably in the
we're we're not talking a couple we're talking 50 60 Scripts so we're managing all of that
material and giving notes so some of those some of those are notes calls they're not all pitches
so there's a lot and then we have to obviously connect with one another to say okay what did
everybody think about this before we give notes so there's a lot of stuff happening during the
day when you're a network executive and it doesn't end on your weekends you're still
doing on the weekends so it's a seven day a week job yeah I had to at EP and I had to
make a decision that Sundays were for myself and my family but the Saturdays I would work
so I took one day this is even just after I got married I needed to foster my relationship right
so I did make sure that I at least had one day for reading material and doing notes or watching cuts
and giving those one cuts whatever that whatever I was doing and sometimes you're you're writing
up the document right so it's not just like I'm reading a script and verbally giving notes I'm
then writing a document or I'm reading a document that someone has written and adding my thoughts
before we send it off so there's again there's process and then at least one day for relaxation
and was it really relaxation or you were always available by phone
no I was not available by phone I had to unplug and that was again that was the stipulation
between when I worked at Fox for Tom Noonan who at the time was a 21st hours seven day a week kind of
person and I would get these crazy calls so early in the morning I was not prepared and I was like
and he had always read everything way before I had so I had to be really really fast and at the time
at Fox I was also the person who had to collect all of the the information this is so old school
but all of the information about everything that everybody else was doing in town so part of my job
besides going to comedy clubs and doing notes and all of this and reading scripts was also to Canvas
the town and do up a report that was well Warner Brothers just bought these three scripts and
these are the auspices and this is the log line and the status and it was a multi-page document
so it was terrifying because I was a person who was like I’ve got to call so and so it
whatever and whittle the information out of them because they didn't always want to give it to you
sometimes you call the agents but you had this binder essentially of
information I will say packets of information about what everybody's doing what overall
Deals they were having they were creating who was getting blind scripts whatever it was I had to be
the router-outer of all things so it was but again it helped me create a network of people I suddenly
had 15-20 people who were my regular contacts that then exponentially again grows your network
can any writer that comes in is always represented it's never a non-represented writer like someone
just cold pitching well if you well okay so so things things are things are different if
I'm finding somebody let's just say I'm finding a playwright they marinate it may not be represented
but the materials out there right so the playwright is probably produced the play that's
how I probably know of that playwright so it's not like it's anything that there's an issue with
me being able to bring that person in so sometimes you have to go chase people who
aren't represented but for the most part people are represented or they have legal
representation or they come in from a valued source when I was at at HBO I because I was
in the diversity Department there was an understanding that if you were coming to me
we didn't need you to be represented we didn't need you we needed you to sign a release form
but we didn't need you to have all the bells and whistles because we were discovering that Talent
and I think some a lot of places don't necessarily operate that way I was lucky that I they allowed
me that chapter where people could could fall out of my desk how many pitches would you listen to
before green lighting a show well the process at a broadcast network it's not quite that
it's not really done that way like I said every every year we would bring in a certain number of
pitches and that was was determined by the budget that I had so let's just say let's just say I for
sake of argument I have a million dollars in my budget and I'm purchasing scripts from a number
of different kinds of levels of writers so some are basically getting scales or whatever it is
they're getting a minimum amount of money because they're brand new they've never done it before
or we're getting some super high-end people who've already knocked it out of the park on it another
Network and they're coming in to do another project for us so I've got a certain budget
the budget will run out at a certain point usually around October for for the comedies
and or for comedies and dramas it depends again on how much money you have in your in your kitty
and and then we would always Reserve something because there's there was usually like a heavy
hitter that came in like at the very last minute there would be always something super unexpected
that you go oh I really wish I had the money for that so you reserve a little bit something in the
in your pot for that but when the money runs out the money runs out so again sometimes it's
55 scripts sometimes it's 85 Scripts and based on that you then get all your first drafts in or you
get all your all your scripts in by I could say your final jobs in before the holidays so just
before Christmas break you get all your scripts in you've already done a draft or two so what's
kind of what's looking good and what's not looking good and then when January comes around and you're
back in business after the holidays that's when you make your pickups and decide okay of all of
these I have enough to make maybe 10 Pilots or 13 Pilots or whatever the number of Pilots are
and at a certain point sometimes you might not want to do a full pilot you might want
to do a presentation you might want to shoot a few scenes to see if it's something but you
don't necessarily need to shoot the whole thing there are times when you must shoot
the whole thing because it's the only way you're going to really know if you got something so we
would decide oh we're going to do three pilots and four presentations based on the money again
and then and then you'd make your pickups based on those things that that panned out
and it's then you go you go into pilot craziness and all of a sudden you're off
to the races with everybody else and you're looking for directors and you're looking for
Studio space you're looking for your your actors and your competing against all the
other networks that somebody might want to go to before they want to come to you and you're doing
your best to scramble to get to get the very best package that you can the very best team of people
and how are you choosing some of the staff writers well that comes after you get the pilot done so
let's just say then the pilot gets shot edit it you see the rough cut you they you go back and you
give your notes you polish it up and buy May when the upright fronts were coming up you then have
you know which ones you were you're put putting on your schedule and which ones you're going to
hold for mid-season as mid-season replacements and then you go out and announce it to the world
and somewhere in that that April delivery of the pilot and the pickup to series is a couple
of weeks where you pretty much know what's going to end up on the schedule and you've you've sort
of tipped a hand to the people who are producing those things and you go all right it's looking
really good you should probably start to read some scripts and get some stuff or a you're not
it's on the bubble or it's not going to work out and then yeah those that's the problem of the of
the showrunner to go assemble that team and start reading people and because we've worked with a
lot of writers we will have an idea of kind of who we would like to have in that group and if
the showrunner's amenable and meets and likes those people then great and if they don't they
might have their own ideas it's a little bit of a negotiation to decide who's going to get on staff
now that I've been a writer in a writer's room I think I even know even more how important it is
to get the right group of people and how much the showrunner really needs to rely on particularly
people at the top who are going to execute that that goal even when they're not in the room I
knew about it before but it's like you really see it in action when it's when you're sitting there
in that writer's room it's really important to have the right mix that's interesting so what does
that mean when someone's not in the room and they can execute so they can then give notes over the
phone or no no I just mean that when you're when you're running a show as a as a writing showrunner
there's other things that you have to take care of so you are also when you're launching your show
you're doing a press you're in the you're in the edit bay doing post you're managing your talent
you are putting out fires left and right you're talking to the network you're pitching another new
stories to the network and the studio so there's a lot of other things that happen that's why the
showrunner is so important and then you might have a head writer who is taking care of running the
physical room while that while you were handling other things you may also be that person who
must dip back in you might have a non-writing executive producer who might handle all that
so when I was executive producing a show it was a drama series we handled a lot of the other things
we were in the writer we were in the edit Bay all the time we were selecting the music We Were
doing the spotting we were doing the color correction we were in the posts in the post
world but we were also dealing with well we had a cast not a Cassidy a costumer who was cycling out
we had to get a new costume designer we had crew changes or other issues we had to figure out what
it's supposed to look like so there's other things other decisions that have to be made
that have to go along with the show the physical writing of the show
so there's a lot of kettle's boiling sure I know I'm mixing my metaphors like no no no no no now
I'm getting a better picture of it right okay so you've got the writer's room they're there
14 hours a day I guess well they commit it like it's a 10 to six kind of job okay all right maybe
maybe although there are legendary shows where they just never went home like they went home
for like a minute to shower and then came back but those are old stories sure sure so okay so maybe
eight to ten hours if we're lucky sure okay so that's its own sort of moving part and then you've
got all these other decisions that you're making whether it's the poster or press color correction
things like that yeah yeah okay interesting yeah and managing the managing the machine.