If A Pitch Goes South, Do You Try To Save the Meeting?

This is a very good question from Moviequill, and as we had this dialogue in the comments section a few posts back, I reprint it here for others who may have missed the comments.

in one of the many tips that ended up my way, I heard if it looks like the pitch is going downhill, try to salvage the meeting by finagling yourself into a re-write job on some stalled script they have on file...do you find that is the case? they are willing to keep you around even if the project you came to them for falls through? - Moviequill.

Good question, Moviequill, but no - that's not the case. All you can do is to bring 120% commitment to your take, your creative enthusiasm, and your genuine insight into the project - and that will either win the day, or not - based on countless variables of which you know only a few. Have they heard something like your take before? Are there political issues with this exec. behind the scenes that make them more/less in favor? Do the execs love this project, but the pres. hates it? (that's happened to me).

You could go crazy trying to figure it all out. I"m guessing that was non-professional advice you heard. I've been specifically told by my agents not to de-rail and try to jump tracks onto a new idea. It looks like you're desperate, and it takes away from you in the end. Now, having said that, if you're in the room - and the exec. says - "hey, forget that, you might be the guy for - this - and it's a new thing, go for it. It's coming from their side and follow that energy. And, on another meeting, I went in for a re-write chat, but we took off on a whole other thing which would have been an original adaptation of a sci-fi book. But as that conversation wound down, the exec. realized it wouldn't work, and so we went back to what the meeting had been about. So in those situations, you ride the energy.

In this town, everyone on the money side has one emotion: FEAR. Afraid they can't fix the script, afraid they'll be fired if they hire the wrong person, fear that the movie will "go away" if the next draft is awful, on and on - so your job is to come in clear, grounded and with answers. Jeez, this is turning into a long answer and I have more to say. For example - in my meeting yesterday, for this production re-write, I went in saying - cut this character, I want this other guy to now be a woman, and she has a child, and they move in with the leading lady...blah blah.. and she is crippled psychologically and has panic attacks (she's a cop and was fine in the other draft) and all this new stuff is coming at them and they're saying - 'you're sure?" And I'm saying - this is how I want to do it, this is how it has to be, don't you see? Now, they're thinking it over this weekend. They may say - screw him - or yeah! But in the end, I went in crystal clear, and confident in the way I saw it - that's how you write, and how you pitch in this town. Period. Because at the end of the day you have to know you did your best job, and the rest will fall where it may. Phew.