Pleased to Meet You

Or How Not to Land A Writing Gig

Meetings.  Bloody meetings.  Meetings about this, meetings about that, meetings about every damn thing, when you could be at your desk, actually writing.

One of the unavoidable joys of being a screenwriter is that you will have to attend meetings.  Not the fun sort of meetings that are days round the story table, but the boring, businesslike, sort of meetings where the people across the table are either pitching to you, or you are pitching to them; or where someone is simply meeting someone else out of politeness and/or because it is their job to politely meet people.  Or the worst sort of meeting where someone is giving you notes.  

Are there rules and/or protocols for meetings other than the basic guidelines for any social interaction and general politeness? 

Turning up on time is a good place to start.  Even if you are then kept waiting, at least in your mind you already have a toehold on the moral high ground.  And if the meeting goes really badly you can walk out in shame knowing that you won by arriving on time. 

Listening is a good thing to do at meetings.  This may sound blindingly obvious, but if you’re like me and get nervous when you’re sitting across a desk or table from a human-being you don’t really know, the temptation is to talk too much.  Try to resist this temptation because the line between being charming and witty, and blathering like an idiot, is a thin one. 

There are the people who like to have meetings in cafes.  I am not one of them.  Meetings in cafes, to me, pile on a whole new layer of things to worry about.  I’ve arrived on time, which probably means I’m the first one there.  Now the waiter wants to know if I want anything to eat.  I look at the menu.  Mmmmm, the eggs benedict speaks to me.  But if I order food, what if I’m the only one eating?  Eating is not an attractive thing to do, unless everyone else around you is also shoving food in their gob-hole.  And what if I come away from the meeting and discover that I’d dribbled hollandaise sauce all down my shirt and I didn’t notice and no-one alerted me so I’ll always be the “eggs bene sauce guy” in their eyes? 

Meetings.  So many ways to get things wrong in a very short space of time.  Especially if, like me, you have a tendency to over-think things.

The strangest meeting I’ve ever taken (although there is plenty of competition for this) was with an overly-enthusiastic American producer.  He was bringing his dream project down to Aotearoa New Zealand and was looking for a local writer to get onboard.  Probably for tax reasons. I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell.  Not that we got anywhere close to talking about such things, because this meeting was a test, to see if I could be the one to get on the same page as him and his Grand Vision.  

The show was a very loose adaptation of a classic tale of a boy and his dog, roaming round New Zealand’s abundantly scenic scenery, having adventures.  It was the sort of thing that is very much not my jam, but it had been suggested to me that it would be a good idea if I took the meeting anyway.  Also a gig is a gig, right?

So there I was, sitting across from this larger-than-life American dude and his vigorous love for all things boy/dog.  He opened strongly, telling me there were only two things I needed to know to be able to write this show.  Only two?  Story and structure?  Boy and dog?  I already had this sinking feeling, like I was about to be sucked into a Vortex of Crazy.

The first thing, he said, is this.  And he pushed the play button on a CD player because that was how you played music, back in those days.  And music most definitely played.  It was an instrumental.  Bland, generic MOR rock music, with soaring guitars.  It was as if you had shoved REO Speedwagon, Styx and Journey into a blender that made everything even blander.  A blander blender for 80’s stadium rock, a genre already inherently bland, to my ears at least. (Except for “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger which is an undoubted work of genius.)

To the ears of the enthusiastic American producer, however, this music was transcendental. It was, he explained, the theme music for the show about the boy and the dog and it perfectly captured the essence of the show.

Uh huh, I said.

For the second (and final) thing I needed to know in order to write this show, he pushed play on a DVD player because that was how you watched things, back in those days.  It was a promo reel for a cheaper version of a Steadicam, that meant you could shoot hand-held in tight spaces.  Part of the sales pitch was footage from Point Break; the chase sequence where Johnny Utah pursues Bodhi in a Ronald Reagan mask, through a bunch of alleyways and houses in, I presume, Venice Beach, before Johnny re-injures his football-wrecked knee and irresponsibly fires his gun into the air in a built-up area.

(Am I the only one who worries where all those bullets might fall back to earth?)

Now as someone who places Point Break very highly in my list of Guilty Pleasure films, I was starting to warm to the idea of the boy/dog series.  Cool, inventive, action sequences are something I could get into writing.

Then the American dude told me that this was important because they would be shooting a lot of the series from the dog’s POV.  We would see the world, as the dog saw the world.

There was a pause, as he waited for me to jump on board with his grand vision – and as my brain grappled with what this would actually look like.

I couldn’t help myself.

“So there’ll be lots of shots of other dog’s butts,” I said.

Needless to say, I did not land the gig.

But at least I took the meeting, which is always a good place to start. 

And end.