54 Days in LA: A guide to selling your script

Mark Needham
Sep 2, 2018 · 11 min read

I woke up at 7. Slept like shit. Laid in bed and played with my phone.

Thennn I got to work.

I finished the last touches on the script last week and I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t know what I could possibly do to make it better.

It sounds cocky but it’s not.

I feel like I’ve taken it to its limit. The story and all its characters have been pushed to their edges, tested over and over again, and in the process, become as genuine and loyal to who they are as I could possibly imagine.

When you get there, you’ll feel like you’re overwriting it (Which can ruin a good story). When you get to that place, stop. Then do what I did.

I sent it to two writer friends and a few avid cinephiles for last-second thoughts and final grammar, spelling and structure editing. With all the free time on my hands, I started working on the Pitch Bible.

A pitch bible is interesting in that, no matter where you look online, you’re bound to find a different perspective, a different set of sections you should have and a fluctuating number of recommended sentences in your Log Line (Some say two while others say up to six). I’ve been taking something from everyone and adding my own edge.

I read a couple pitch bibles including Battle Star Galactica’s fifty-three-page full history and the eight-page New Girl bible which ended with me laughing my ass off for twenty minutes. It was everything the show is and it gave me more inspiration for my own story, even though our genres sit on opposite sides of the spectrum.

The thing I think is most important in the pitch bible is the character that speaks through it. It should be creative, different, and personable while also informative. It should showcase all the best parts of you, catch their eye and keep them turning the page. It’s your closer in the room with studio executives, whether you have to speak fluently about your story or let them look over the document themselves. The pitch bible will help you truly know your own story through a process of self-discovery.

I made mine to look like a classified military project, replacing words like “Log Line” with “Mission Briefing” and explaining my characters as if they were given psychological profiles by the government. It was fun for me, gave it a unique style and still honors the important elements of a standard bible.

So, for you aspiring writers out there; make sure you do your pitch bible once you’re happy with your pilot script. I’m actually having more fun writing it then I did the script, and I loved writing the script.

The pitch bible will constantly put you in a position of trying to know your story better. As you explain your characters, the world, or the arc of each season, you may discover you can’t say as much as you would like to or find a plot hole or contradiction. Writing the bible forces you to look deeper into your world, flesh it out and expand the story of your characters’ past.

Luciano and I spent the whole morning and part of the afternoon working on ours. Mine is at 20 pages and his is about the same. It’s a bit long and only half done. I’m thinking about writing a “Summary” version.

We also promised ourselves we would check out Santa Monica and Venice Beach. From Koreatown, it’s only about a thirty-minute drive. Parking on the side streets by the pier near California Blvd is a dollar an hour, which is a steal and puts you less than a quarter mile from the beach. A couple dollars for water and a packed lunch and you will have an experience, unlike anything you’ve ever had before for less than the price of a movie ticket.

I didn’t realize how strangely beautiful California could be. I enjoyed Sacramento, liked San Francisco, but this place is truly a dream.

When I played “Lights” by Journey crossing into the bay for the first time, I felt it. I understood that it was a love song from the band, to the city by the bay that meant so much to them. The way it must have felt to hear it and play it for the first time as a San Franciscan must have been absolutely epic. I couldn’t even imagine what it was like to hear it live…

Today, I got to play Santa Monica (Everclear) in Santa Monica. It was corny, but it was perfect. It was a fate coalescing, it was life coming together. It was harnessing the magic of art and place and instilling the spirit of creation. And it’s bragging rights for a kid who grew up in a no-name town stuck in a 50-year stumble.

Tell Sheryl Crow I’ll get her next time around on the Boulevard.

The hours past as we strolled the beach and the boardwalk, got shitty service from BIRDapp Scooters (Just don’t do it. They’re not ready) and dipped our feet in the rolling waves. The longer I was there the more it felt like home. People smiled, talked, laughed, sang. It was the world I always talked about remembering as a kid after I moved east as a kid. I was always trying to convince my hard and cold New Yorker friends about the good news like I was some kind of evangelist. It never worked. They couldn’t understand our strange ways.

It didn’t matter. I was back.

Santa Monica is exactly like it sounds. Chill, relaxed. beautiful and open. The people are generally kind and talkative, the smell of the food makes me want to run in and just steal something off of somebodies plate, and every sports car brand is represented at every street light.

Venice Beach was something completely different.

As we walked off the curvy paths of the bike trails from the beach and shook the sand off our feet, Luciano asked me, “Are you ready?” with a big smile on his face.

It was like nothing I’d ever seen or heard. The moment we stepped onto the boardwalk, the culture was tangible. It hit me like a wave. It felt like the first trip of Ayahuasca in Peru. A haunting and saturating industrial edm song played as two 60-year-old beach bums screamed crazy shit at each other and engaged in a dance battle.

They both got served.

A storefront named “Titanic” played the music amidst its eight-foot-tall metal sculptures of Optimus Prime and Bumble Bee. People danced and smiled above, in little chateau balconies.

And one man sat silently among all the chaos, with his hands in a mudra, meditating with his eyes closed. I could feel his calmness and it overtook me. This was religious, this was inspirational, this was a miles-long muse for all artists, builders, and thinkers.

This was Venice.

I started to feel as though, the unique happenings, the artists, the transients, the jokers, the colors, the skateboarders, the weird shops and beautiful people were all serving some larger purpose, pulled forth by the calling to create something absolutely different, chaotic, agitating and ultimately inspiring for all those who wanted to push at the edges of being human.

It was transformative.

And I’ll be back next weekend.

When you come down to sell your script, make sure you take a day, every week.

On Disruption: Much of the early afternoon conversation was dominated by one idea. This idea of disrupting old systems. It’s all over new media, in the tech industry and storytelling. And it may be the metaphor of our generation.

As soon as we made it to the end of the pier, its as if something changed in us. We immediately began talking about time travel, resurrecting the dead and regrowing body parts with the modern miracles of science. We are Sci-Fi writers.

The conversation curved into the limitations of humanity; and how media, religion, culture, and politics have played their part in inhibited our growth and slowing the process toward things like stem cell research and high-speed transportation. The chasm that lies between Gene Roddenberry's dream and our reality is maintained only by the separation between people. That, and our fear of the unknown, which harbors all things yet to be discovered.

Culture, on one level, was built to protect our minds from an infinite world and the great mystery of existence. The colors, routines, gods, beliefs, foods, and statues all end up being flashy colors that distract us from the deeper truths of life, which are often hard to come to terms with.

But culture has served its purpose and now, its a dragging anchor at the bottom of the harbor.

Culture has made life interesting. But do we need it? Can we still make art without it? Can we still have a personal god devoid of a hostile religion? (I don’t think all religion is hostile, but there are some winners out there) I think so. We are coming to a point in history where the subtle nuances of culture may come undone as we ask ourselves why we separate ourselves along barriers of language, religion, and politics.

Is there a best way of conducting ourselves culturally?

And it’s not just individual cultures. It’s the global system of culture that pervades the lives of almost every human being on the planet.

As a species, we seem to be tired, angry, stuck, and blaming one another for our problems. While the old system maintains itself and punishes people for being people instead of realizing that it is, well, old.

So many things don’t work anymore.

Sensationalist mainstream news.

1800’s Prussian Army inspired school systems.

Pharmaceutical prescriptions handed out like candy.

No ‘Cap’ on Capitalism.

How does one remedy the situation?

Luciano and I began to talk about our stories and how, at the heart of both of them was this idea of disrupting the old ways, digging deeper into ourselves and reaching farther back into the past to rediscover the essence of being human. What was it like to make fire for the first time? Or utter the first sound attached to an idea or thing?

What sorcery it must have felt like.

Where did the magic for life go?

Have we lost that wonder of being alive?

Amidst all the great advancements of society have we become numb to it? Are we missing what we could be? What could we become?

The universe is at our fingertips. We went from horses to rocket ships in less than a hundred years and we still let differences in things like culture and physical appearance guide a majority of the modern conversation about society.

It’s like a sickness in us. Embedded by the hustle, mainstream media outlets, the old systems of power and wealth and our own individual ignorance about the dynamic differences between people that don’t separate us based on our group, but unite us individually.

How do we collectively work toward the greater good, and transform ourselves so that the world is forced to transform with us?

I know what my show is about. But that is always to a degree. I don’t think I can ever know it fully. Because all that story comes from a deep and mostly unknown place within. There are so many dark and quiet places in the mind, filled with ideas which push up powerful urges and desires manifesting itself as “art.”

So as I write my story, I know that there is something I am not in control of. There is a subconscious agenda which aims to fulfill my deepest personal aspirations for my world, and maybe for the world at large.

Life is always in need of change. And art is often the “proof of concept” for the new ways.

Think of these things as you search for the ultimate purpose of your creations. Look deeper into you and ask the bigger questions that your art brings up.

You know, the really scary questions you usually avoid. As the old Alchemical saying goes,

“The thing you want the most is in the place you least want to look.”

Daily Networking: We decided that every day we are here we will try to connect with 5 relevant people on LinkedIn. The key here (the way I rationalize it) is to just glean a little knowledge from them, making it apparent in the first message that that’s all you want to do.

I don’t want them to feel like I’m trying to sell them something or pitch my script right then and there. So I don’t. I ask them who I should be trying to do that to. I want to know the exact people I should be talking to, the places I should hang out, the type of wine HBO executives drink, etc, etc.

So be sincere, be polite, and really do your homework by checking out their profile. With your most informed discernment, connect with people you think won’t mind taking a few minutes to point you in the right direction. It has worked very well for me in the past in other industries. I’ll let you know how it works out here.

We’ll be copyrighting our scripts Tuesday, calling agents and managers Wednesday and hanging out with Adam McKay by Friday.

But if that doesn’t work out well initiate phase two.

Which consists of going to snazzy coffee shops where the cool kids hang out.

We got a plan. Sort of.

Pro Survival Tip: Going to LA on a whim without many prospects for immediate and steady work can put you into a pinch economically. One thing I found is that I actually really enjoy eating healthy. And healthy is often cheap, despite the rumors.

Nuts, rices, beans and coconut products are relatively inexpensive, even in their organic form. Stocking up on this through Amazon and mixing meals with fresh counterparts from Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods makes my food budget somewhere between $20-$30 a week. Which is great. And it’s solid food that will give you tons of energy and make your brain work at optimum for all that writing you’ll be doing.

Pro Writing Tip: Write a pitch bible, even if it is only for yourself. I already see the one I’m writing going over 100 pages as I expand the ideas, the mythology, the paranormal aspects and the constitutions of each Kingdom. Sometimes writers will create vast manuals for their stories, which end up being incredibly useful to basically everyone on set. Make sure you also make a quick version. Go for 5 to 10 pages for you 15 minutes meetings with Netflix. Have fun and explore your world through the document.

Something about the Show (Log Line): “In order to make a better world for his people, Jacob kills his best friend, as eight dynamic groups of people compete for the ultimate prize of creating their own legitimate, sovereign nation. The stakes are real, the danger is rising, as things get strange in a world cut off from normal reality.”

People: Are constantly changing pallets of experience.

People in LA: Are just like anybody, anywhere else in the world. In Koreatown, they honk, drive fast and make awesome traditional Kimchi. In Santa Monica, they walk slow, smile and laugh and work on their tans. In Venice, they defy the laws of psychology and physics. The environment is always shaping and transforming us into the thing we must be in that moment and place. We will become that which surrounds us, like an ether calling us toward it.

I Am: Moved by the cities by the ocean and worried about money.

Thanks: To my Aunt, who told me “Hey you should do a blog. Write every day you’re there and call it, ’54 days in LA.’ What do you think?” Aunt Mick, thank you. I love you. See you soon.

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