Your TV Pilot Elevator Pitch

( AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File )

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For the last few minutes of the show today and for this week let's have fun with something a little different. We're going to invite anybody listening to share your elevator pitch for a TV show or a screenplay for a movie. Yesterday, we asked about pandemic purchases you loved or regretted. Today, we're wondering in those early days of the pandemic when you were stuck at home, maybe suddenly unemployed, did you finally get around to writing that screenplay or a TV pilot, were you laid off from your job, maybe even in the industry, so many theaters closed down and everything like that, and you finally wrote it? Want to pitch it now? 212-433-WNYC.

Yes, we are inviting you to pitch your TV pilot or a movie screenplay, 212-433-9692. Keep it short, it's an elevator pitch, but you never know who's listening. We have listeners in the network suites, I'd imagine. We have listeners on Broadway front offices, I'd imagine. We might even have listeners in Hollywood. Good morning, Hollywood. We just had a guest from California. Give us a call and tell us what your movie screenplay or a TV series would be about. It's your elevator pitch. You're invited to give it to us and who knows who's listening, at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

I once went to a dentist who knew who I was from the radio, and at the end, he handed me a script that was this screenplay, or it was really a TV pilot, I guess, kind of a true crime series that he was writing. [laughs] I'm not in that business, I think he gave it to the wrong person, but it was pretty hilarious, and I had some fun reading it. People do that, so we're inviting you to do that. Our lines are filling up so okay, right after this, your elevator pitches for your TV series or movie screenplays. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now to your elevator pitches for your movie screenplays or TV pilots. Paula in Syosset, you're on WNYC. Hi, Paula.

Paula: Hi, Brian. It's an honor to be speaking with you. I had an idea for kind of a sci-fi film where hackers get into companies that control medical devices like resetting fibrillators and pacemakers. They manipulate those devices, and people start dying.

Brian Lehrer: Why are the hackers doing that?

Paula: Because some people are just evil.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Then, you go on, I presume--

Paula: Could be a foreign country doing it.

Brian Lehrer: Right and then you go on to the law enforcement or detectives or whoever it is, quest to find those hackers?

Paula: Exactly, but in the interim, there's a lot of devastation.

Brian Lehrer: Paula, thank you very much for starting us off. Daniel in New Providence has a TV pilot to pitch. Hi, Daniel, you're on WNYC.

Daniel: Hi, Brian. Big fan, big fan. Thank you. My idea is there's this two gay couple, one is the registered nurse, one is the lawyer. One of their best friends actually ends up passing away, and they get custody of the two kids, so it's kind of this dark comedy of them trying to figure out, wow, now we have to raise a child. They go to therapy with the child, and then eventually the extended family who was never involved start showing up, and now they're trying to fight for custody, so it's like this kind of dark humor, but yes, I don't know, I thought it was really good. I started writing just the pilot episode of it, and I think it's a really great original idea.

Brian Lehrer: Over the weeks of the TV series, you'd see the different family members fighting for custody?

Daniel: Yes, exactly, but really there's nothing they could do. He's a lawyer, so he knows the law and stuff, but he wants to integrate. He doesn't want to shun the children's family, but they had such a close relationship with their friends that they knew that it was in the will. They're in their early 40s, so it was like a sudden loss, but they learn to take take a child, they learn a different type of love, and it kind of just follows their journey.

Brian Lehrer: Very sweet, Daniel, thank you very much. Charlie in Newark, you're on WNYC, what you got for us?

Daniel: Yes. The name of the show is Velo City, a superhero comedy. It follows the adventures of Zip the Man Wonder, once Boy Wonder, now Man Wonder, sidekick to the Blue Gargoyle, hoping he's going to get selected to be the new Blue Gargoyle of the city, but gets passed over as the role goes to his daughter, something of a privileged wastrel in [unintelligible 00:05:51] superhero sense, and he--

Brian Lehrer: He gets passed over in favor of his own daughter?

Daniel: Well, no, the Blue Gargoyle's daughter.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I see.

Daniel: Because he's [unintelligible 00:06:06], and but he has to help her learn the ropes of being a superhero now. It's both funny and sweet and poignant as these people in this world of superheroes still have to deal with mortgages and things like that and how it's really hard to be a superhero if you have to buy your own utility belt.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] I love it, Charlie. Thank you very much. Yes, superhero mentoring. I don't think I have seen that one before. Thank you very much. Nour in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nour.

[silence]

Brian Lehrer: Do we have Nour in Queens? Am I on the right line? We'll try to come back to Nour. Let's go to Caitlin in Sparta. Caitlin, you're on WNYC, can you hear me?

Caitlin: Yes, I can, Brian. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What have you got to have an elevator pitch for?

Caitlin: There is actually a group of four of us, and we were inspired by the polarizing politics taking place across our nation and a local school board, maybe including our own a little bit, but the series, it's a TV pilot series called Board Games. It is an hour-long comedy-drama. We did that intentionally. Four neighbors team up to take down a corrupt a school board in their small town of Lenape Falls.

It is your basic privileged white Native American names town with neither a waterfall nor a Native American insight. We watch as they forge lasting friendships while combating corruption, racism, homophobia, carpools, and even the occasional case of head lice, but it's all ready to go. Our pilot introduces and unites our four women for the first time while they tackle their first major challenge, which is to convince their school board to shed its offensive Lenape Falls warrior mascot in exchange for a honeybee.

Brian Lehrer: That is wild. I like this one. I think this is sellable. Executives, are you listening? Between the family aspects, everybody is obsessed with school boards these days, bringing in the fictional, I presume, town of Lenape Falls. Here we all are in our area in Lenape hoping.

Caitlin: Yes, sir.

Brian Lehrer: Boy, it sounds like a hit to me. All right, that's Caitlin in Sparta, New Jersey, executives. How about Jeff in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jeff.

Jeff: Hi, Brian. This is an animated feature called Animal, kind of about the industrialization of the food industry in America and decaying and dying malls. The main character is a mouse raised by his Italian grandparents from a restaurant that's now defunct. He has to move to greener pastures because there's not enough food going around to support the community. Moves to the mall, meets a whole cast of characters. The food court is getting renovated, so it's the capitalization, McDonaldization of food industry, and it deals a lot with hunger which affects one in six people in the States. It's a coming-of-age story about dealing with those types of issues.

Brian Lehrer: A coming-of-age story of a mouse who grew up in a defunct Italian restaurant. Is the mouse a direct descendant of Topo Gigio who was a famous Italian mouse on the old Ed Sullivan show? You're familiar with that?

Jeff: I'm not familiar with that, but it sounds like we should definitely include that.

Brian Lehrer: Check it out. It was a puppet character, one Italian mouse in the history of television that I know of that exists already. All right, we're going to wrap it up by giving Nour in Queens a second chance. Nour, we have 30 seconds for you. Hi.

Nour: Hi there. I'm here. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Go ahead. We've got 25 seconds for you.

Nour: Okay. I am a home birth midwife in New York City. I think the story of home birth midwives is really interesting. Lots of people are really interested in Call the Midwife as a show, but Call the Midwife New York City edition would be a really great series, especially going through the pandemic as a home birth midwife and just dealing with different types of people in their homes and all the struggles of-- the interesting stories that come along with catching babies in people's homes in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Call the Midwife. Thank you for calling the Brian Leher Show with Call the Midwife and thank you all for calling with your TV and movie elevator pitches. Have a great weekend.

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