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TV Guys - Episode 6 - Come On Down

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV show The Fixer 

Note: This episode contains language that may offend some readers.

While I busied myself with other production factors – small things like writing episodes, getting graphic design elements and a website in place – Jaime continued our hunt for financing.  It felt by now that we’d exhausted our lists of potential investors.  Jaime had pored over issues of Fortune, Forbes, and Boston magazines in his hunt for locating wealthy benefactors – all to no avail.

When we’d first come up with the idea of doing THE FIXER, our first thought was to approach one of the Boston area’s most flamboyant businessmen, a local car dealer who had inherited his empire from his father, but who still used the same motto that his father had screamed at television screens for years.  I’d made the initial approach but gotten no response.  Jaime, demonstrating his normal inability to take no for an answer, had kept dogging the man’s personal assistant.

Finally, Jaime called me one afternoon.  “Tell me I’m great.”

I paused.  “Tell me you got us $20 million first.”

“Almost.  I got us a meeting with Chalk.”

That got my attention.  “How’d you do that?”
   
Jaime proceeded to tell me that he’d finally managed to get his assistant to look at THE FIXER website and see what a cool project it was.  She had managed to locate some time on Chalk’s schedule for a meeting. 

Monday. 

3PM.

We were stoked.  Given the fact that Chalk was all over television through his ads and in bit spots on one the best shows on television, we felt certain he might be our guy.  We spent the better part of a week preparing for our meeting.

First, I researched as much sales data as I could find on the web about his empire and what figures he might be moving in a given year.  Our plan was to show him how backing us would not give him a tremendous return on his investment, but also give him fantastic product placement opportunities, enable him to gain a larger market share over his competition, and much more.  I wrote up five small character roles that he could play in THE FIXER itself if he wanted.

Nick, our web guru and one of graphic design wizards, put together a poster of one of the villains in THE FIXER and got it to me at midnight the day before our meeting, handing it over in the parking lot of a mall as if we were in a drug deal.

But Jaime and I felt certain that we had this thing locked up.  Our presentation was solid; we had all the materials we needed to make our case, and things felt…good.

We drove to the business office where Chalk reigned supreme.  My first impression was that it looked like someone had cornered the market on faux wood paneling.  The place was pretty much a dump.

Inside, Chalk’s personal assistant greeted us warmly and had us take a seat.  We waited for about three minutes and then Chalk himself came out.  We shook hands and then he looked at us.

“Who are you guys again?”

After explaining who we were, and trying to quell the uneasiness I suddenly felt, he brought us into his office and had us sit at the conference table.  As I sat and got my materials out, a magazine suddenly got shoved under my nose.

“Check it out!”
   
I glanced at the cover.  Billboard.  I looked up.  “Excuse me?”
   
Chalk jabbed a finger at the Top 100 charts.  “Check it out.  That’s my record label.  My first band.”

I looked back and saw that he’d sold 7400 copies of the CD for the band that he’d signed.  I wasn’t impressed.  The band had had national hits back when I went through Basic Training and if all they could muster was 7400 copies, I didn’t think it boded particularly well for the label.

But Jaime and I said “wow,” and “amazing,” until he seemed satisfied that we were impressed enough.  Then he dropped his lanky frame into a seat and looked us over. 

“So, a TV show?  What’s this all about?”

We went through our pitch, which by now, we’d honed to a fine point given all of our other experiences.  Jaime and I delivered it perfectly.  Chalk, however, was anything but impressed, and let us know in a high-pitched whiny voice.

“What?  You wanna do what?  Why?”

I told him about the Lawson Vampire books sitting on the table in front of us.

“Wait-“ he grabbed one of them.  “You wrote these?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god, I have to get you to sign them.” 

I said sure, and took out my treasured Mont Blanc.  But Chalk waved it off.  “No, no, no, no, you gotta use a marker.  Don’t you have a marker?”

As I started to explain that the marker didn’t work well because the paper would make it bleed, he got up and raced back to his desk, returning with a thick Sharpee.  “Ya gotta use a Sharpee.”

I dutifully signed the books and he patted them.  “I’m gonna read these.”

Swell.  Jaime and I got back into our pitch. 

“So, I sold Bobcat Goldthwaite a car last week.”

Huh?

Chalk explained how he’d sold the comedian a car the previous week.  He then proceeded to explain how he and Goldthwaite got into a conversation about a certain actress and her rather impressive physical attributes.

“She’s got great tits,” said Chalk.

I cleared my throat.  “You know, that’s Bobcat’s ex-wife, right?”

Chalk stopped.  “Really?”

Chalk’s phone rang.  He looked at it.  “Hold on, I gotta take this.”  He then proceeded to have a fifteen-minute talk with the head of a record company.  Jaime and I respectfully waited until he was done.  Then we started up again.  After this, we waited.

“It’s just so fuckin’ risky.”

This then became Chalk’s mantra for the remainder of our meeting.  He would bring up problems and questions he had with the project and we would answer and address every one of them.  Every time we delivered a suitable response, he would counter with his newfound mantra.

“You know what you guys need to do: you need to find someone who doesn’t mind losing a few million.  You know, someone who can afford to do that.”
   
I cocked an eyebrow.  “All due respect, Mr. Chalk, you’re a billionaire.  And the Sultan of Brunei isn’t exactly returning my calls right now.”

Jaime and I had been in a lot of meetings by this point, but this was something else.  Chalk was anything but professional.  His manner betrayed a complete lack of grace and his speech was uncouth, given the nature of our meeting.

I’d had enough.

While Chalk looked over one of our handouts, I calmly eyed him and said, “Why on earth did you have us come in here today?”

He looked up.  “Huh?  Well, Christine (his assistant) told me about you guys and you know, I kinda like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and stuff, and so…” his voice trailed off.

Jaime and I gathered up our stuff.  It was time to go.  We thanked Chalk for his time and left.

There are a lot of colorful terms I could use to describe Chalk.  But I think you have a pretty good idea of what he’s like and I’ll leave it to your creativity to conjure up a suitable moniker for him. 

And just think: this is the abbreviated version of what actually happened.

Note: Jon's latest thriller PARALLAX is now out as an ebook! Check it out HERE!

TV Guys - Episode 5 - Of Lunatics & Liars

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV show The Fixer 

Along the way to making THE FIXER television series, Jaime and I have encountered a whole slew of people.  All of them have usually been extremely interested in the project, and some have even offered to help out.  This, of course, is very nice.  When you’re out on the edge, it’s nice to know you have company.

However, not everyone actually lives up to what they say they can deliver.  And we also started running into our fair share of crazy people along the way.  Usually, the conversation would go something like this:

Them:  “Oh my god, I love your project!  Vampires!  Spies!  How can I help?”

Us:  “We’re looking for investors.  Do you know any wealthy folks who might be interested in coming on-board?”

Them:  “Yes!  I have an aunt who has a ton of money and she loves television.  I’ll bet she would invest.”
   
Us:  “Awesome!  How can we get in touch with them?”
   
Them:  “Uh, well, the thing is she’s kind of dead.”
   
Us:  “Kind of?”
   
Them:  “Yeah.”

This exchange actually happened more than we ever would have believed possible, leading both Jaime and I to surmise that people are either a) blissfully oblivious as to the exact nature of death and how it might interfere with such mundane things as financial and investment transactions or b) a lot crazier than the evening news would have you believe.  I suppose they could also be both.

But the crazies we dealt with usually by chuckling about the whole thing and continuing on our merry way.  We had scores of people yet to talk to and a few minutes taken out for a grin or a smile was a welcome thing – especially when rejection has been a constant companion.

Liars, however, are something else entirely.

We met one woman who swore she could help us.  Turns out her mother had worked for a guy who owned his own energy company.  Every year this guy threw a party for his employees that ran him at least a million.

To Jaime and me, that sounded like a cool dude – someone who took care of his people - and one we’d like to speak with.  We told Hillary that we would welcome her help in getting our material in front of him.  My wife went out one afternoon in the pouring rain to overnight copies of my novels, the prospectus, and everything else to her.

According to Hillary, this man was worth at least three quarters of a billion dollars.  He had money to burn and had even looked into getting involved in the entertainment industry a few years before.  He loved movies and TV.

More pluses in our minds.

Hillary told us it would probably be a few weeks before we heard.  She wanted to make sure she caught this guy at just the right moment.  She knew him very well; they’d been friends for a long time.

After three weeks, however, we still hadn’t heard anything.  And my usual gut instinct told me that something was wrong.  We emailed and called Hillary who put us off, saying that she needed more time.  We gave it to her.

Another week or so passed.  Hillary she came back and told us that she hadn’t heard anything yet, and that she didn’t want to pester this guy too much.  We understood that to a point, but when days stretched into weeks and we still didn’t have an answer, both Jaime and I started getting concerned.

We called Hillary back and spoke with her.  The outcome of the conversation didn’t sit well with Jaime and I.  Both of us started to suspect that Hillary wasn’t being entirely honest.

So Jaime called the guy’s office and here’s how the conversation unfolded once Jaime explained who he was.

Personal assistant:  “Yes, we received the material.  It was very interesting.”

Jaime:  “So would he be interested in coming on-board as an investor?”

Personal assistant:  “No, I’m afraid not.  He actually decided not to invest about a month or so ago.  We told Hillary that he’d decided not to invest.  Didn’t she tell you?”

No.  She hadn’t.

We immediately contacted Hillary and asked her why she hadn’t told us.  Instead of admitting her mistake and the fact that she had obviously lied to us, Hillary went off on a verbal rampage, accusing us of being unprofessional and that she’d never been treated so horribly before in all her life.

Um…yeah.

We told her to send the books back and while Hillary updated her Facebook status with snide oblique references to us, we scratched her name off the list of helpful people who actually have supported THE FIXER along the way to reality.

The thing is this: we’re always glad for help.  But Hillary had made herself seem like she could deliver our entire financing goal easily – even going so far as to tell Jaime that she was 90% certain she could get the money.  Well, if you tell that to two guys who are eager to set the world alight with a new kick-butt TV series, they’re obviously going to ask you to step up to the plate and deliver.

If Hillary had simply gotten back to us and said, “he said no,” that would have been fine.  Case closed on that prospect; on to others.  And we had plenty of people yet to speak with.

Instead, Hillary chose to lie when she told us she hadn’t heard anything.  She tried to ingratiate herself into the actual production of THE FIXER and secure her own standing there before telling us it was a no.  And by doing so, all she actually guaranteed was that we would never trust her or employ her in any fashion.

As we’ve found, people will say almost anything.  But getting them to step up and deliver is something else.  We don’t have time for liars.

Only for success at what we’ve committed ourselves to achieving.

Enjoying TV GUYS? Join THE FIXER group on Facebook and show your support!

Uncomfortably Numb

My Claim to Fame: Part 2

by Michael James, motocross racer, journalist, screenwriter

As I mentioned previously I jumped into screenwriting full steam ahead. But that was mid-2001 when I met my friend and producer John Nemec (more on John in forthcoming articles). As we all know what happened later in the year, the world changed with the terrorist attacks of the World Trade Centers. That was the day the world lost its innocence and for better or worse my job as a columnist at that point was to speak my truth, not the false truths being splashed across the television screen for the following weeks, but my own personal and painful truth. The article that follows is exactly as it ran in the issue of MX East that ran soon after the WTC attacks happened. Where I live is a little over a mile from the banks of the Hudson River and from the Yonkers Pier I could see the buildings burning, all the while knowing people, thousands of people were inside them.  I have often been accused of writing straight from the heart and this piece was no exception; I can re-read it now and the tears and emotions well up as if  9-11 was yesterday. All writers have their own style and the trick –and my advice- is to stay your course, don’t imitate someone else’s style; speak and write your truth… the world will eventually come around to it.

Write on,

Michael

"Uncomfortably Numb"

By the time you will read this I am sure you will be aware of the tragedy that has struck America for the second time in it short history. A gutsy but ill-advised enemy has snuck inside the gate and did irreparable harm to our land, our people, and our psyche. Fifty six years ago, Japancame waltzing into Pearl Harbor and sucked us into World War Two.  Now an insane Islamic coward has tried to initiate the start of World War Three. 

It is now 4 A.M. New York time on September 12th, and I have just gotten off the couch in the basement to come up to bed. Needless to say I didn’t get to sleep after a day of watching my fellow New Yorkers live through the hellish nightmare of a terrorist attack.

            At 8:50 A.M. yesterday morning, I got a call from my girlfriend, Susan, who works at Rockefeller Center, which is not far away from the World Trade Center. Susan was in a panic as she looked out her window many floors above the Manhattan streets and told me an airplane just crashed into the Twin Towers. I ran to the third floor of the building where I report to work at the telephone company and turned on the TV in the lounge. What I saw boggled my mind and little did I know this was only the beginning of a grim fairy tale. I told a few of the workers who were not busy what had happened and immediately the urgency of the situation unfolded as people who overheard ran from their desks and broke down crying when they saw the images on the screen. They had husbands and sisters that worked high above the streets in one of those buildings.

            My heart sank when I saw the look of desperation on their faces. As more people filed into the lounge, we all were still thinking that some pilot lost his way or had a heart attack and couldn’t steer the plane. The initial reports were that of a Cessna or other small plane and we wanted to believe that. But the amount of smoke and fire billowing from the building didn’t correlate to a small plane. It is amazing what the human mind can force itself to believe when faced with the unbelievable. As the Channel 7 (ABC) news copter hovered and sent us the drama, we could see a large plane bank left and veer around tower number one which was in the foreground of the shot and go behind it. Four seconds later and orange explosion erupted in tower two, which sat in the background. It looked like a bomb had been set off and we realized that this was a terrorist attack. Little did we know at the time that this was the jumbo jet we had seen fly past that was crashing through the middle floors of the 110-story structure.

We were floored as we stood there watching and the two women who had relatives that worked in the Trade Center went into panic mode. Their piercing screams ripped at the heart of even the toughest men standing there. We all felt their pain as they tried to make frantic calls to their loved ones but most of us were too mesmerized by the images on the screen to even move from where we stood. Verizon had many major trunk lines that passed through the W.T.C. and the telephone switches were on overload as word filtered out and calls from loved ones tried to funnel through the log-jammed switches as a result of the calls being re-routed around W.T.C.  Susan, in the meantime, was giving me a blow by blow of the first couple of minutes of the invasion. Within seconds, I could hear people in Susan's background yelling and screaming and Susan running with the pack. Her heavy breathing made me realize that she was too close to ground zero for my comfort. I was scared senseless and fought to not let her hear it in my voice.

She said they were evacuating Rockefeller Center and that she would call me when she next could. For the next hour, I proceeded to bite off the ends of my fingernails and call as many people as I could to see if they were okay. I didn’t know it at the time, but my best friend, Terry was a mere two blocks away when the first plane hit. He would later recount to me that the blast of the first plane hitting the building knocked him and others on the entire block off their feet. He would tell of the panic that struck people and the horror of looking behind them and seeing their once-invincible symbol of American might, American manhood burning like some prop on a blockbuster disaster movie.

All of the images for the next several hours were surreal… like we were all in a collective nightmare that none of us could wake up from. In the movie 'Independence Day' there is a scene where the aliens blasted Manhattan to bits that was all too realistic and my mind kept trying to wake up from this real-life movie shoot. I didn’t want to see any more of it. Someone, please…turn the TV off, turn the lights on, wake me up from this unwanted nightmare. But there was no letup. My cell phone rang again and it was Susan. She was now outside and telling me that people were panicking and running all over the place, trampling anyone and anything in their path. She spoke of a woman who was running with her baby in her arms and of how this baby was knocked to the ground and repeatedly stepped on by the panicking crowd running for their own lives. I was in tears now and knew that anything at all was possible in this lifetime.

Susan, along with thousands of other workers, was trying to flee the heart of the attack. Pandemonium was the order of the day even though the rescue workers were on hand in a matter of minutes. When the word filtered down that the orange explosion, we saw was the 767 jumbo jet I too fell into panic and begged Susan to run like hell and get to a safe place. The cell lines as well as the land lines were now dangerously slow, locked up, or non-existent. My heart sank further when we were cut off. I turned to the television set again to see what was happening, hoping for information that could prove useful to Susan when she called again. By now almost every employee had left their desks and gathered in the cafeteria to look in horror at the destruction that was unfolding. I can’t express the multitude of feelings that flowed from all of us. There was fear, shock, anger and outrage at the inhuman horrors we were watching, relief that it wasn’t happening to us, and guilt that we were happy it wasn’t happening to us.

For another hour, I was heartsick not knowing what happened to Susan as there was a near communications blackout. I prayed and left the outcome to God. For moments I had lost faith in Him. How could God let this kind of thing happen? How can anything borne of human flesh have so callous a heart as to orchestrate something this horrendous? The scenes were like a hatchet through the skull; the pain and the reality of it all was mind numbing and emotions left my body and came back in waves… waves too big for me to swim above. I hated humanity for our ability to create weapons and think of treachery capable of planning such an evil, heinous, unprovoked attack.

By this time, I had gotten a cell call from my ex-wife, Dawn, who was in tears asking me to pick our son Brian up from school. She would get our daughter Jessica and take them to her job at the sugar factory. There was no work for her to do as her industry lives and dies by the commodities trading which was shut down at this point due to the lack of communications. Brian seemed in a daze when we met at the main office of his high school. Fourteen-year-old children were not meant to see the kind of destruction we were enduring. They aren’t supposed to feel the fear that I saw in his eyes as he wondered out loud of the possibilities of more attacks where we were.

Manhattan is less than six miles away from the city of Yonkers as the crow flies. I did my best to explain to him what was happening and who is likely behind it: a multi-millionaire madman who has convinced the peasants of the world that America is bad because we all are richer than them and are intent on keeping them and their faith down. All the while "Osama Big Loudmouth” is hiding the fact that his own personal fortune could easily help pull his own countrymen out of their impoverished life if that was his intent in the first place.

By 5 P.M., it was time to leave work – I got absolutely nothing done today-- and the whole city of Yonkers seemed like a ghost town. Not that there weren’t any people around, there were plenty, but there was a silence that is indescribable. No one spoke at all... no one looked up to your face, and no one smiled. The sky was eerily tranquil. It was such a beautiful day to live, not a beautiful day to die. The waves of pain inside was crushing as the magnitude of what had taken place weighed heavily on our shoulders. The skies were deafeningly quiet as the whole country shut down all air traffic save for the occasional F-16 fighter jets that strafed the Hudson River. Not even the birds were flying much. The fighter jets were so fast that if you were lucky enough to see one, it would streak by silently and five seconds later, you would hear the thunderous roar of the engines on full afterburner. I felt hope seeing the jet jockeys up there knowing they would not be taking prisoners should anything else come up.

I was uncomfortably numb by the time I drove through the pockets of people huddled on various street corners.  Even the bad guys/drug dealers in the seedy neighborhoods were stunned and looking scared as they huddled in front of the stoops where they lived. They looked so scared, so innocent, so vulnerable, and so… human. I stopped to talk to every telephone service technician I drove past for there was nothing to do but talk about it and vent a little as this was too much for any person to digest on their own. It just defied logic that what we saw really happened. We saw structures that were hundreds of feet wide and nearly a quarter of a mile high fall to the ground like a crumbling deck of cards... all the while knowing that there were still thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people still inside. The only saving grace is that their deaths were swift; they didn't suffer long and drawn out deaths.

As I stood there talking to Marcus, a co-worker, an Arabic woman and her two children walked past us and I must tell you that the rage that built up inside me was quite ugly. I had to fight the urge to do harm to her and her kids. I had to remember that they too are Americans and have nothing to do with the antics of a madman, an Anti-Christ with a heart as cold as Jesus’ was full of love. I had to pull my faith back and remember that I am not alone, I am not dead, and as a journalist, have an obligation to help rebuild this mighty nation’s pride. I have an obligation as an American to hold my head high and not let the savage jaws of terrorism steal my sunshine, steal my joy at living and steal the dignity away from those who perished yesterday for simply doing what all good Americans do: go to work. If these religious zealots could see the work, time and effort that it takes to make America the great country she is, they would have less time for jealousy and put more effort into building up their own countries. I am not rich like Osama "Big Loudmouth," and likely you aren’t either, but we are vilified by people an ocean away for the fact that we live in the richest country in the world. For a moment I wish these zealots would see that America's wealth is not it's true strength, it is the strength of her people that makes her wealthy.

I wish to ask that anyone reading this say a prayer for the victims, their family and friends, and for all people of this great land. I pray that we recover and rebuild, rebuild the two monuments that were destroyed to honor those who lost their lives. We must never forget them and the world community must now act in a swift and decisive way to ensure that the germ, the stench that is terrorism be eradicated from this planet for good. The world is changed forever and history will record this day, September 11th, 2001, as the day the entire world lost its innocence. By the way, Susan and Terry both made it home safely.

TV Guys - Episode 4 - Waiting for Decisions

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV show The Fixer 

Bob, Rose’s Chief Executive, had initially told us that we’d have an answer by the end of the week.  Rose was going to take my novels and head home, give them a read, and then let us know if she wanted to get involved.  We said great.  We could wait a few days no problem.

Friday came and went without a call.

Any sales professional will tell you that the longer it takes to get an answer out of a prospect, the more likely it is that it will be a no.  The sale goes cold.  So, when the weekend passed, Jaime and I made sure to call on Monday.  Rose, however, wasn’t around since she’d flown down to her six million dollar home in Florida.  Her assistant would give her the message that we’d called.
   
We kept waiting.

Days turned into weeks.  And our initial optimism about the meeting quickly started to dwindle.  Rose was nowhere to be found.  She was busy.  Messages were passed on to her (presumably) and we kept up the calls.

In the meantime, we’d started a group for the project out on Facebook.  We had a few hundred members and I took pains to search for Rose’s sons on Facebook and friend them.  They accepted my request and I then promptly invited them to join THE FIXER group.  They both did.  This helped restore some measure of hope in me, but the continued failure of Rose to contact us nibbled away at any of the confidence I felt.

Jaime and I replayed the meeting over and over again, trying to dissect and see where we might have made mistakes.  We Monday-morning quarterbacked that thing so often and we both came away with one conclusion: we could not have prepared any more or done things any better than we did.  If we lost this prospect, it simply wasn’t meant to be.

That slammed home a hard truth: while it’s absolutely vital to be as totally prepared as possible for any meeting like this, preparation does not win the game.  It only makes defeat a little less likely.  There are still plenty of variables that can derail what looks to be a promising partnership.  And most of those variables are things you can’t prepare for.  That makes it all the tougher to take when things go badly.

Finally, after the better part of a month, my cell phone rang.  The number that popped up on to the screen matched the number on Bob’s card.  (I’d positioned Bob’s card right atop my keyboard from the day I’d returned from the meeting knowing that he would eventually call us.)

His assistant said hello when I answered and asked me to hold while she patched Bob through.  I took a few deep breaths and steeled myself for the conversation, my heart thundering in my chest.  Memories of the dangerous situations I’d been lucky enough to survive during my life flashed through my head as adrenaline raced through my system.  It seemed to me that I had stepped out on to another kind of battlefield, one where hope is the casualty of war.

Bob came on the line.  We exchanged the obligatory pleasantries.  I noticed he made no apology for the enormous length of time it had taken them to reach whatever conclusion he was about to deliver.

“So, you know, we don’t know very much about the entertainment industry.”

I frowned.  We’d covered this already in the meeting.  “It’s new ground for you,” I said.  “I understand.”

“Yes, so I know Rose was really interested in pursuing this, but her advisors think it’s a bit too risky at the moment.  I really don’t think this is going to be the right move for us right now.  Especially since we’d be the lead investors on the project.”

This was true.  We didn’t have any other investors at that time.  If Rose decided to come onboard, she would be our first and most prominent investor.

Bob continued.  “So, what I’d suggest is you guys keep doing what you’re doing.  We had a great meeting – very impressed with the both of you – and if you can find some other investors, we want you to come back and talk to us.”

My heart sank.  This wasn’t what I’d hoped to hear.  “So, you’re saying Rose wants to boogie.  She just doesn’t want to be the first person out on the dance floor.”

Bob laughed.  “That’s about it, exactly.”
   
I thanked him for his time and said we’d be in touch.  I hung up.  Devastated.  We’d had a great meeting.  Rose clearly wanted to get involved, but her money people had convinced her it was too risky.

I called Jaime and told him the news.  We were both floored.  Pissed off.  Why, we wanted to know, would anyone worth about a billion dollars take financial advice from people who weren’t even millionaires?  Rose had seemed like a strong woman who was capable of making her own decisions.  But apparently not.

We allowed ourselves an hour to mourn the fact that we hadn’t succeeded. 

Yet.

Then it was back to searching.

As one last gasp at trying anything, I reached out to both of Rose’s sons and asked if they would be interested in coming on-board for a smaller investment.  Jaime and I figured that a couple of young playboy types might really enjoy doing something like this.  But neither son showed any interest, citing the exact same reasons that Bob had told me on the phone.  Too risky.

Until we had another investor, Rose was a dead-end.

We took the hit in stride.  Both Jaime and I have dealt with a lot of tough things in our lives.  We still had a killer project that we knew was going to be an immense success.  All we had to do was find someone with the courage and foresight to recognize its greatness.

The next morning we went back to work.

(Next time: The search continues!)

My Claim to Fame: From Motocross to Screenwriter

by Michael James, motocross racer, journalist, screenwriter

 

I started off wanting to write children's books. Lots of classes and subsequent stacks of rejection letters later I realized I wasn't going to make it.

An article in a Writer's Digest issue suggested "write what you know."  On a whim while I tried to figure out what I wanted to write about I sent in several slogans to a company in Oregon named Ephemera, they sell bumper stickers and such. Three made the finals and one was picked and made into a product_"I Don't Do Mornings"_ which I have since seen all over the place. The high I got from getting paid to write was indescribable and it pushed me further along in the game.  

After long pondering the situation, I remembered the crazy, funny stories of my days as an amateur motocross racer and put pen to paper. Around that time a buddy and fellow racer had just started a district level paper about the local racing scene and I submitted an article to him; it was printed and the guy asked for more. After three articles I realized it must be good work and requested to get paid for them. I learned the next lesson in the writing game when It took another two months before I finally cornered him and got my 75 dollar check for the three pieces. Long story short, I got an article in a program for a monster truck event he was promoting and that led to another article in the program for the prestigious USGP motocross race in Budds Creek, Maryland and meeting Davey Coombs.

By coincidence of the two articles I had in my hands, I handed Davey the one that mentioned Evel Knievel --I had no idea Evel is Davey's hero. He  printed the article in his underground newspaper Racer X Illustrated and every query for freelance work I sent after that I got based solely on having been in RXI.  The paper went on to become the most read glossy magazine in motocross history.

I  then secured my own column,"Northern Exposure," in MX Southern Style which became MX East and then MX America. I quickly gained a fan base and my confidence grew in leaps and bounds. I secured columns in MRA, a Pennsylvania based motocross paper and in Raceway news, the official paper of Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey.

Even local Pro racers were sending me mail saying how much they enjoyed my articles. I was the voice for a generation of dirt bikers who made them feel good about what they did and each other. While the general public looked at us like adrenaline junkies or daredevil freaks on a death wish....we were nether. We were athletes who lived for our sport, our families, and our friends.  

At one point I even had a reader send a letter to the MX America saying that when they read my articles it wasn't like I was writing for thousands of people but to them directly. That meant a lot to me and I realized I wanted to reach more people... I decided screenwriting was the ticket.  I even went as far as missing a car payment on my Mustang GT at the time to take the McKee screen writing class.

From the beginning it has taken seven years (I started in earnest in 2001) to go from journalist to screenwriter (they are polar opposites) and eight drafts to get Hollywood's attention. Now draft nine is in place with high hopes of a nice check and career change to follow. Stay tuned... the best is yet to come.

Write on,                                                                                                                                                                                         Michael

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MichaelJames_NY

 

 

 

TV Guys - Episode 3 - Meetings

 

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV show The Fixer 

(Please note: all names have been changed in the interests of protecting the privacy of the people we've met with on this journey.)

The morning last February dawned bright and cold.  Jaime and I suited up and prepared to enter a meeting with a woman who could easily hand us a check for $20 million and never bat an eyelash.  Our hopes, to say the least, were huge. 

Rose was a widow and her husband had started one of the largest private companies n the US, employing tens of thousands of people.  Their business was in recycling metal and a variety of related businesses.  When Rose's husband died, control of the company passed to her.  We’d never heard of them until Jaime had pulled up Rose’s information and succeeded in getting us in for a meeting.

We brought several copies of the prospectus with us to go over.  In addition, our graphic design genius Ari had put together a few great posters that she’d mocked up despite being horribly sick.  Since we didn’t yet have our leading man, the person in the poster was deliberately in shadow.  However, we felt that having a visual aid would help this woman visualize what THE FIXER would eventually look like.

Jaime and I drove into the financial district of Boston for the meeting and arrived five minutes early.  Upstairs in the non-descript, but elegant office, we were shown into a conference room.  We immediately noticed that there were six chairs set out.  We had anticipated pitching only to the woman in question.  It turned out we had a larger audience.

The first person who breezed into the room was Bob and he introduced himself with a hearty handshake and smile.  “I hope you don’t mind me sitting in on this.  Rose asked me to look over your materials and I’ve got a few questions.”

Far be it for us to say no, right?  Rose then entered the meeting and was gracious and warm in her greeting.  Her first words to us were, “Well, you’re not what I expected.”

Apparently, when she heard that a couple of guys from Boston wanted to make a vampire show, the first image that popped into her head was that we would be dressed in Gothic fashion with tattoos and piercings.  Instead, she got two suited business professionals.  Score one for us.

Behind Rose came her two twenty-something sons, who, according to Bob, “Don’t get a chance to do something like this everyday, so we invited them to sit in on this, too.”  The guys were both nice enough and only looked vaguely disinterested.

We all took our seats and Bob brought out a copy of our prospectus that Rose had provided him.  All over this document was bright red ink and scrawled questions.  Bob smiled.  “I’ve been looking over your presentation and I’ve got just a few questions for you…”

For the next sixty minutes, Bob fired salvo after salvo at me.  Jaime sat quietly by and it seemed that Bob was focused solely on me.  Perhaps because they were my novels we were talking about turning into a TV series.  But for sixty minutes there was no let up in his assault.  This was a man who knew exactly what questions to ask of any business in order to make a judgment call about investing.  It was impressive, to say the least.

Bob had questions on every conceivable aspect of our proposal.  He went through the sales figures, budgets, casting, crew, book sales, and pretty much every possible thing he could.  I answered his questions evenly and without pause.  And for the most part, he seemed satisfied with the responses.  Yes, obviously this was new territory.  No, no one has tried this before.  Yes, there is risk.  But there’s also great reward.

And so it went.  At the end o sixty minutes, Bob paused and said (thankfully), “Well, that’s all I’ve got.”  He then looked around the table, first at Rose and then her sons.  After Bob’s barrage, the other questions were a joy to field.

Bob’s role in Rose’s company was of Chief Executive, so it’s no wonder that he really took us through the wringer.  We’d never expected an easy sale and $20 million is one hell of a lot of money.  But Bob was also fair and I respected him immensely for his candor.  Where he didn’t know about the industry, he readily admitted so.  And our presentation became as much a tutorial on the entertainment industry as it did our addressing his concerns.

The biggest hurdle, it appeared, was the fact that they, like other wealthy Bostonians, simply didn’t make any money in the entertainment field.  Convincing them that they could was our biggest challenge.

Finally, Rose stood and said, “Well, I’m really looking to do something different.  And this certainly is different.”  We took that as a great sign.  I’d brought copies of my novels and handed them around from my dwindling supply.  Rose took copies of each and told us she was going to read them and let us know what she thought.

We all shook hands and thanked them for having us come in and that was that.  Outside, Jaime and I walked back to the car and sat there catching our breath.  I had a pounding headache and felt like I’d just run a marathon.  I’d been in pitch meetings before with film and TV types, but those were an absolute dream compared to what we’d just endured.  Bob had never been rude or insulting, he’d just been persistent with his line of questioning. 

Now we had to do the most uncomfortable thing of all: wait.

(Note:  Enjoying reading about our experiences turning THE FIXER into reality?  Want to get involved?  We still have room for a few investors if you’re interested or know someone who might be.  Drop us a line at jonfmerz@verizon.net)

 

TV Guys - Episode 2 - The Search for Money

(When last we left, Jon & Jaime, partners at New Ronin Productions, had just decided to produce their own television series THE FIXER based on Jon's Lawson Vampire novels.  But they needed money to do that - a lot of money...)

Based on our budget for producing thirteen one-hour episodes, plus an additional 14th episode that would be released only on the DVD set, and the purchase of a small facility for a sound stage, green screen, and post-production, we estimated that we would need $20 million to fund THE FIXER.  That’s a lot of money, but far less than what networks routinely spend.

Jon F. Merz

Once you start delving into Hollywood, you find out that networks usually spend up to $4 million on a pilot episode alone.  Additional episodes range anywhere from high six-figures to $2-$3 million.  Then there are the amortization costs that networks and production companies add on that further drive up the cost. 

But we were most definitely not Hollywood. 

And we had assembled a team of people who knew how to get things done without a bloated bottom line.  Further, the people who had come on-board the team were more interested in being a part of something big rather than simply cashing a paycheck.

Keeping that budget in mind, we set about doing sales forecasts of what we could reasonably expect to make on broadcast rights sales domestically, internationally, and through DVD sales, and digital downloads. 

We knew that a $20 million investment would require a $30 million payback ($20 million + 50% ROI for our investors) plus whatever we hoped to make as profit.  And our hopes were that we would make enough beyond what we owed to set up a second season of THE FIXER and possibly start some other projects as well.

Our worst-case sales projections came in at $35 million (cumulative from all sales channels) and our best sales projections were well over $100 million. 

Emboldened by these numbers, we didn’t necessarily feel that seeking $20 million was too far-fetched.  It would still require a deft touch to even get in the front door with potential investors, however. 

My partner Jaime has just that touch.  He’s a gifted speaker and is empathic and driven about what he believes in.  And whereas I loathe the prospect of cold calling anyone, Jaime has no qualms about picking up the phone and talking to absolutely anyone about what we are doing.

Jaime did some research on New England’s wealthiest people and started calling them up.  Just like that.  Inevitably, he would get a personal assistant on the line or someone in charge of filtering out potential nut jobs.  But Jaime very seldom ran into anyone who wasn’t interested in hearing about THE FIXER.

We soon had a prospect.  While I won’t disclose any names of the people we dealt with out of respect for their privacy, all of our initial pitches were to billionaires in our area.

Billionaire #1’s personal assistant just happened to be a vampire fan.  That’s always a good thing.  And when she heard about THE FIXER, she couldn’t wait to tell her boss about us.  And she did just that.  We sent over our confidential prospectus and waited.  After several weeks, Jaime spoke to her.  She told Jaime that her boss was interested, but wanted to run it past his son, who apparently worked out in Hollywood at his own production company.

We said fine and waited some more.  Jaime called again and was told that the son thought the idea was spectacular.  Great, we thought, this is it.  A home run the first time out.  When do we sign?

But this particular billionaire thought that rather than get involved himself, that THE FIXER would be a perfect vehicle for his son’s production company – would we be open to that?

Of course we would!

And that, of course, is where everything fell apart.  Because, unbeknownst to us, we had wandered into the middle of a father/son feud.  After doing some research on the son’s production company and discovering that neither of his two projects to date had made any money, we wondered about the nature of the company.  Jaime called to speak with the assistant again and was told that as soon as her boss suggested to his son that he work with us, all hell broke loose.  The son didn’t like his father telling him what he should do and who he should work with and stormed out of the house to fly back to Los Angeles in a big huff.

Oooookay, we said, how about if we just work with the dad then?  You know, the billionaire himself?

But now the father didn’t want to have anything to do with it since it reminded him of the rift with his son.  And our first golden opportunity evaporated in front of our eyes all because of a stupid little spat.

Jaime hadn’t been idle during our long wait and had lined up several other potentials.  He would call them up and make the pitch and then I would fire off all the emails with our prospectus.  We were developing a great teamwork approach to finding suitable investors and pitching them, but our reception was anything but warm.

Most of them had no idea how Hollywood worked.  New England’s rich make their money in technology, real estate, healthcare and one or two other isolated industries far removed from the glitz of Los Angeles.

But we wanted someone local backing the project.  This was a New England production, we said, and it should really have someone behind it from the area. 

So, as we pitched, we had to educate.  We explained and became conversant on the myriad ways Hollywood makes its money (actually, wink-wink, Hollywood doesn’t make any money at all.  Nope, not a dime.  Never.  Everything they launch goes into the red and no one ever gets paid.  Seriously.  Here, have a bridge, too.)

And then we found someone else who wanted to meet with us.  She was local.  She was wealthy.  And she wanted to “do something different.”

Well, we were different.  And we finally had a chance to pitch her in person.

Next week: The Money Pitch

TV Guys - Episode 1 - A Crazy Idea

 (Today's guest blogger is Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV show The Fixer )

If I were pitching my current project as a movie in Hollywood, here’s what the logline would sound like:  “Two guys with no real experience in the television business decide to ask private investors to front them millions so they can produce 13 episodes of a new supernatural TV series that they will then sell broadcast rights to domestically and internationally, thereby hopefully making hundreds of millions of dollars and turning the entire Hollywood business model on its head.”

Sounds absolutely ludicrous, right?

But that is, in fact, what my business partner Jaime and I are doing.  Let me back up for a moment and give you a few more details.

I’m a writer.  I’ve had over a dozen novels published, co-authored two non-fiction books, had scores of short stories appear in print alongside some heavy hitters like Stephen King, and have written ad copy for everyone from Polaroid to Red Lobster Restaurants.  I’ve scripted comics, screenplays, and turned four 3-minute webisodes into a novel.  I don’t just write in one medium, preferring instead to try my hand at anything that helps me bump my game up to the next level.

Over the years, I’ve flirted a lot with Hollywood.  There’s been some serious sexual tension, culminating a few times with deals that looked reasonably good on paper. But I’ve never jumped into the sack and here’s why:  Hollywood doesn’t pay writers enough.

If you’re interested in how Hollywood makes its money, there is no finer book to read than THE BIG PICTURE: Money & Power in Hollywood by Edward James Epstein.  I read that book several years ago and it opened my eyes.

Novelists especially tend to have a very fairytale image of Hollywood.  They imagine that if they write a book, that Hollywood will come calling with an option (this is a small price – almost a rental fee, really – giving the producer or exec the ability to shop the project around and possibly secure financing, cast, crew, etc. within a certain time frame (usually 6-18 months)) or an outright rights purchase.  If the movie then gets made, the studio will cut the writer a handsome check and the novelist gets the thrill of seeing their book turned into a movie.

When I started cutting my teeth in publishing, I imagined it would be this same amazing love story.  What I didn’t count on was the interminable wait, the endless teases, and the fact that Hollywood doesn’t want novelists writing anything or sticking their noses anywhere into the process.

Some writers can live with that.  They take the money and run, knowing that the end result may well be such an extreme departure from their original novel that it bears resemblance in name only – if they’re lucky.

But when studios wanted my work, I knew what they could reasonably expect to make off of my creations.  And I wanted more than they were offering.  Of course they balked and all the whispered promises evaporated.

Last year, exhausted at the number of television shows that were coming out that were, to be overly kind, crap, my friend Jaime and I sat down and discussed the idea of trying to do something ourselves.

When we hashed out the concept of using my un-vampire vampire series of novels as our first project, the first person I bounced the idea off of was a good friend of mine who works in the film/TV industry.  He’s well-known, so I won’t mention his name here, but he pretty much knows everyone worth knowing in Los Angeles and New York City.  I called him and told him what we were planning.  Then I asked him if we were crazy.

What he told me was this:  “If you can make this work, then the sky is the limit.  You will open doors that have never been open to you before and you will change the way Hollywood works in TV.”  Then he offered to come on and be part of our executive board.

That was good enough for us.  We started New Ronin Productions and chose THE FIXER as our first project.  Ronin, in feudal Japan, were masterless samurai – called “wave men” because they owed allegiance to no lord.  The name felt appropriate and our mission seemed sound, albeit tough as hell.

We would find private investors willing to back us in the production of thirteen episodes for the first season.  (Networks usually greenlight, or approve, a pilot and then order up to twelve additional episodes for a first season run).  We would put a team together to shoot, edit, and package the series, as well as sell it domestically and internationally.  I would write all the episodes, thereby guaranteeing that the sanctity of my novels stayed intact and that I had complete control over the story lines and characters.  The novels take place in New England; the cast and crew would be from New England; and we hoped that our investors would also be from the region.  THE FIXER would be born and raised in our backyard.  We thought that was pretty cool.

We enlisted two experienced directors who had worked in both television and independent films for years (therefore they knew how to work on a tight budget).  Our sales force was composed of industry vets who had shepherded major films to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales.  Experienced vets and up-and-comers made up our crew.  And our art & marketing department worked hard to develop a consistent look for our flagship project.  You can see the results thus far at our official website.

But we needed money to pull this off.  There was no business precedent whose plan we could use to attract investors, so we put it together after weeks of research into Hollywood budgets, sales forecasts, and more.  Trying to divulge what Hollywood spends and what it makes is harder than cracking into the National Security Agency, but at long last, we felt we had a workable business prospectus.

Our offer was generous; we knew it had to be.  We offered a 50% return on investment within 24 months to those who chose to back us.  The task now was to try to convince wealthy Bostonians and New Englanders that a TV series entirely produced in their backyard was a viable and worthwhile investment.

But first, we had to find them.  And then we had to get in the front door…

-Jon F. Merz

Next week, TV Guys returns with an inside look at how Jon & Jaime tracked down wealthy potential investors and pitched them on THE FIXER.