Advice from the World’s Second Greatest Netflix Pitcher

Lots of people ask me how I manage to produce so many pitches. These days everyone wants to be in the business, and they’ve seen on my blog that I’ve averaged 7.46 pitches per day over the last three-plus years. I don’t want to sound self-aggrandizing, but I think some people are awed by that number. They think I must have some secret, but the truth is the only advice I can give is the classic advice for all writers: pitch what you know. When you look at it right, your own life has endless wells of inspiration.

Let me demonstrate with some of the pitches I have generated just today.

Cerealympics. Contestants in this game show are given simulacra of their real children and have to drag them through a series of physically challenging obstacles to win the prize of a family vacation to a sponsoring amusement park. The dummy will be created with 3-D modeling and printing technology to look exactly like one of the contestant’s real children. Challenges include dragging the 50-pound dummy out of a top bunk and dressing it in age-appropriate clothing as it thrashes and resists, cramming as much cereal as possible into the simulacrum’s synthetic gullet as the bus timer ticks down, and running through the house to find deviously hidden books and worksheets that have to be thrust into the “child’s” backpack before the buzzer sounds. The final challenge is to throw the fully dressed and accoutred simulacrum into the open door of a moving school bus. The highlight of the show will be the intense reaction shots of the contestants’ real families as the lifelike dummy either makes it into the bus or is crushed under its giant wheels. / Wacky Game Show, popular with families and children

Wife’s Goodbye. Every episode of this series opens with the same exchange. The wife is standing in the driveway a few feet from the driver’s door of her car. The husband is peering under the hood of his car, parked in the protection of the garage. The wife says, “Don’t you wanna go out today?” He glances up before replying, “I gotta get this car working first.” He turns back to his work. She gives him one last sad look, pregnant with all her disappointment at how his failure has hobbled her life and her desperate wish that today will be the day he comes out of it. But she gives up, starts her car, and pulls away. The rest of each episode cuts back and forth between the protagonists’ lives, as she finds escalating adventures, and he tries to figure out why his car won’t start. We see her invited onto a private helicopter that whisks her to a secluded ocean beach or led blindfolded into a salon where a live chamber music ensemble plays for the participants in an orgy. We see him turning a socket wrench and feeling around under his back to find a lost part. At the conclusion of each episode, the husband and wife come back together in the evening and each ask the other how their day was. They both answer, “Fine.” / Relationship Drama, popular with women 35+

The Doorbell Tolls for Thee. An inventor working in his home laboratory on a quantum mechanism that can change the present by “re-rolling” events in the past is interrupted by the trill of the doorbell. He opens the door to a smiling mailman. He is about to berate the mailman for interrupting his labors of genius when the mailman pulls a pistol out of his mailbag. The inventor dives and flees through the house, escaping out the back door as bullets ping all around him. The mailman turns out to be part of a sinister cabal led by the inventor’s former college roommate (who once, by the way, tried to kiss the girl the inventor liked, so he should have known). The cabal now controls the re-roller and sets out to remake the present and take over control of the U.S. government. Little do they know that the inventor had a stopper key in his bathrobe when he fled, and in each episode he fights to prevent a new scheme of the cabal’s. / Scifi Suspense, popular with men 36-48

Pickle on Top. A seemingly normal man one day builds what has to be the perfect sandwich. It has a layer of turkey folded exactly to the edges of the bread, two slices of alabaster cheese trimmed with paring scissors, a passionate whorl of lettuce that looks like it could have been sculpted by Bernini, a meaty tomato slice, and two glistening sandwich-style pickle slices laid over the top like virgins on an altar. But when the cat unexpectedly thumps the man’s calf, his hand twitches, and everything from the lettuce up tumbles to the ground. His rage is so great that it actually changes his blood chemistry and he finds he has the power to make vegetables explode. He is filled with desire for revenge and begins a career of crime, terrorizing the farmers’ markets of the Upper Peninsula until his climactic battle with the tractor-driving Mr. Flannel. / Superhero Drama, popular with men 18-35

It’s still only about 1:30. I have a lot of time left to beat my average today. It’s important to stay focused. Most of the people you’ve heard of who’ve produced shows have nowhere near as many pitches as I do. The production, casting, and editing time all just take too much away from generating new pitches.

You might wonder why I’m not in the Guinness Book of Records. Yeah, there’s this seventeen-year-old in Bulgaria named Krasimir Petrov who has been pitching Netflix since he was 10. He claims he averages 8.71 pitches a day. And even though he takes the Orthodox Christmas and Easter off, I haven’t caught him yet. Maybe one day he’ll break an… That gives me another idea.

Pitching Assassination. Two rival pitch writers, one in an old apartment block in Bulgaria and one in a split-level ranch in the Upper Peninsula, are locked in a tense battle to win the crown of world’s most prolific pitcher. One day the pitcher in Michigan decides to hire an assassin to take out his rival. He hires his brother’s old friend from middle school who’s been in and out of lockup all his adult life. While riding the train from Munich to Sofia with a pistol and silencer tucked in his jacket, the assassin researches his target and reads some of his pitches. Inspired by the art form, the assassin writes a pitch based on his own life and after checking into his Bulgarian hotel learns that Netflix has bought the rights for $2 million. He heads off to run the new show, which eventually becomes immensely popular, and leaves the two great pitchers locked in their epic battle. / Action Drama, popular with men and women 13+