Alright, Let’s Talk About These Fucking Reality Show Pitches
This may be a controversial statement to make on a screenwriting blog, but make it I shall. If I had to choose between watching a trash ass reality show and watching a middle-of-the-road multi-cam network sitcom, I would sprint to that reality show before you could even finish asking me the question.
It’s not that I’m a massive reality TV fan or anything like that. Although I’ll admit to being an ironic watcher of The Masked Singer and Four Weddings and an unironic watcher of The Great British Bake-Off. Also, I bought every season of Jersey Shore on DVD to write what ended up being a ten page paper during my sophomore year of college, and the I Love New York DVDs made for some fantastic drinking ga— I mean, I’ve never watched any other reality TV in my life.
The bottom line is that I’m above nothing, and at the very least, reality TV is more honest about what it is and what it’s trying to sell. Most network sitcoms promise wholesomeness and comedy, but really, all they have to offer is a dull all-consuming nothing.
I say all this to make a simple point. This is not an article about why reality TV is bad or irresponsible. In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say that the argument that reality TV led to some mass moral degradation was always dumb, and even it it wasn’t, it’s not an argument worth having anymore. “Everybody knows that the war is over” and all that good stuff.
Now that all that is out of the way, I promised you all an article about terrible reality pitches, and I’m a man of my word.
Why bother, other than the aforementioned promise? Two reasons. The first is fairly simple. I think they’re funny, and I imagine a lot of you will as well. (Okay, two of them are funny.) But the second and more important reason is that I think they offer a glimpse into the mind of the untalented. Those who think that all you need to do is chase trends and you’ll be successful. (And the sad truth that some of those people may be right.) We’re about to enter a portal into the mind of the hack, and if any of their line of thinking looks familiar to you and your writing career, maybe this is your come-to-god moment. I genuinely hope this helps, and if it doesn’t, at least we’ll have some laughs.
It should also be noted that I read all these pitches at my first gig. All of these pitches came from the same group of people in the form of Powerpoints explaining what the shows would be, who would ideally star in them, how they would work, and where they were hoping to sell them. There were five, but these are the three that stand out. Also, I’m working from memory here, so I might get a detail or two wrong. (Apart from the ones I’m leaving out for the sake of confidentiality.)
Let’s dive in!
Pitch 1: Pimp My Ride, But Teenage House Parties
The show would start by finding a nerdy high school kid.
We get to learn about his nerdy life. Presumably, he has a bunch of nerdy hobbies and wears nerdy clothes and roams around with a pack of nerdy nerds who do nerd shit like read books or study for school or write horrible things about women on the internet.
The solution to this problem? Throw a house party… apparently!
So after we learn about our nerd, a crew of fashion people gives them a makeover, including new clothes and a new hairstyle. Meanwhile, a party planner and a crew redo areas of the teen’s house to accommodate a gigantic themed party. (Said theme would change every episode.) The kid sees the house, we get the shot of him freaking out while seeing everything, and every kid in the nerd’s school comes over and freaks out about how awesome a party it is and how they totally think the nerd isn’t a nerd anymore. Also, a special celebrity guest performs. (As I read this in early 2013, the pitch specifically named Carly Rae Jepsen as a potential guest, this being the height of “Call Me Maybe.” No, these people did not have access to Carly Rae Jepsen. It was just a random celebrity to throw in because all execs are star fuckers and this is how it works.) After this amazing night, the kid’s life is changed forever. That is until the kid finds about the squealing emptiness of existence and descends into suicidal depression. The end.
Of the five pitches these people sent, this was probably the best one. I might even go so far as to say that in a vacuum, removed from context and my snarky recap, this isn’t a terrible idea for a show!
That said, there are many obvious points we can make here, be they about the logistics of what happens the next day when the party’s over, or the profound moral failure of the premise of the show and encouraging all kids to act like jocks, or the observation that, like the cars on Pimp My Ride, any change in the kid’s life is only on the surface, and even if it wasn’t, appearing on this show would probably make our nerd’s life worse in a variety of manners. However, let’s stick to two points.
The first is how nakedly the show follows the renovation reality formula, whether it’s home renovation shows or, in this case, MTV reality shows like Pimp My Ride or Made. (Remember Made?) Now, the reality TV audience may not value originality as much as other sections of TV viewers, what with the many Real Housewives iterations and the rip-offs of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. (Also, I’ve also watched plenty of Bake-Off derivatives, including shows about flower sculptures and American BBQ. Again, I’m above nothing.)
However, if we think about this in terms of screenwriting, you have to keep in mind the intern or the reader or the assistant who’s going to read your material before any of the executives. It’s their job to tell their bosses what your work reminds them of. Thus if you’ve ripped off something too much, you’ve already stumbled out of the gate. (Or someone beat you to your concept. It happens to the best of us!)
Point #2: Pimp My Ride ended in 2007, and I read this pitch in 2013, making this show about six years too late. This, in and of itself, may not necessarily be a problem. The nature of certain kinds of TV have a strange cyclicality to them that any given pitch may or may not be able to tap into. However, it’s not just that this show uses an old format. It’s that it also feels old. It’s a show that wants to transform nerds into football captains in a time when comic book movies rule the conversation and the tactics craven politicians use to win power are developed and tested by video game fans.
The people who wrote this pitch clearly didn’t read the room.
Pitch 2: The Weight Loss Show (or: The Section In Which Uncle Jam Tries His Hardest Not To Make Any Suicide Jokes In A Pointless Attempt To Not Alienate Any Readers Or Cause Anyone To Worry About His Mental Wellbeing)
The show would start with a series of interviews with men explaining why they didn’t find their wives attractive anymore.
Don’t get them wrong, the pitch reassures anyone reading it. They still love their spouses very much. However, the years have gone by, and they’ve put on a little weight and “lost their sexy,” which is a phrase the creators of this show think human beings say to one another. Of course, the real reasons why these women gained weight is never explored, but we can assume this insight got lost somewhere between the horror of realizing they married someone who’s willing to go on TV and call them unattractive and the reminder that the boundless void of death is tangible.
After the interviews, we get to know our future contestants a bit, then a van drives by and “black-bags” them. (l remember this phrasing very well.) Of course, if you bend the English language to its breaking point, maybe you could figure out a gentler way of phrasing your desire to kidnap women in broad daylight and force them into a van. However, if you have the opportunity to evoke Bush era war crimes, you might as well take it!
The women would be brought to a remote camp, and their situation would finally be revealed to them: Their husbands all think they’ve gotten fat, and they are here to learn the art of weight loss via pole dancing.
Specifically, there would be an exercise/diet focused challenge in which the contestants would earn a prize or immunity from elimination or something like that. I remember two clearly. The first involved locking all the contestants in a room with a giant feast and challenging them not to eat any of it, Pan’s Labyrinth style. The other had them navigating an obstacle course while someone in a guard tower shot paintballs at them, like that scene in the training montage in Jarhead.
Later, they would work on a pole dancing routine, and a panel of judges would decide who gets eliminated each week. I don’t remember whether or not the amount of weight they’ve lost plays any factor, but given the general incompetency and shamelessness exhibited thus far, I feel comfortable saying that it didn’t.
Look.
You don’t need me to explain to you why everything you’ve just read is terrible. Or if you do then, you know… go fuck yourself. One may also read this and posit that all this is meant to be ironic, in which case, I’d argue that I wouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt, and even if I did, the pitch didn’t sell the irony at all and it’s still harmful.
There isn’t a particularly substantial point to belabor here. (Except for the quick one about how there’s nothing wrong with pole-dancing or sex work.) The point is simple. You can’t be a terrible person.
Again, an actual human being is going to read your work, and some of them are paid to tell the person who could change your life that they read your work and they think you’re garbage. That’s certainly what I did when I finished reading this presentation.
Don’t be shitty. That is all.
Pitch 3: The Suicide Show
There isn’t a particularly elaborate set-up for this show. In fact, I don’t know if there’s a name for the particular subgenre of reality TV this show falls under. Perhaps it’s a “docudrama,” though I have quarrels with that particular classification for this concept.
Whatever. You know shows like America’s Most Wanted or Rescue 911? (or High School Stories if you’re an MTV watching millennial like myself?) Shows where a real person would tell a story, but then the show would recreate the events with actors? The people behind the first two pitches wanted to make one of those about people who survived their suicide attempts.
Now, given the tone and the moral failure of the previous two pitches, you may be inclined to believe that the people behind this were equally as… (searches for the word) graceful with their handling of such heavy subject matter. But believe it or not, I don’t recall it being too bad! Or at the very least, I don’t recall anything outwardly weird or offensive. Or at the very very least, I recall them being unusually well-intentioned.
There would, for example, be plenty of resources and information offered on treatment and resources one can turn to if they’re in crisis. Moreover, they went out of their way to say that the intention was not to glorify self-harm, but to offer inspiration to those who may need it and to reassure anyone struggling with suicidal thoughts that they’re not alone and that they should not be stigmatized for any of their struggles. There was some nobility and humanity here, as there should be.
The problem, however, is that despite anyone’s good intentions, it’s still a show about actors recreating people’s suicide attempts.
You’re still trying to recreate deeply personal stories for the sake of selling ad time on national television. Decisions will have to be made regarding which actors to cast and what they’ll end up saying if they end up say anything at all and how to light somebody playing a real human being who at one point in their lives actually wanted to die.
This isn’t to say that we can’t film fictional suicide scenes or suicide scenes based on real life. The point is that when you’re making a show about serious subject matter, you’re playing with live ammo. Maybe if you, I don’t know… pitched a reality TV show about forcing women to lose weight by having them pole dancing, you may not be the best equipped to make a show about suicide prevention.
As to how this relates to screenwriting, the point is simple: Make sure you know what you’re talking about, and when writing about subject matter that requires sensitivity, there’s no such thing as too much feedback. Double check that you’ve handled that subject matter with care. Triple check. Milluple check. (That’s one thousand.)
Just showing the effort in trying is worth something. After I read this pitch, I remember thinking, “You know, maybe I shouldn’t dismiss these people entirely.” I still did. But it occurred to me not to, just for a second.