my attorney had taken his shirt off

 

-------------- [excerpt] -------------- We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.  I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...."  

And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.  And a voice was screaming:  "Holy Jesus!  What are these goddamn animals?"

     Then it was quiet again.  My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process.  "What the hell are you yelling about?" he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses.  "Never mind," I said.  "It's your turn to drive."

--------------------- [Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  A savage journey to the heart of the American dream.  By Hunter S. Thompson.  Excerpt in Rolling Stone magazine, November 11, 1971.]

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...But -- you aren't going to be able to know if the movie was well-executed or not until it's finished, and you watch it.  Yet they tell us the purpose of the "pitch" in the "pitch meeting" (where you say what the movie is about in one sentence, or something) is to communicate the idea, so that they can decide to give you the money to make your movie.  

     So if the idea isn't important, then how are you ever going to get your movie financed so they can see if it's "well-executed" or not?

     Movie business has kind of become like politics:  everyone is an expert, which means no one is an expert.  As William Goldman said, "Nobody knows anything."

     Another aspect to the Theory of the Pitch Meeting is the "High Concept" concept.  In the '90s, screenwriting books, articles, and speakers often emphasized "high concept" as being a category of movie that would sell well to the people who can finance it.  High concept meant the circumstances and challenges in the plotline were in some way extreme.  Like -- the characters are in outer space, or on the Titanic, or they rob banks....

     Since characters in The Crown are members of the British Royal Family, does that make it a "high-concept" series?

     They are not on the planet Mars.  But--the vast majority of humans are not in the British Royal Family, so their situations are unique and unusual.  (Extreme?)

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