Film School (39 page)

I'll be honest. I'm nervous. I'm not used to being the one talking. For a long time, I used to be a newspaper reporter, so I spent a lot of time listening to other people talk. But I'm thrilled to be here . . .

When I was a reporter, I covered a lot of stories. Buildings that burned down. Planes that crashed. People who fell into wells. But there is one story I never reported on . . . although it was very interesting. There was a young man who worked at the University of Chicago back in the '90s. He was a transplant coordinator, which means he harvested human organs from dead people. Livers, mostly. But sometimes hearts or kidneys or even lungs. Now, what made this guy interesting is that he was only twenty-five years old, and he had absolutely no medical training to do his job.

I pause. The panel is eating it up.

Now, this guy, this twenty-five-year-old, was actually assisting in surgeries. In fact, on one occasion, on a Christmas Eve, because the hospital was short on medical staff, he scrubbed in and assisted on an experimental liver transplant surgery. At the University of Chicago, one of the most prestigious hospitals in the world. And remember, this guy had no medical training whatsoever. The guy was a freakin' English major.

I take a drink of water. I give Callaway a knowing glance. The panel members are leaning forward. The room is dead silent.

Now, here's the reason I never wrote about this guy. He was me. I was the twenty-five-year-old helping take organs out of dead people.

The panel members are impressed. I've saved my good stuff for when it matters.

You see, I was hired by the University of Chicago to harvest human organs when I was twenty-five years old. I had been a radio news reporter before that and accepted the job on a lark. My girlfriend knew the wife of the guy who was hiring. What the hell, I thought. I was ready for a change. Compared to being a reporter, it paid great. I flew all over the country in private jets. And I assisted in the removal of organs from dozens and dozens of brain-dead people. It was a great adventure. It was also where I got the material for the show I'm about to pitch you called HEART & SOUL.

I pause again. One panel member seems particularly impressed: Ted Gold.

What I saw as a transplant coordinator, what I saw in operating rooms and in emergency rooms and all the places in between, I've never seen represented well on television. My show, HEART & SOUL, will change that. It's a one-hour drama that focuses on transplantations and the doctors who perform them. I know something about doctors. I'm married to one. Both my brothers are physicians. My uncle was a doctor. And so was my grandfather. And let me tell you, transplant surgeons are a different breed of doc. They're cowboys. Real gunslingers. There's a saying in medicine: if you want to save the world, you become a pediatrician—my wife is a pediatrician, by the way. If you want to make your tee-time at four every day, you become a plastic surgeon. And if you're an adrenaline junkie and you don't want a family life, you become a transplant surgeon. This series will follow a handful of these transplant surgeons—these ass-kickin' cowboys—and every episode will focus on a donor, and a recipient.

I take another drink.

The structure of this show is based around a single transplant operation. The through-line of every episode is from donor to recipient. We'll meet the donor, the donor's story. We'll meet the recipient and the recipient's story. And in the middle is the transplant team, who will react to and become involved in each of these different stories.

For the next fifteen minutes, I describe the television show I had spent several months developing. I talk about the main characters, the show's tone, and I walk them through a pilot episode.

The pilot opens in a small Louisiana harbor town. Aerial wide shot. The camera tracks from a shrimp boat approaching the docks to a delivery truck driving down the town's main street. The truck stops near the town's small hospital. The camera is punched in now. The deliveryman exits. He's carrying a good-sized box, carefully. He enters a small clinic. A psychologist's office. There's a receptionist, a box of Kleenex on the counter, a couple sitting in the waiting area. From behind a closed door, we hear a terrible argument. It's a man and a woman, shouting at each other. The deliveryman walks past a surprised receptionist and pushes open the psychologist's door. We see the layout: it's a counseling session. A crying man on the right, his angry wife on the left. In the middle is their counselor, a professionally dressed black woman, midfifties.

The argument stops in mid-yell. All eyes are on the deliveryman. He reaches into the box he's holding and takes out a big honkin' Molotov cocktail. As he lights the rag, he says to the psychologist: “Thanks for the great advice, bitch.”

We pull back to an exterior wide-shot and see the windows of the clinic blow out in a fireball . . .

When I get done, the students and panelists break into applause. I'm so excited! I feel like I'd nailed a gymnast's perfect ten. Ted Gold is the first panelist to speak.

“Do you feel there are a hundred episodes here?” Gold asks.

“Oh, absolutely,” I answer. “The format of the show allows for great flexibility. You could focus primarily on a donor, or primarily on a recipient, on success or failure, or solely on a surgical team member. The sky is the limit.” Gold nods, looking pleased.

The woman on the panel, an executive, speaks up. She looks peeved. “I have to say this: I didn't like how you stood over us. During a pitch, you always need to sit down. Otherwise, it gives your pitch a bad vibe.”

The man next to her shakes his head. “Oh, I don't know,” he says. “I liked it. It had a lot of energy.”

The woman doesn't back down. “You always need to sit during a pitch,” she lectures. “I felt you were towering over me. Executives like to feel they are in control.”

I speak up. “I understand. I was planning on sitting, but I was pretty nervous and just felt much better pacing.”

“Still,” she says through pursed lips, “you need to sit.”

Gold is smiling through the entire exchange. That's a good sign. My time is up, and I walk to the back of the room. Next up is Caraballo, and I know he'll be good, and he is. His comedy pitch about street-corner Hispanic day laborers is very funny. During Caraballo's talk, I catch Ted Gold looking at me and smiling. I'm elated.

When the evening wraps up, I walk out into the night air. It is past 1
A.M.
back in Minnesota. I leave a message on Julie's cell phone. I tell her I've nailed my pitch and I know, I just know in my heart, that in a week or two I'd be able to call this television executive named Ted Gold and at least introduce myself again.

The next day, Friday, is just another day at film school. In the afternoon, I'm moving lighting equipment. It's hot. I'm sweating. I'm hoping to have an early dinner with my brother and his wife, who are visiting Los Angeles to see Mikey. A little before 5
P.M.
, the moving complete, I debate blowing off the rest of my work, including checking my emails. It is times like this when I envy my fellow students with their BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones. Sweating, I walk to my favorite computer lab where I can log on and check my messages. There on my screen is an hours-old message from Callaway. He asks if I would mind him passing my info on to Ted Gold. My heart jumps into my throat. Would I mind?!

My heart is still beating fast when a new message pops on my screen a few minutes later. It's from Ted Gold's assistant.
Could you meet Ted at Paramount/CBS Studios?
I shoot back an immediate yes. She answers a few seconds later:
How does 9
A.M.
Monday work?

O
n Monday morning, I'm parked on a side street by the Paramount/CBS studios. I'm an hour early. I've got my pitch down stone cold solid. I wonder if I'll be pitching in front of other executives. I didn't sleep much the night before.

At a few minutes before 9
A.M.
, I walk into Gold's bungalow. It's next to the soundstages for CSI: NY, and it's so dang Hollywood I wanna pinch myself.

Gold's assistant offers me water. I, of course, accept a nice square bottle of Fiji. She shows me into Gold's office, and it's just him and me. We shake hands and he tells me to sit. I'm expecting to do my pitch over again in front of an audience, but Gold is interested in talking more about my background. He's friendly and warm. I'm not expecting this, and it seems like we're just talking over a backyard fence. Then he shifts gears, and he's all business. He asks me to take notes. He wants me to create a list of obstacles the characters could face—everything under the sun. He wants story obstacles. Medical obstacles. Weather obstacles. Logistics obstacles. He wants to see my list of story ideas—as many as possible. He says he wants to see if it is indeed possible to create a hundred episodes or about five years of episodes. “It's not that hard in the big picture to get a television show on the air,” he says. “What's really hard in this business is to get a television show that will last for five years.
That's
hard.”

I scribble down notes. Then we talk some more. After an hour, Gold wraps up our meeting. We shake hands again, and I exit.

I drive to USC feeling stunned. Julie wants to know how my first “meeting” went. “Good, I think,” is my understated response.

When I get back to USC, I go straight to my favorite computer lab—a place where film students rarely venture—and start writing. I write page after page. I take a break and go for a run and eat and type some more. I do it again the next day and email my stuff to Gold. I email another big hunk of information the day after that. I've sent Gold more than four thousand words about obstacles and twenty story ideas and my vision of the world these transplant surgeons operate in.

I'm thankful I've stayed ahead of my class work at this point because I'm ignoring everything related to USC. Only when I go to screenwriting class do I speak up about my adventure. My classmates are stoked. My instructor is wide-eyed. One of my classmates asks if I'm worried about my ideas being “stolen.” It's a fair question. I answer that I've registered everything I wrote with the Writers Guild of America through its electronic registration service. But I also say, “How do you get your ideas out if you're not willing to push them and take a risk that someone is going do something nefarious?” Besides, I say, Gold is clearly a friend of Callaway's. Callaway has been a straight shooter, and so far, I explain, Gold has been the same. And so far, I say, it's been a great experience. I look around the room. It's an overheated classroom with a half-dozen badly dressed graduate students, all in debt, and one adjunct professor. We're hardly in a position to dictate terms.

On Friday morning, I get a call from Gold's assistant while I'm writing again in the computer lab. “Ted would like to talk, Mr. Boman,” she says. “Can you hold?” I scamper from the room into the hallway to get some privacy. I am standing right in front of the computer lab's bathrooms. I hope Gold can't hear the sound of flushing toilets. Gold comes on the phone. He sounds happy. He asks me what I'm doing. I tell him I'm writing more.

“I think you've proven there's a lot here,” he says, with a chuckle. “I tell you what: I'd like to option this idea. I think it's really good, and I think you've done a great job with this.”

Gold adds that he's working with Curtis Hanson, the movie director. Curtis Hanson? The director of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL? Yes, Gold says. “I hope you'll be able to meet him soon.”

I stand frozen in the hallway. Ted Gold wants to option my idea. He's dropping the name of Curtis Hanson, one of the most admired writer/directors in Hollywood. The only thing I say is: “Okay. That sounds great.”

Less than two months earlier, this idea didn't exist. Then I was being pushed into yet another CAT scan, a middle-aged man pursing the somewhat outlandish idea of going to graduate school in film production two thousand miles from his home.

Now a TV executive wants to option my idea. I lean against the hallway wall and close my eyes to let the moment sink in. Time slows down. I hear a toilet flush. It sounds a million miles away.

From far away, I hear Ted Gold's voice again. “But we have one issue to clear up. I've never dealt with anyone who's unrepped,” he says, then sounding like he can sense a bit of ignorance on my end, he goes on. “By that I mean everyone I deal with has an agent. You'll need an agent, too, at this point for me to keep talking to you. I've got some names of good agents that you could talk to. Or if you want to find your own, that's fine, too. The rules of this game, though, are such that I really can't do anything more with this project until you've got an agent.”

I hadn't thought of this. Getting an agent at USC is considered the Holy Grail. Thompson in my screenwriting class is the only one on campus I know who has an agent, and he got it due to his success at Sundance. Now I've got Ted Gold explaining that he's got several names he could give me, and getting one sounds like it will be as easy as buying my cheap hair gel at Walgreens. He wants to meet me again when I have one.

I hang up the phone. What does one do with news like this? I jump around the hallway next to the bathroom, trying not to hyperventilate. I stop jumping whenever an engineering student walks by to use the bathroom. I'm so excited. I call Julie. She's at work. She's busy with patients. She asks, “What's an option?”

I go back in the computer room and email my good news to a few pals and my family. I shoot Gold an email, too, saying my wife is so far removed from Hollywood that she doesn't know what an option is. I neglect to write that I do know what it is. He writes back a long, generous email explaining what an option is (it's a contract that allows Gold's production company to have exclusive rights to develop my idea).