The Pilot Season.

                                                George Clooney

For some reason a post I wrote about the pilot season in 2012 is getting a lot of hits. I had a read and I thought it might be interesting for you do here goes:

Here we are on another January morning in Hollywood; Los Angeles, really, but Hollywood when we talk of the film business as that is what the industry is here.

Januarys have usually been around the start of the pilot season when mothers bring their kids here to try and get a job in a TV series; try and get a job in a pilot which they hope would be a TV Series more like.

Most of the pilots the kids would be aiming for would be situation comedies – sitcoms – as there were very few children needed in the cops shows or hospital shows.

Between where I live and the Valley proper, there are apartment buildings which used to temporarily rent apartments to the mothers and their, usually, precocious little brats.

I've worked with few children in my time and most of the time they have been well behaved – not so much their mums – but we had to watch our language and watch when their little kids would do a tap dance on the set.

If the kids were well known they seemed to have a certain confidence – and maybe precociousness – and they would give opinions about things and people would listen to them; this would give me the cue to go to my dressing room. Don't get me wrong, I love kids – I used to go to school with them – but I always hated kids in the cast.

But back to the pilot season; well it doesn't seem to exist any more; they (the royal they whoever they are) make pilots all the year round. They make hundreds of them if not thousands. I have seen many; I saw one about a gay robot butler, one about cavemen and one with Tom Conti playing a drunken grandfather who pals up and takes his grandchildren to night clubs.

These pilots cost a fortune and George Clooney appeared in so many, before he made ER, that he became quite rich. They would pay – and I stand to be corrected – about $40,000 for the pilot not even knowing if the pilot would be picked up.

When you go for an audition for the pilot you get the sides (the pages they will want you to read for the audition) 24 hours before the audition. This is a great SAG (Screen Actors Guild) rule which doesn't happen in the UK which enable the producers to cast the best actors in their projects; they are after talent and not the best readers.

After the audition with the casting director, the casting director recommends a short(er) list to come in the for 'call back'. This may still be a 'pre-read' and if you get through that you will be asked to come and audition for the director or one of the producers.

This can happen numerous times till you get to meet the executive producers, their wives and other hangers on.

Before you meet the executive producers, their wives and other hangers on, and you may be down to half a dozen people for each role for the show, your agent will be called and they will do the deal – there and then before the final audition – and you will be told (maybe after negotiation but I doubt it) what the terms of the contract will be.

You will see the increments over the next few years of the show – how much you will get per show, what the residuals are (which will be standard), how much you get if the show goes into syndication and a lot of other imponderables and terms.

The contract will blind you with figures and will be worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes will go into millions. You may be offered maybe $40,000 per episode and projected to shoot 13 or 26 episodes per series and then get an increase in the second season and so on – and you haven't had the final audition yet!!!!

This final audition may go into another call back but eventually a pilot will be shot.

When the pilot is shot the producers will show it to the studio executives who will pick it apart and maybe re-cast some of the roles and they will re-shoot those roles and then when they are finished again they will take it to a market research company and focus groups will gather around Los Angeles and watch them; some of these people will be paid.

They will gather in theatres, offices and small screening rooms; sometimes the executives will watch the audiences through a one way mirror to see how they react and the audiences/focus groups will be made up of a sample of the population – some black, some white, some Latino, blue collar, white collar and all the other ethnic and sexual persuasion that it's a wonder anything comes out of it.

The one group of people that they never want in the group would be actors; in a company town it is very hard to throw a stick any day of the week without hitting an actor; I don't even have any idea how many actors live in this building so sometimes they go 'out of town.'

After this they may re-cast and re-shoot yet again because a character may be disliked or an actor may be disliked or even be the wrong colour or race.

So after all this they eventually have a show; then they show it to some critics and they let us all know which ones are going to be hits; the one they said would be a hit this last season was one called Lone Star.

Every critic loved it and it was going to be a big hit – the hit of the season and everybody who had anything to do with it was delighted and optimistic; it was cancelled after just two episodes.

Here's what Fox said about the cancellation:

While speaking at today’s Fox Winter TCA tour in Pasadena, CA, Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Rice spoke about why he felt their Fall series LONE STARfailed after only two episodes.

“We made a show we really loved, and thought the creators were very talented and made an excellent show,” says Rice. “ [The critics] believed in the show and liked the show, but not enough people showed up to watch it. We were very disappointed in that. It’s the reality of the business we’re in. It’s intensely competitive and you make the best shows you can. The truth is, it failed to meet the expectations we had. That doesn’t mean we don’t like the show and respect the people who made it. I would much prefer to fail with a show we’re creatively proud of than fail with a show that we’re embarrassed by.”

What is not mentioned above is that it was put on opposite the American version of the BBC Show Dancing with the Stars produced by the BBC over here – now isn't that a dumb decision? It was buried and I have to confess I don't know why they buried it there; so the advertisers who bought space on the opening night were not satisfied with the number of people who watched the show; by the time the second episode was shown the writing was on the wall and Fox pulled the plug.

So after all that work, the auditions, the call backs, the contract talks, the rehearsals and the rest of it the show is history.

These people are professionals and they know what they are doing but there was no way an excellent show could be saved.

Let me put my oar in here and as usual I will say I am not an expert on anything – the advertisers are always looking for a specific age group to aim their advertising at; 18 to about 40 – maybe even younger – and I have to ask why?

People with the most money to spare are the senior members of society and they are usually over 40 and watch mature shows and things like Dancing with the Stars so why don't they aim more shows at them?

I only watch Jeopardy so I'm out of it!!

By the way Skins, the hit TV Show from the UK about teenagers, has just opened on MTV here and already some advertisers who bought time in the first episode have cancelled; one of them General Motors.

When the music died.

I watch The Daily Politics most days and they usually have a little “guess the year” quiz; today I got the answer right as it was 1958; I knew that because one of the songs they played was “Teddy Bear” by Elvis Presley. That was from the film Loving You which blew my mind at the time. I had heard Elvis on the radio and I hadn't heard anything like him. But to see him in that movie must have influenced a generation. I knew I was still at school when I saw the film so the question was easy.

I left school in December 1958 age 15 and started work a week after my birthday. I worked at a place called Oswald Bailey which was an Army & Navy Store; I think they were supposed to be army surplus but it wasn't; it was new stuff which included camping equipment, work boots and, heaven forbid, dungarees.

I worked as a warehouseman – guess where? Yes in the warehouse; I had to climb steps and ladders to reach boxes of shoes and the warehouse manager would put his hand up my leg; the dirty bastard. He was a well built fella with a lisp and I would kick out at him. It didn't put him off as he was always at it but I still kicked him and sometimes I would connect.

The guy driving a railway truck would ring the bell once in a while and I found out that my dad was usually their boss; they all seemed to like him and the lisp found out too and wondered why he hadn't given me a job and I said be careful where you wander you might get lost – okay I had a smart mouth! 

“Wonder I said – not wonder!” Yes he said I shaid!!

One day my dad rang the bell and I told the lisper that my dad was at the back door and he must have thought I had told him about his wandering hands as he looked a little nervous as this blue eyed Irishman looked him up and down.

I was at Oswald Bailey's when the music died; Buddy Holly – February 1959 and I was the only one in the place who even knew who he was; it happened again in 1980 when John Lennon was shot; I was working with a load of squares.

With John Lennon I was working on the night shift at a bakery trying to get some money together to pay back taxes. Most of the other workers there were ex-cons, Pakistanis and Indians and of course they had heard of The Beatles but not individually.

But back to Oswald Bailey's – the warehouse manager would send me across to Woolworth's at the Bull Ring for ice buns and those days, no matter what anybody ever tells you about them, were terrible. It was a terrible place to be where everybody knew their place with their shiny shoes and Brooks Brothers suits. Their short back and sides where the only spice they ever had on their tables was Daddy's Sauce.

Olive Oil was only sold at the Pharmacies – people cleaned their ears out with it - but there was rationing because of the war and that was the price we had to pay.

The only rebels were the teddy boys and up to about 1957 they were drafted in to the army, navy or air force where they had their hair cut off; and then when they were demobbed they had changed; no longer rebellious. 

We didn't know any better – I was in the army cadets at the time and 16 year old sergeants would shout down my ear on their journey to being full time mature bullies; because that's what they were and are; they have to bully the soldiers as they need to make an obedient squaddie out of them so they would jump when told and kill. I would hear phrases like “when I shout shit, jump on the shovel.”

Of course I reached the age of 16 and I was the 16 year old sergeant but managed not to be a bully. Later I joined The Royal Warwickshire Regiment (TA) which actually paid us as they filled our heads with propaganda. I did quite well as I used to teach map reading and weapon training in the cadets so it all came easy and I took the selection course for something called the SAS.

Lots of times we would show up in civvies and in those days I would wear a black shirt and white tie. So others said I looked like a spy so guess my nick name; James Bond. I had never heard of him, of course, as this was way before the movies and sometimes in later years I would see one of the others and I was still known as Jim.

But back for the last time to my days at Oswald Bailey which didn't last long as after a few months I went to work at the post office as a messenger. 

My mother always wanted me to work at the post office as it was a job for life and, to be honest, you didn't have to work. I went along with it because I wanted a job on the motor bikes.

The post office had a youth club and at lunch time we would go to the club to play tables tennis and snooker and listen to the records; the number one in the charts was It Doesn't Matter Any More by Buddy Holly. The song still haunts me now.

I was sent out of the town centre to one of the burbs and I was an indoor messenger delivering mail from office to office and the office we worked in was where we played table tennis every day for the year I worked there till I was old enough to work on the motor bikes; why didn't turn out to be Andy Murray?

I can't believe that was such a long time ago even though I can still sprint – no longer 100 yards but 50 when the bus is at the stop, but those years, even though they were dark days with politicians calling the press by their surnames and everybody knowing their place, I learned a lot – I learned to retaliate to sexual advances from older men – and there were a lot of them – and I learned what work was; by not doing any: I never thought that doing up to 100 miles a day on a motor bike was work; playing table tennis every day was work and when I became an actor I didn't really class it as work. But it was even though most other people would class it as play.

I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.