The Pilot Season

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 if 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 STAR failed 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 amount of people who watched the show; by the time the second episode was shown the writing was on the wall and Fox pulled the show.

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.