Where writers can talk their way in the door

Movie producer Robert Kosberg still recalls the pitch about cloning Jesus Christ -- oddly enough, it’s one he’s heard dozens of times -- as well as the screenplay about homosexual dinosaurs and the time a writer insisted on performing a Mexican hat dance by way of illustrating the theme for a potential movie.

But what keeps Kosberg coming back to the Hollywood Pitch Festival year after year is the hope he’ll stumble across a great script or idea that will become the next “Godfather” or “Citizen Kane.”

“A lot of the pitches, you know you’re not going to be able to do anything with and you start giving up and getting pessimistic in the back of your mind,” said Kosberg, an independent producer currently based at Nash Entertainment, “but when you come across that great idea, it’s like a cold slap in the face.

“It’s like when the lights are going down in the movie theater and you’re hoping the movie will be great. It doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s what makes it fun.”

Starting today, roughly 200 novelists and screenwriters will test their luck at the annual event, where they will have the opportunity to hawk their ideas in seven-minute one-on-one pitch sessions with agents, managers and producers at Hollywood’s Renaissance Hotel.

Fade In magazine, which organizes the sold-out event, screens candidates before charging them $395 per person to attend.

For some, the festival can be a life-changing two days, jump-starting careers in Hollywood with big paychecks following close behind.

Christina Welsh, a Los Angeles screenwriter, attended the festival for the first time in 1998 with her three-line pitch for a comedy titled “Split Decision.” On the first day of the event, her script was optioned and she was later accepted into the Writers Guild and hired to write the script for Disney. It remains in development.

“It’s exhausting but it’s also energizing,” Welsh said of the event.

“You’re going from person to person and you’re feeding off all the energy in the room. A lot of people are trying to make something happen.”

Welsh also met her first manager, Jeff Graup, at the event. “You never know where that great writer is going to show up, but once you find them, everyone’s going to want a piece of that person,” Graup said. “You have to find them first.”

Under Graup’s management, Welsh sold another script, “If Only,” for a mid-six-figure price after nearly two years of development. “It was a lottery moment for me,” she said. The romantic comedy will air on the ABC Family network in January and eventually be released on DVD, with Jennifer Love Hewitt playing the lead.

But for most of the writers, the pitch fest experience can be a tough lesson in the realities of getting a movie made in Hollywood.

Chuck McClelland, a 65-year-old screenwriter and playwright who also works as a film extra, will fly in from Philadelphia to attend the event with some new material. His most promising script to date is a dark drama chronicling life in a boy’s reformatory school, a project he has spent 10 years perfecting. It has been optioned but never made.

“It was a learning experience about how the system works,” McClelland said. “Maybe someday someone will be interested in it. But after a while you just need to move on.”

This year, McClelland will pitch an action-adventure story that he said involves “a bunch of teenagers on a hazardous mission.” For the past two months he has worked on trying to condense his 100-page script into a four paragraph pitch that he has now memorized.

“The important thing is to have fun and be relaxed rather than look at it as something to dread,” McClelland said. “It’s energizing more than stressful because your adrenaline is really going. One of the main reasons I go is that you can’t really send your scripts to production companies or studios -- they’ll send it right back to you.”

Hollywood producer Kosberg said that the pitch festival -- and some spinoffs that have popped up around the country -- have helped shake up the Hollywood formula, giving writers access to powerful people in the movie business.

“Everyone is constantly asking me, ‘How do I get an agent, and if I can’t get an agent, how do I pitch?’ And as a producer, I’m constantly forced to tell people that’s how the Hollywood system has been set up for all these years; it’s hard to break through. But [the festival] is democratic and fair-minded. Anyone with a good idea can at least have their day in court.”

Among Kosberg’s other “discoveries” was 75-year-old Emily Lloyd from Ozark, Ark., who came to him with a photocopied article from Parade magazine about a man who lived in the Statue of Liberty. She proposed a romantic comedy titled “Keeper of the Flame,” which has been picked up by the production company Working Title. Another writer proposed a comedy based on the real-life story of the only white player in baseball’s Negro Leagues, which existed from the 1920s to the 1940s. It has been purchased by Happy Madison, Adam Sandler’s production company, and is in development.

“People are amazed that Hollywood would want to talk to them, but we’re just looking for ideas that haven’t been through the system a million times. I know the person behind the desk at the studios is just like me -- they’ve heard everything. I want to be able to go in to them and say, ‘I bet you’ve never heard this one.’ ”