Movie pitch is expertly cultivated

ANTHONY PELLICANO isn’t the only guy with the goods on everyone in show business. If you want to know who’s making up and who’s breaking up, who’s in the penthouse and who’s in the doghouse, go see Eric Buterbaugh, the ultimate power flower guy in Hollywood.

Operating out of the basement of the Four Seasons Hotel, Buterbaugh is the go-to florist for the industry elite, including Charlize Theron, Gwen Stefani (when she had a baby, he did the floral arrangements for the nursery) and industry titans like Universal chief Ron Meyer and CAA partner Bryan Lourd. When Paul McCartney got married, Buterbaugh did the wedding.

At his desk he has a Christmas card displaying a photo of the Schwarzenegger family adorned with the greeting, “Wishing you a magical holiday season.”

Buterbaugh is so in the know, in terms of romance and relationships, that when his friend Ashton Kutcher was hanging out with him one day, a crazy idea popped into the young actor’s head. If you wanted to do a sassy, sophisticated comedy of manners set in showbiz Los Angeles, wouldn’t a flower guy who’s on hand for all the hookups be the perfect inspiration for a central character?

Jason Goldberg, Kutcher’s production partner at Katalyst Films, stressed that the story is not specifically about Buterbaugh. But as he put it: “What a great blueprint to create a character from. He’s not only a florist, but a therapist. He fixes people’s problems through his flowers.”

In Hollywood, selling a fresh comedy idea all comes down to crafting the right pitch. “Splash” was bought at a pitch meeting, as was “Dragnet,” which producer David Permut famously sold by intoning, “Dum-de-dum-dum” with Dan Aykroyd standing next to him. Last summer’s hit, “The 40 Year-Old Virgin,” was sold as a pitch, as were two of this summer’s big comedies, “Nacho Libre” and “Talladega Nights.”

Cynics would say that if you’re Will Ferrell, you could probably run into a room and vomit on the studio boss’ desk and everyone would say, “We love it!”

But the truth is that it’s so hard to get movies made in today’s risk-averse studio world that pitching a comedy idea has become as extraordinarily sophisticated a process as launching a new soft drink or sneaker, complete with video rehearsals and informal focus groups. A good pitch has an immediacy that scripts or books lack.

“It makes an idea feel personal, and once something feels personal, the studio gets more invested in it,” explains producer Brian Grazer, who says he pitched “Splash” a hundred times before someone bought it. “A really good pitch is interactive -- the writer makes everyone feel like they’re creating something new.”

Convinced the Flower Guy was a unique character, Goldberg and Kutcher first sought out a screenwriter who shared their vision. Last fall, Kutcher went to the Chateau Marmont to meet Kevin Bisch, a talented screenwriter who’d penned “Hitch,” the Will Smith comedy that was a big hit for Sony Pictures earlier that year.

Bisch instantly responded to Kutcher’s concept. “I thought it was a fascinating idea for a movie -- the guy who knows everybody’s business,” Bisch recalls. In the months that followed, Bisch, Kutcher and Goldberg would regularly speak or e-mail one another. “Ashton had a real sense of where the story should be going,” says Bisch. “After a while I felt like I was in a garage band, secretly rehearsing for months before the first show.”

Bisch also spent several days with Buterbaugh at his flower shop, where he put in hours prepping vases, trimming flowers and making deliveries. “My big goal was not to knock anything over,” he says. “But it really made me appreciate what a gift Eric has. I don’t know if you’d call it method screenwriting or not, but if you’re a storyteller, it’s important to steep yourself in the world you’re writing about.”

A great pitch is a theatrical performance, not a literary event. It bears a striking resemblance to a streamlined version of a one-man stage show, in which the performer -- in this case, a screenwriter with precious little stage experience -- must captivate a room full of skeptical studio executives. After everyone had worked out the story beats for the pitch, Bisch began rehearsing in his living room, videotaping himself over and over.

“I’d watch the replays John Madden-style, to see if the energy was flagging or I was losing my focus,” he says. “I’m a big believer that when you’re under stress, you go on autopilot, so you have to watch to see if in the heat of the moment, you keep scratching your nose or do something that might be distracting.”

Once he’d made progress, he began doing dress rehearsals for the pitch before a carefully selected focus group -- a group of agents at ICM, his talent agency. Afterward they offered feedback and encouragement. “You learn the trouble spots -- what jokes don’t work, what people are confused about,” Bisch says. “It was really valuable.” Not long afterward, he did another show for a similar group of agents at Endeavor, Kutcher’s agency.

“In today’s market, it’s so difficult to sell a pitch that we wanted to really go in prepared,” says Goldberg. “The test runs really taught us not to be afraid of detail. The details made the pitch special.”

Finally, it was time to play the big tent. A series of meetings were set for the first week of May. Instead of giving one studio a chance to make a preemptive bid, every studio had to hear the pitch before any offer could be made. This meant a grueling two-day schedule; with pitches at Warners, New Line, Disney and Paramount on Tuesday, Universal, Sony, Fox and DreamWorks on Wednesday. With the exception of Paramount, whose top executives were in New York for the “M:i: III” premiere, every studio had a president or chairman-level executive in the room.

Kutcher also went to every pitch meeting, signaling that he was fully committed to the project. As a final shrewd theatrical touch, one of the ICM agents had a brainstorm -- why not send a flower arrangement to each studio the day of the pitch? Of course, they knew whom to call -- Buterbaugh, who created an eye-popping arrangement for each studio executive.

In essence, the flowers help set the tone for the pitch. “It’s important to be highly strategic and thoughtful in planning the actual pitch process,” explains Brian Sher, who along with Jon Huddle leads Bisch’s team at ICM. “You have to market a pitch the way you market a movie. Having the flowers there, in someone’s office, served as a great reminder of the event, not to mention the global appeal of flowers.”

Bisch admits that doing eight straight pitches was taxing. “These studios aren’t putting up Monopoly money for a project like this, so I knew I better have the goods. It was intense. By midafternoon we were all like sugared-up fourth-graders.”

The pitch was such a hit that the team found itself fielding offers from virtually every studio. Having Kutcher onboard clearly was a major enticement, but the genre of the pitch also played a key role, since sophisticated comedies have a strong commercial track record but are scarce commodities in Hollywood. Bisch and Kutcher’s representatives quickly struck a deal with Sony, propelled by strong enthusiasm from Amy Pascal and her production chiefs, Matt Tolmach and Doug Belgrad.

According to Variety, Sony will pay Kutcher $10 million against 10% of the gross for the project, with Bisch getting $2 million-plus to write the script. Sony agreed to a progress-to-production deal, a rarely granted arrangement which guarantees that the film will be in production within a certain window of time or the material reverts to its creators.

“I told them as soon as we heard the pitch that I wanted it,” says Pascal. “Kevin Bisch is great in a room. He’s really entertaining, but he had a great story that was fully worked out, with strong characters and a first, second and third act.”

Pascal especially liked the concept of the Flower Guy, in part because it was a fresh way of telling the classic Cyrano story but also because she believes that romantic comedies do especially well when the man is the main character. “Women will definitely want to go and see Ashton, but the guys won’t complain about going along too.”

Pascal sighed. “I really like romantic comedies. They’re great fantasies. When they work, you feel so good about the world and life and possibilities and all the things that aren’t really true.”

It will be a long time before we know whether the pitch spawns a classic or a stinker. Back at his shop, Buterbaugh is too busy worrying about doing the arrangements for Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday party at Windsor Castle. When I saw a nice bouquet in a vase wrapped with faux ostrich skin, I wondered: Was it a sly message from an old flame? A hopeful hint from a secret admirer?

Buterbaugh smiles and puts a finger to his lips. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

“The Big Picture” runs Tuesdays in Calendar. If you have questions or criticism, e-mail patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.