It has now been nearly 11 months since I made my first pitch through Stage 32.
The "VIP" I pitched to has had my script since early July 2025 and I am thoroughly convinced of two things:
1.) Stage 32 is a scam website, preying on the hopes and dreams of gullible aspiring screenwriters.
2.) This "VIP" is, obviously, never getting back to me.
Thus, now I feel it is time to tell my story...
So, on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025 I had a Zoom pitch meeting through Stage 32 with an executive / producer who, apparently, has worked with Sony and Columbia Pictures. What they have done for those companies, I don’t know… and should’ve probably investigated.
But I digress.
Anyhow, I won’t say this guy’s name, because I don’t want to burn any bridges.
But he was specifically reading horror and thriller scripts.
He was also 2 minutes late to our 10-minute pitch meeting.
He came on screen and had kind of a Mark Zuckerberg look (though his profile picture on Stage 32 makes him look a bit like an older Jason Flemyng). He’s also young (I’m pretty sure he’s younger than I am). He also had something of a dude-bro douchbaggy arrogance about him. Furthermore, he seemed to be seated on the patio of an outdoor café (probably a Starbucks… or the ultra-hip, ten-times-as-expensive L.A. equivalent) and had sunglasses on. How utterly unprofessional! The guy couldn’t even look me in the eye!
Yikes!
He did apologize for being late and complimented me on my Wes Craven tribute shirt (which I made myself, eleven years ago when he passed…every time one of my heroes passes, I get a shirt made for them).
We did the usual niceties and asked how one another was doing, etc.
I then told him to tell me when he was ready.
I then launched into my elevator pitch which, essentially, outlines the concept, the overall plot, a basic sense of the characters and my inspirations for writing this (to give them an idea of the “feel”/mood/tone/vibe of the film).
When I reference The Monster Squad he said cut in and mentioned that it reminded him of that movie. Which is fine, that’s what I’m going for. But it was a bit jarring. That and, I’m sorry, but historically I have not met that many people who’ve seen Monster Squad. But I guess if you are a horror-centric producer, you’ve seen it.
I then alluded to the fact that Personal Demons has just had its 16th film festival win.
Usually this is the point where “VIPs” ask me for the highlight reel of my festival wins.
He just asked me (basically), “So… what… you submitted it to these competitions… and it won?”
… Yeah. That’s literally what I just said. Why was it necessarily to confirm that?
I mentioned that, occasionally, I’d only get an “honorable mention” or something, but typically I was an official selection, or I won some award or recognition.
He asked me about the demon in my script and to explain it a bit more, because (he said) the antagonistic nearly always gets the short end of the stick… Which is odd. How many horror franchise villains (Freddy, Jason, Chucky, Pinhead) can the average person name off the top of their head… and how many final girls can they name (by the character’s name… not just the actor’s name)?
I told him that my model for the demon was the Xenomorph in the first Alien film (and some of the sequels) and that, while it was cut from the same cloth as archetypal demons, that the script stayed with the demon for a lot of the story, so you got a sense of his agenda, his motivation and his movements. I also said that I reveal the mythology/theology of the story (with specifics to the demon) in a moment of confrontation between the protagonists and the antagonist (I compared it to when Nancy confronts Freddy at the end of Nightmare on Elm Street). I won’t give the details I gave him, because they are sacred to me and I don’t want anyone pilfering them, but he seemed impressed, smiled and said he liked that detail.
He asked what the demon’s name was.
I told him it didn’t have a name and he seemed okay with that.
He then asked if I saw this being a PG-13 movie, or R. Or if I saw it being “like Stranger Things” where there was violence, but not too much.
I told him that I wrote it as an R film (with hard gore) because it was modeled after the movies from the 80’s-90’s that I grew up on, movies that took no prisoners. But I (lied and) said that it could be trimmed down to PG-13 with only a few snips to a few scenes. I then said it could have “an unrated 4K”. He smiled and snickered at this. I firmly believe that, if you love movies, you love physical media.
He asked me when I wrote this movie.
I was honest and told him ten years ago (at the time, remember this was July of 2025), before Strangers Things and the 2017 adaptation of It came out, and that I was a bit frustrated that those movies kinda stole my thunder. He said, “No, that’s actually good for you!” I guess meaning people want similar stories to ones they already love… and both those IPs are huge hits, so…
I also said that I didn’t really do anything with the script until 2019, when I started sending it out to film festivals. Then it started winning and I figured I should do something with the script.
He also how long I had been doing Stage 32. I told him just a week. That a random email showed up in my inbox and I decided to try it and see what it was like. I think that either surprised or impressed him. Can’t tell which.
Now comes the part I really want to talk about…
Then he started critiquing my pitch.
He hewed and hawed and, basically told me that I needed to talk about the characters more, give them names, let the VIP know about their relationships.
He then started throwing stuff out.
“Do they start out as friends?”
“What brought them together?”
“Is one of them a bully?”
He said that I should have launched into the structure of the story more and maybe told how the script starts out (I guess he meant the inciting incident?).
Again, he started throwing stuff out (projections that I guess were fueled by his own “creativity”):
“Does the town cover up that it’s a demon killing these kids?”
“Is there another town involved?”
“Is it an urban legend about this demon?”
He then started throwing out all kinds of buzz words, telling me that including the characters, their relationships, the story structure (I guess he meant the beats of the story… like the plot points in Syd Fields’s three-act structure) and the world building which would make my pitch “more grounded… make it feel more earned”.
I honestly, in his California surfer-dude accent and his scatterbrained buzz word vomit, couldn’t tell what part of my pitch he was criticizing more, or which part he thought I should have accentuated more in my pitch.
But he kept telling me which parts of my pitch he liked. He said my pitch “was strong” and that he appreciated knowing that it was set in a “mining town” (I guess that catered to his need for world-building), he said he liked the concept, and he said I did a good job of making it unique and making it mine (this is after telling me it reminded him of Monster Squad).
Now, what aggravates me the most about this (and I should say that, if memory serves, I’ve never had this kind of criticism from an agent… this must be purely a producer thing… or just specific to this person) is that I’ve always been told to give my elevator pitch first (the short and sweet version) to see if they are interested. This should be brief, but impactful and should outline the basic story, the concept, a vague understanding of the characters and (perhaps) what your inspirations were in writing this. Maybe that last part is not part of the typical pitching formula, but it’s always netted me good results. When I told one agent that Critters was an inspiration for this script, he thanked me for mentioning that film, told me he was friends with Dee Wallace and then we geeked out about Dee Wallace’s horror filmography, with specific emphasis on the Critters movies. That kind of stuff endears you to the people you pitch to and sometimes, like with the story I just gave, offers you an “in” with them.
But the bottom line is: you give them the basics. The logline. The elevator pitch.
If they want to know more, if they’re even remotely interested, they’ll ask.
I just don’t understand why this guy couldn’t just have just asked me questions to fill up the rest of the piddling few minutes we had left, instead of (passive aggressively) reading me the riot act (that’s how I took it) and criticizing my pitch for future reference (which is just a big red flag that he is already unsure, or has his reservations about my pitch and, thus, my story, my script and my writing… I see this as being a big “no” even before he “reads” it).
I would have answered his questions (I had answers to all his multitude of questions and info. to satisfy all his criticisms ready to go) if he had actually asked them. Instead, I felt exhausted and, honestly, crushed when he blathered on about what he would have changed about my pitch.
Another thing that angers me to no end is that these VIPs make it seem like such an imposition to show up to these pitch meetings (even though they are getting paid to be there and, who knows, they might find their next client and the next “It” screenwriter… though most of them resign themselves to the fact that these pitchfests are a wasteland of untalented nobodies and they are just making some extra vacation cash by showing up and even pretending to consider the pitches given to them). And, as such, we are given precious little time with these VIPs.
For Stage 32 your pitch meetings (via Zoom… which is good that they’re at least technologically up-to-date… FadeIn uses Skype (!) for their virtual meetings during Hollywood Pitchfest) are ten minutes. Period. Then you get cut off and the Zoom meeting involuntarily ends… And this guy wasted two of those minutes by being late. So, we only had eight minutes. My pitch is a practiced and honed 3-5 minutes that covers all my bases and leaves room for questions. If I had lengthened my pitch to include everything he wanted (in-depth character detail and analysis, a sense of the world-building, the story structure/beats, etc.) my pitch would’ve been (and I’m guestimating here) about 7-9 minutes. Which leaves no room for questions or criticism. And if there’s anything I’ve learned about agents and producers, they don’t want you to talk the entire time. They want their voices to be heard and their comments, questions and criticism to be part of the pitch. They are a very self-important lot… even the agents with no famous clients and the producers without a credit (or notable credit) to their name.
I even
pitched to an agent once who, after I thoroughly impressed him with my pitch,
said,
“Well, I need to get a sense of the story beats… but I’ll get those when I read
it.”
I don’t know.
In the end this VIP seemed about 30% “into” my pitch, and 70% married to his criticism about how my pitch could’ve been better.
He said, “I definitely want to take a look at it”, but it seemed like a begrudging afterthought.
I asked him how that worked, as I am new to Stage 32. He said he would request the script through Stage 32 for me to send to him to read.
As I write this (just hours after my pitch) we shall see if he actually does request my script.
If he does, and I am not holding my breath, I am fairly certain he will sit on for months before I start asking (while being respectfully persistent) until he finally shoots me down near the end of the year (if not longer).
But time will tell.
Update: Well, this “VIP” did indeed request my script (the next day, on Thursday, July 3rd, 2025… I thought I’d written about that extensively in my blog… guess I didn’t).
Then, on September 29th (88 days… nearly three months later) I wrote Stage 32 to see what the holdup was. They emailed me back with some frustrating placating. I wrote about it here.
As I write this now it is mid-May of 2026 and it has been 11 months since he requested my script.
Yeah, this dude is not getting back to me.
He was picking up some extra fun money for the weekend.
What a crock!
Afterthought: I went back and re-read the bio of the guy I pitched to.
Here it is (I am paraphrasing it from Stage 32’s site… but I have layered in my own commentary here and there):
Basically he was a “creative executive” at a major film studio (which is also a popular electronics brand). He co-produced a children’s movie based on a 30+ year old video game adaptation (of which there have been several sequels).
Apparently, he has requested 12 scripts and 2 meetings from their last Pitch Session!
He was also the “assistant” to a major movie producer (whose production and name is everywhere) who specializes in exploiting popular horror IPs and preying on fanboy nostalgia.
I don’t know. This guy didn’t seem old enough to have worked on all these projects.
I’m guessing he is another guy who was grandfathered into the Hollywood system (by the usual means, unique to the American entertainment industry) and is now just kind of bumming around Hollywood, throwing his limited clout around like a sledgehammer, just ‘cuz he can.
This guy’s work on “horror” is limited and is relegated to a lot of modern fluff horror (and the aforementioned IP exploitation).
In short: I really resent this guy wasting my time, money, taking my script, getting my hopes up (however little hope I gave this situation) and trying to talking to me like he’s John Carpenter.
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