SYNOPSICS
Pitch (1997) is a English,Italian movie. Kenny Hotz,Spencer Rice has directed this movie. Kenny Hotz,Spencer Rice,Samuel Z. Arkoff,Jay Bergeren are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1997. Pitch (1997) is considered one of the best Documentary movie in India and around the world.
Long time friends and aspiring Toronto-based filmmakers, Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice (who Kenny calls Spenny), have written a movie, a transgender mob comedy called "The Dawn", the script which they are trying to sell to get produced. They envision the movie to be a big budget Hollywood production with an all-star cast, rather than a low budget flick. Through cold calling, they quickly learn that they will need one piece of the movie in place - whether it be financing, or a major star or director signed on - before anyone else will really listen to them. More importantly, they need a reputable agent to do the leg work for them. They take the opportunity of the 1996 Toronto International Film Festival - a festival where many of the Hollywood elite attend - to pitch the movie to whomever will listen. Some people do give them advice, as well as advice concerning the making of this documentary, however they garner no solid leads. Thus, they move to the ultimate step in trying to get their...
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Pitch (1997) Reviews
Pitch is just what it says it is.
This film is exactly what its title describes--an attempt to get you to buy into what the writers have to offer. First, it's kinda fun to see the 1996-style Toronto I remember with all its silly haircuts, sunglasses, clothes, and attitude. It really hasn't changed any; just a nice, safe, cheap, provincial little urban backwater that makes a great meeting place for international film types! It's also amusing to see Kenny and Spenny head to L.A. and find out that it's Toronto all over again, only with a strange assortment of beach bums, musicians, fortune tellers, and yet more uppity film types. I don't see Pitch as a film to be enjoyed; it's not entertainment unless the viewer enjoys watching someone's aspirations being trampled. I take Pitch as a warning that power and money is really held by studio execs and production houses. Would-be (and "successful") writers, musicians, and actors are still mere transients even when they reach the Big Time. So, Kenny and Spenny are trying to sell you a warning. Buy it or don't, but the message is still there.
The ultimate Hollywood Nightmare
Credited by Variety to be one of the greatest documentaries to ever come out of Canada. Al Pacino, Roger Ebert, Neil Simon, Matt Dillon as well as a constant slew of celebs make this film a Canadian classic. The film is really best described as "Roger & Me" meets "The Player". Watch as Kenny Hotz and Spenny PITCH their script to the big boys of Hollywood. Called the only American film to ever come out of Canada, This film opened the Toronto Film Festival in 1997, Winner of the 'Best Indie Film Award Toronto'. Europe premier was at the prestigious HOF film fest in Germany. U.S.A. premier U.S. Comedy Festival Aspen 1999. More information available at www.kennyhotz.com
Shows that selling a script is like trying to score in high school
If you've ever wondered just how smart Roger Ebert is, you should watch this movie. Pitch is supposedly a documentary about two aspiring Canadian writers trying to get somebody, anybody to buy their screenplay. But Ebert's the only guy in the film who figures out that the two writers are making the documentary solely as a gimmick to get producers, stars and movie studio people to talk to them. It's a neat trick and using the camera as sort of a backstage pass to the film industry provides an interesting look at the difficult and frustrating slog that is trying to sell a script. Pitch starts out with the two writers, Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice, sitting in what appears to be their makeshift office in Hotz' mother's house. They sit around calling studios and production companies and imagining that they're going to get Al Pacino or Alec Baldwin to star in their movie. No one will really give them the time of day over the phone, so they head out to the 1996 Toronto Independent Film Festival where they push their script on literally every person they come in contact with. The process of trying to get someone to read and buy their screenplay has a definite adolescent mating aspect to it, with Hotz and Rice acting like horny, lonely guys who just can't figure out how to get past first base. The film then follows them, along with Hotz' girlfriend, on a two week trip to Los Angeles, where they talk with everyone from street performers to Hollywood greats like Samuel Z. Arkoff, Arthur Hiller and Neil Simon. The boys even finally manage to land themselves an agent and seemingly stumble out to the edge of success. Because the documentary started out as sort of a scam, it doesn't have the structure or well-defined viewpoint of most documentaries. It really looks and feels more like a mockumentary, but it's real so it's not nearly as funny. What Pitch does very well, however, is let you see how much fear and uncertainty permeates the movie industry. Hotz and Rice constantly run into a wall of noncommitment. People in the movie business are reluctant to even give them solid, helpful advice let alone buy their script and turn it into a $40 million production. Pitch paints a picture of film-making where the only way any movie ever gets made is through heroic, individual efforts because no one is willing to risk themselves on someone else's project. It's an understandable attitude. A saying I once heard about Hollywood and making movies sums up why that is. It's "nobody knows anything". The weirdness of celebrity and the enormous money involved in film-making can sometimes obscure the reality that the folks who make movies are usually tremendously talented and have worked extremely hard to perfect their craft. Yet for all of that, they still don't have the slightest idea of what makes a good movie and what makes a bad one. The evidence for that is all around. The first Iron Man movie was a bigger hit than anyone expected. There probably wasn't a single person on Earth who thought Iron Man would make as much money on its opening weekend as Batman Begins and Superman Returns combined. And just a week after Iron Man, a movie based on the old Speed Racer cartoon came out with a huge budget, amazing special effects and the prestige of being directed by the Wachowski brothers (makers of The Matrix). Speed Racer, however, became a box office bomb of biblical proportions. The truth about movies is that not all good movies succeed and not all bad movies fail and not even the people who make them understand why. Pitch lets you feel how that mystery underlies every decision in Hollywood. It's why no one wants to take risks and why everyone always wants to make one more little change to the script. As for Hotz and Rice? Does anyone eventually buy their screenplay about a mafia don who accidentally gets a sex change? Did they ever become successful Hollywood screenwriters? I don't want to spoil it for you, so let me put it this way. About a decade after they made Pitch, Hotz and Rice ended up with their own show on Comedy Central. They lived in the same house and engaged in gross and ridiculous competitions, like "Who can eat the most meat?" and "Who can stay tied to a goat the longest?", where the winner got to inflict ritual humiliation on the loser, like farting on them or forcing them to make out with an old woman. That's show business.
A necessary first step...
Hotz and Rice obviously have enough friends who are willing to come to IMDb to regale the quality of their earlier work. But if you are just an average film viewer like me, chances are you decided to view this film after stumbling upon it, because you thought it might be promising after having seen at least a few episodes of "Kenny and Spenny"--and you would likely be disappointed by this film. Hotz and Rice have written a script and are attempting to "pitch" the script to a string of Hollywood producers, agents, actors, and scouts to help make it into a movie. The first part of this documentary demonstrates the difficulty they encounter in even finding an audience to pitch the script. The second part shows the difficulty they encounter in convincing the aforementioned "industry types" at film festivals to accept their script (and thus enable them to "break" into the industry). Based on their descriptions of the script, it promises to be a really bad film, so a series of rejections coupled by increasingly desperate pitching methods make up the bulk of the documentary. At this point, you might say: "well, these people are not giving you an opportunity because, quite frankly, your script sucks." If you say this, you would right, except for the fact that countless bad scripts are turned into screenplays for over-budgeted Hollywood trash every year, so a bad script is hardly the reason why someone cannot get their "big break" as a screen-writer or producer. A superficial viewing would suggest that the point of the film is to educate and highlight an aspect of the film industry with respect to its treatment of new writing talents. But a few of the notables who appear in this film, like Roger Ebert, are more attentive to the subtle purpose of the film, which is that the actual "pitch" is not the script, but the documentary itself. Here we see some of the elements in the Hotz and Rice collaboration that made "Kenny and Spenny" such a hit: the contrast between their personalities, the constant jabs between them, and the drama/antics that unfold as a result. Except here, they have not yet realized how entertaining it would be if they were to take these elements to their extremes. This film is thus, in many ways, a failure. The antagonistic friendship between Hotz and Rice is subtle and contained, and none of their antics are particularly creative or funny. Moreover, it is the subject matter, not their relationship, that is the focus of the film. It attempts to highlight something so obvious, with a straight-forward documentary style that is far too serious to be taken seriously. On the other hand, Hotz and Rice have clearly learned from it and polished some of the elements of this film into the cornerstone of their successful television series. So unless you care about the "evolution" of the ideas that made "Kenny and Spenny", it is unlikely you will find this film particularly entertaining.
"Pitch" has some hysterically cogent lessons for the Hollywood uninitiated
An hilariously accurate caricature of trying to sell a script. Documentary hits all the beats, plot points, character arcs, seductions, moments of elation and disappointments and the allure but insane prospect of selling a script or getting an agent in Hollywood;and all the fleeting, fantasy-realizing but ultimately empty rites of passage attendant to being socialized into "the system." Hotz and Rice capture the moment of thinking you're finally a player, only to find that what goes up comes down fast and in a blind-siding fashion;that for inexplicable reasons, Hollywood has moved on and left you checking your heart, your dreams, and your pockets. Pitch is a must-see for students in film school to taste the mind and ego-bashing gantlet that is, for most, the road that must be traveled to sell oneself and one's projects in Hollywood. If your teacher or guru has never been there, they can't tell you what you need to prepare for this gantlet. To enter the"biz," talent is necessary but far from sufficient