Hey everyone Hope you’re all having a wonderful day. I was hoping to please get some feedback. Before I carry on. I’m working on my pitch deck - I’m just playing around with tone and the vibe of how it looks - the writing will be changed as I just wanted to se show it looked. Soo ignore the actual words because they will be changed. I’ve only done three pages. Before work - is this the kind of thing and way it’s meant to look. I’ can’t seem to find examples or many online, so I’m guessing. Thank you sm.

I am so grateful to have had the conversation with @Melissa Verdugo and have taken her suggestions to heart. I created a Producer Pitch Deck that I feel covers what we discussed, and it's so much better. When she spoke, it clicked, and I am so excited about the results. Thanks @David Stem for creating this amazing community and the opportunity to do something I never thought would happen. I wrote a screenplay, received placement in four film festivals so far, and made two pitch decks! Yahoo! I would so love to know what pages strike you most, and perhaps what feeling you have when you finish looking at the deck. It's structured a bit differently because it's got a theme that relates to the screenplay. And I hope it makes everyone want to see the final product. Fingers crossed!

People, people! There's a New Member Orientation/Hot Seat/Welcome to The Cult Indoctrination call this Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time! You are encouraged to bring the opening of your script, which we will read in a table read and then give feedback on. Or bring a treatment idea or logline. Or just come along to meet your fellow writers and get an earful of why this place was built, what my philosophy is re writing and why you can Save the Cat and neuter your script at the same time. Seriously, don't get me started on Save the Cat. Or do. It's always a fun ride! Who's in? If you have pages, drop them below and our man @Chad Desrochers will coordinate the line up. But seriously, if you're new here, know this: One call like this can change the entire direction of your writing. So, drop in and see if it resonates with you. If it does, you're in for an amazing ride. Just ask our members who's been here for a while how it's affected their scripts. Looking forward to meeting the new people who are here and ready to take their work to the next level! See you Thursday, David

On The Rugrats Movie there was a Russian director named Igor. His English wasn't great. He'd read our latest draft, find me and my writing partner in the hallway, and deliver the same review every time. Imagine this in thick Russian accent: "I read script. Script needs... something." That was it. He never said what the something was. It pissed me off. It felt unfair. But he was absolutely right. It did need something. And he wasn't a writer, so pointing to it wasn't his job. Finding it was ours. The same way it's an actor's job to bring a character to life, or an art director's job to bring a set to life. Your job as a writer is to find the something. // I used to think the something was plot. Things happen, and characters happen to be standing in them. So I'd rearrange events, punch up scenes, and Igor would find me in the hallway again. Script needs something. After a long series of beating my head against the wall, I found it. The something is what your character is hiding. Or is in deep denial of. // Rugrats turned around when we leaned into Tommy's denial. Suddenly there was comic juxtaposition between the scene Tommy insisted was happening and the scene his friends could plainly see. Same engine in Shrek. Shrek at dinner with Fiona's parents is funny because he's in denial about how obviously they hate him. But look closer. The King is in denial too. He's hiding that he was the frog a princess kissed. He believes that part of him is unlovable. Rewatch the movie and you'll see it: everything that happens in that kingdom happens not because the father hates Shrek, but because he hates the frog in himself. All of us hide parts of ourselves from the world. Including from the people closest to us. So when a character on screen does it, we don't watch them. We recognize ourselves. // Here's the truth nobody tells you. The audience doesn't care about you. They don't care about your story. They don't even care about your characters. They care about themselves. That's why they bought the ticket.

I am so blown away at the timing of the Universe right now! Today, July 3rd, 2026, the World Rugby Museum just posted about my Dad, his jacket, and the collection I donated, and it's making me cry happy tears! This is so going in my Pitch Deck now! This is the post from the World Rugby Museum with a photo of my dad's jacket. https://www.facebook.com/wrugbymuseum/posts/pfbid0vLxEuWSJuYBryyt3uY2YEXnoDtBV3SRx551N5FidsksEto8FMrBDtio9vPkUHpZYl This is the blog the Director wrote about my dad, his jacket, my team, and their wild episode of eating wine glasses at the banquet dinner in Leningrad in 1978, in this way: "With B.A.T.S., Markson had his work cut out. In true rugby style, he was as often to be found treating extreme hangovers as he was physical injuries. In later years, during a memorable trip into the Soviet Union, specialist aid had to be administered to the B.A.T.S. team after several members accidentally ate wine glasses. Markson was, perhaps fortunately, absent on that occasion." They didn't do it accidentally; they did it to intimidate the KGB agents, one of whom was Putin at the time, but he didn't want to inspire others to do this on rugby tours, very nice of him! In my documentary film, "Organized Mayhem: The B.A.T.S. Rugby Club Story" on YouTube, the guys describe the what and why, and the disastrous results when one player didn't understand the how. https://worldrugbymuseum.com/from-the-vaults/museum-collection/trainer-of-bats?fbclid=IwY2xjawS013lleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFsUlNqMEtwWWZORDFCYXF6c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHkXR_1vMvgSonkOZGM4l7mtFC8hj-id2mtF_4tcEmvTolToUsUSln2n58gaB_aem_lf-aQcxB4F1lgJ1GpPU69w