My Pitch Meeting With
Steven Spielberg
by J. Neil SchulmanHere's a picture of Steven Spielberg with E.T.
(Spielberg is the one on the right.)
In 1982, when E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was released, six-year-old Brian Herzlinger first got a crush on its young co-star, Drew Barrymore. Twenty-three years later, with a video camera obtained under morally ambiguous circumstances and $1,100 prize money he won on a game show, Brian decided to make the charming, inspirational, and laugh-out-loud funny movie, My Date with Drew, in which he documents his campaign to get a date with his crush. Strategic to Brian's campaign to meet Drew Barrymore was setting up a website named MyDateWithDrew.com.
Now, in 1982, when E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was released, I was 29-years-old. I did not get a crush on Drew Barrymore, who was seven-years-old, for cryin' out loud. But my first novel had been published in hardcover three years earlier. I was living in Long Beach, California, where years before Steven Spielberg had attended film school, and there was nothing I wanted so much as to get a copy of my second novel The Rainbow Cadenza, which had just been given final acceptance by my publisher, into the hands of Steven Spielberg.
Legend has it that when Steven Spielberg was just starting out in the movie business, he donned a suit and tie and, carrying an attache case, he walked onto the Universal Studios lot, set himself up in a vacant office, and before anyone discovered he didn't work on the lot he'd managed to get himself a directing job.
So if Brian Herzlinger was looking to impress someone with his audacity to get his big break into the movie business, Steven Spielberg, rather than Drew Barrymore, was the person who would most understand.
Steven Spielberg is the American Dream writ large. A kid who grew up in the suburbs making 8-millimeter movies grew up to become one of the most commercially successful moviemakers in history.
I was first impressed by Steven Spielberg's work in 1967 when he directed the last episode of the 90-minute TV series, The Name of the Game, a brilliant science-fiction episode written by Philip Wylie titled L.A. 2017. Every time I see Mick Jagger these days I can't help thinking of the prophetic scene where an elderly rock band performs in a club populated only by the Geritol set.
Since that time, Steven Spielberg has gone on to write and direct some of my all-time favorite films. An inexhaustive list includes Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones series, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Minority Report, Catch Me if You Can, The Terminal, and his latest as of this writing, The War of the Worlds. His producing credits add to my incomplete favorites list the Back to the Future trilogy, Men in Black, and Band of Brothers.
I, on the other hand, have had a career with plenty of artistic satisfaction -- nine published books including three well-reviewed novels, several awards, and the script for one of the best remembered Twilight Zone episodes from 1986, "Profile in Silver." But at age 52 I'm still waiting for that blockbuster movie sale that will set my writing career on fire.
So I've decided that if Brian Herzlinger can win his 15 minutes of fame by putting up a website begging for a date with Drew Barrymore, why shouldn't I put up a website begging for a pitch meeting with Steven Spielberg?
Mr. Spielberg,if you grant me twenty minutes with you, I promise to pitch you at least a half dozen stories as commercial as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. How's that for chutzpah? And I still think that my 1983 science-fiction novel, The Rainbow Cadenza, would be the greatest science-fiction movie you'd ever direct.
How about it, sir? You'll find my contact info here.
J. Neil Schulman's latest novel Escape from Heaven, has been praised by authors including Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, David Brin, Piers Anthony, and Colin Wilson. Neil is currently producing his screenplay adaptation of Escape from Heaven with Nichelle Nichols. His next book, I MET GOD, will be first released as an audiobook. His personal website is The World According to J. Neil Schulman.
