Pitch (1997)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

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.

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.

I really wanted to like this movie. I absolutely love kenny hotz, and spenny rice has a charming side to him. Not that I like spenny at all. Spenny ruins this movie. He should of let kenny and his hot girlfriend pitch the movie.Anyways, it's pretty boring aside from a scene with Roger Ebert in it. There really isn't too many celebrities in this movie, and most don't seem to say more than one line. Overall this movie was disappointing. I would only suggest watching it if you got it with the season 1 DVD of kenny vs spenny (it comes for free on the 3rd disc). Regardless of this production, I am still very excited to check out The Papel Chase.

This is the worst documentary to come out of Canada ever!!!! I'm glad to see the guys haven't made another movie. All they want to do is get a movie made and it doesn't have to be the one they wrote. They keep changing the script to suite the person they're pitching. I could not get out of the theatre fast enough when I saw it at that year's Toronto Film Festival. Please never see this film.