The Producer of 'Hustlers' Wants to Teach You How to Pitch Hollywood

You can write the best script in a group of your writing buddies… and still watch it die when you get in the room. Knowing how to pitch is a skill in its own right, separate from writing, and most of us learn it by bombing in front of executives or producers until something finally clicks. You have to practice. A lot.

A new course wants to shorten that curve. Producer Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas and writer Amy Ferris are launching From Dreaming to Streaming, a three-week live class built to move you from a raw idea to a pitch you can take to studio and network execs.

The platform behind it, Noon Miracle, announced the course on July 27, and enrollment is open now. It's capped at 20 students, tuition is $600, and it is taught online.

Sessions and lessons are not prerecorded. The course is comprised of three live, two-hour group sessions, and each week's homework feeds straight into the next stage of development, so you walk out with a finished pitch as well as notes to take forward.

Noon Miracle runs the class. The platform hosts writing and screenwriting courses alongside table reads, a podcast, and salons for prose and screenwriters, and it lists From Dreaming to Streaming among a fall slate that runs into November. Several of its courses receive scholarship support through the same fund that backs this one.

Who's Teaching the Course?

Goldsmith-Thomas started on a William Morris desk in the early 1980s and climbed to become one of the most powerful agents in the business, repping Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, and Spike Lee. She went on to produce 13 Going on 30, Maid in Manhattan, Mona Lisa Smile, Hustlers, Marry Me, and this year's Office Romance. Her debut novel, Climbing in Heels, is being adapted into a series by Darren Star for Peacock.

"There are no straight lines in a career, or in a script," Goldsmith-Thomas said in a press release.

Ferris co-wrote the features Mr. Wonderful and Funny Valentines, earning a Best Screenplay nomination at the Black Reel Awards for the latter. Her memoir Marrying George Clooney was adapted into an Off-Broadway play in 2012, and her latest book, Amy in Retrograde, arrived in March.

Between them, the instructors have worked both sides of the table. Goldsmith-Thomas went from agent to studio head to producer, and now serves as a producing partner to Jennifer Lopez. Her own novel is heading to television, the same idea-to-screen path the course lays out. Ferris, named one of Women's eNews' 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, has written for television and film and spent years teaching and mentoring writers.

The Structure of the Course

In week one, students will start by creating a logline and a one-paragraph pitch.

The logline is a one-sentence hook that tells the audience everything they need to know about your idea, and the pitch is the slightly longer summary that hopefully hooks a distracted exec. Compressing a complicated story into a single line is sometimes harder than writing the script itself. And elevator pitches are no picnic, either.

The one-paragraph pitch does a different job than a logline. It gives the exec the shape of the whole story (the setup, the turn, and where it lands) in the time it takes to read a few sentences. Getting both to sit side by side, each doing its own work, is the first real test of the idea.

Week two moves to characters. Typically, a high-concept idea will get you somewhere and at least pique some interest, but if you don't have interesting people in your world, the idea doesn't matter. Execs want to fall for people they'll follow for two hours or six seasons. Figuring out who these characters are, what they want, and why we can't look away is the goal. Can they grow? Can they sustain a story?

This is also where a strong concept gets pressure-tested. A premise can sound fresh in a logline and fall apart the moment you ask who is living inside it, so this step goes toward making the people as sharp as the hook.

Week three, students assemble the full pitch. They will practice pitching it directly to both instructors before the class wraps. Whether you're chasing a feature o pitching a TV show to a network or streamer, the materials you carry into the room are all part of its own discipline, so it helps to know what execs expect you to have ready. Then students rehearse.

Again, the practice is so important. You never want to go into a room and just read something, because execs could do that themselves, and reading off a page tends to break the connection in the room. So, by the end, the aim is to have the beats down cold and deliver them like a conversation rather than a recital. Remember, you're selling yourself as much as your idea. For example, the Duffer brothers memorized their Stranger Things pitch word-for-word, and that took them pretty far.

Every student gets personal feedback in a small group.

Two Full Rides Are on the Table

Six hundred dollars is a barrier for many aspiring writers. Two full scholarships are available through the Ken Ferris Scholarship for Women Writers.

To apply, you submit a treatment and at least five pages of the script you intend to develop during the course.

The fund is named for Ferris' late husband, who watched her find joy in mentoring women writers and built the scholarship in his honor to help her reach more of them. The scholarship is sustained by its donors and exists to remove cost as a barrier for women writers. The treatment and pages you submit are for the project you would develop in the class, so those admitted start the three weeks with a script already underway.

From Dreaming to Streaming starts on Sept. 15 and runs three consecutive weeks. You can apply for the scholarship or enroll directly through Noon Miracle.