Martini Shot Share |    This is Rob Long with Martini Shot on
KCRW.  Once, a writing team I know pitched a show to a network.
Pitches are tricky things – sell too hard, too slick, with too
much prepared "hey! How are ya?" kind of patter, and you turn
everyone off. You turn something that's supposed to be a sales
call disguised as a casual meeting into a sales call disguised
as a…well, disguised as nothing. As a sales call. A shabby
please-buy-my-thing kind of event, no different from those
people you see lugging pharmaceutical samples around doctor's
offices, handing out pens and pre-printed post-it notes.  But in
this case, with the writing team I'm talking about, it was
pretty clear. They were selling. Hard. But they were also a
little desperate, which had created tiny hairline fractures in
their relationship, which, under the pressure of the pitch,
started to widen. Especially when it was clear to both of them
that the pitch wasn't going well. There weren't a lot of laughs
from the network executives, were