The Pitch

THE PITCH



         Bob Getz is a small man, but seems big. His gestures are extravagant, his voice loud and booming. In a crowd he is always the first person to be noticed. Clothes that would look silly on anyone else look fine on him. Today he is wearing chocolate brown linen pants, a lime-green shirt and has a tan jacket slung over his left shoulder. He isn’t wearing a tie. Bob Getz hates ties.



         As he climbs the wide stairs to the front door of the building, he runs a smooth, carefully manicured hand over his thinning hair, ensuring the few strands he combs over his bald spot are in fact, over said bald spot. Confident that he is looking his best, Bob Getz carries on, pushing his way through the wide glass doors and heading to the bank of elevators where he stands, tapping his foot impatiently and pushing the button. Finally an elevator slides open. Bob slides inside, allowing the tiny car to swallow him.



         He is spat out on the twenty-fourth floor. A receptionist’s desk stands in front of the elevator doors, guarding the offices beyond.

“Can I help you?” The girl’s voice is high pitched, sugary sweet.

“You sure can!” Bob grins a crooked grin, displaying a bank of chemically whitened teeth. “You tell Mr. Donnelly that Bob Getz is here to see him.” He strides over to the green suede couch and plonks himself down as the blonde girl picks up the telephone, peeking over at Bob Getz once or twice as she whispers his message into the receiver.



         “Mr. Donnelly will see you now.” Before the words have finished being spoken Bob Getz is on his feet. He speed-walks past the receptionist and sweeps into the office beyond.

“Greg!” he calls as he enters, bounding up to the heavy wooden desk behind which the president of the network conducts his business. “How are you? And your wife? Kids? All well, I hope!”

“They’re fine.” Greg Donnelly’s voice is dry. He is a tall man, well built and conservatively dressed in a pinstriped suit. His maroon tie is fastened with a Windsor knot. He has a thick head of dark brown hair, just beginning to grey above his ears.



         “Boy do I have something for you!” Bob Getz gets straight down to business. He knows he needs to come up with something fantastic this time or these doors will be closed to him forever. His last show ended badly. Very badly. In fact, one could quite honestly say Bob Getz’s last show was a disaster.



         It had been a reality show, as all Bob Getz’s shows were. After making a start as a production assistant on Survivor, Bob Getz had gone on to create and produce several other reality shows, each more successful than the last. But then Bob Getz had gotten cocky; he’d wanted to do something truly different and groundbreaking. Reality TV was commonplace now, every network had a slew of them, each sillier than the last. So Bob Getz had hit upon the idea of really challenging his contestants. His last show, Sleepless, involved the contestants being subjected to all kinds of sleep deprivation and sleep interruption techniques. As their brains became more and more exhausted, the contestants’ behaviour had grown increasingly bizarre. Bob Getz should have foreseen the disaster, but nobody had.



Jeremy Golstein, a mild-mannered forty-eight year old career plumber, after six nights without sleep, had bludgeoned another contestant, the audience favourite, to death.



         “You’ve got five minutes, Bob.” Greg Donnelly’s face was stern, his grey eyes cold behind his horn rimmed glasses. “What have you got?”

“Okay!” Bob Getz’s eyes glittered with excitement as he raised his hands. “I call it Demolition Derby Drunk. It’s a really high stakes game. Really high stakes. And socially responsible too. We’re going to promote a real message with this one. About safety, you know?” Bob Getz meets Greg Donnelly’s eyes, making sure the other man is listening.

“It’s like this. Every week we get a bunch of people together to drive in a demolition derby. You know, get some dinged up old cars and a few clowns to drive around smashing each other up in them. The twist is, we get them really drunk first. So they’re totally impared behind the wheel.”

“So who wins?” Greg Donnelly is sitting back in his chair, arms folded across his chest.

“Well, it’s more about who loses,” Bob Getz says, still animated despite the chill coming from the president. “You see, it’s really high stakes. The loser, well, the person who gets eliminated from the competition, well, they’re the one who gets killed, see?”

“And this is socially responsible, how?”

“You can die driving drunk, right?” Bob Getz is beginning to sense he’s lost ground. “We want to show people that. Show them how messy it is. So they won’t go ahead and drive after they’ve had a few, or at least think about it a little….”



         Greg Donnelly gets to his feet. He towers over Bob Getz who seems to have shrunk a little.

“Get out!” Greg Donnelly’s voice is deep and loud. He points to the door which has already been opened by the sweet mouthed receptionist.

“But Mr. Donnelly…” Bob Getz hold up his hand. “Okay, okay. Maybe that’s a little extreme. I have this other idea too. What about….”



         Bob Getz is still talking as the security guards shove him out the glass doors, back onto the steps leading to the street.



922 words