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Blog 03: Pizza and Networking, Manhattan Style

25 September 11

As anyone who's been will tell you, Manhattan is the urban equivalent of sticking your fingers into a plug socket. Add to that a bit of jet lag, a lot of excitement, a lot of pizza, remove sleep, and you get a sense of how my week in New York went.

Our schedule was built around the New York Television Festival, which is impeccably run by a team of passionate individuals (lead by Terence Gray), who assembled an elite of industry experts for us to pester. I'll name-drop just a few: LOST co-creator Damon Lindelof, Hollywood comedian Jason Sudeikis, Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal, VPs from just about every major US network and agents from William Morris Endeavour, United Artists and CAA.

The bulk of our time was spent attending group talks, one-on-one meetings, and networking events with all of the aforementioned TV bigwigs. If the concept of 'networking' puzzles/horrifies you, simply think of it as being plied with free booze and shoved into a room full of like-minded people. It's knackering but fun. A bit like New York.

There was also a myriad of red-carpet preview screenings on offer, but I missed most of those, favouring instead to stuff my face with the abundance of food available absolutely everywhere you look in the city. I recall stumbling out of my hotel room one night at 2am, jet lagged and starved, and only having to cross the street to order a very civilised, freshly prepared vegetarian burger and chips with extra pickles (that's gherkins to us) for just $10. I love London with all my heart, but the chances of getting this in the British capital without having to walk 18 miles and being stabbed repeatedly are slim-to-none.

The cherry on the cake was our own event: a performance of our scripts in front of lots of scary people, followed by a feedback and Q&A session lead by legendary writer/producer Phil Rosenthal.

Here I am on stage with Phil (below), who looks a little bemused, most likely by the state of my hair...

I was worried my script wouldn't play out well, mostly because it's a dark comedy (the protagonist tries top herself by page 6), but the evening was a success and the response from both the audience and Phil was very encouraging. Some of the scary people in attendance came forward after the performance, and revealed themselves to be in fact very lovely and keen to develop a working relationship.

I'll bore you with details of that in my next blog.

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