The Failed Pitch Podcast: Recent Episodes
Marc L. Reda and Luke Miller
Pitching TV shows is tough, lots of great ideas go unsold and never made. What happens to the ideas that never get made? Well they’ve been sitting in a folder on my Desktop. 10 years of pitching and lots of rejection makes for about 300+ unmade pitches. Marc L. Reda, Creative Director, and Luke Miller, Historian, are going to take the unsold and get them a step closer to being told through this new podcast series. Each week Marc and Luke pull a pitch from the archive, discuss the subject, and tell the story as it would’ve played out on your TV. The topics will cover a great range of History both in the US and around the world.
A look into the pitch and story behind "Black Monday"
The largest one-day drop in stock market history shocks the American economy and triggers the downfall of the 1980s “greed is good” craze.
A look at the arc, story, and style of the pitch around Black Monday.
The ACLU has existed for 100 years, fighting for and helping to preserve our democracy and freedoms. This week's episode takes a look at their long and hard fighting history as told through a potential 6 hour series. From their founding, an era of Nazis, Black Rights, LGBTQ Rights, and another Nazi era, we guide you through how this would've played out on TV.
A look at the ups and downs behind the pitch for John Lennon: The Final Year. Another twisting and turning episode that not only tells the story of the musical greats final year, but near success, and the downfall in the end.
Pitched as the final WWII series that would feature voices of living veterans, WWII: The Final Tour would have been a 6-hour limited series telling their stories. Marc and Luke dive into the the pitch, the style, and the stories behind the pitch. This time our show ends on a positive and only a slight failure.
A departure from the norm, this episode focuses entirely on Disney centric pitches, specifically made for Disney+ streaming service. From the parks to the MCU, Marc and Luke discuss a variety of pitches that were sent to the folks at Disney+.
We cover the pitch and story behind Ernest Withers, a feature length documentary pitch:
I AM AN ICON, I AM A SPY is the sweeping story of civil rights icon Ernest Withers and his unbelievable responsibility in the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior. Withers was known for his remarkable ability to capture some of the most important moments in the civil rights era. Emmitt Till, The Little Rock Nine, The Montgomery Bus Boycott, Withers always found himself in the right place at the right time and it made him a legend. His photographs still hang in the National Portrait Gallery, The Smithsonian, and the National Civil Rights Museum.
Our hosts take a deep dive into the pitch that would have told the story of Martin Luther King Jr. and the final 31 hours of his life in Memphis.
31 Hours: A close-up focus on the dramatic, revealing last 31 hours of King’s life. Previously untold eyewitness accounts by those who were with King in his final hours reveal a wealth of hour-by-hour detail and breadth of context.
This weeks episode takes our listeners through the story of the Green Book and the limited series pitch that took on a unique style to tell its story:
"Amazingly, until 1966 there was a published guide for African Americans that ensured their safe travels within the United States. Our series host uses the Green Book to explore multiple destinations across the U.S., finding out what’s changed, and what hasn’t, for Black Americans during the eight decades since the book was first published."
Marc and Luke discuss a pitch focusing on their favorite decade. The 1980's documentary would've been a follow up to Hippies and 70s Fever, telling the story behind Greed is Good and the era of excess. So much from the decade was iconic that it was surely going to be a fascinating and compelling story. Our hosts discuss Miami Vice, 80s song puns, and the timeline that made the decade.
Marc and Luke take a look at the pitch centered around journalist and cultural icon, Hunter S. Thompson. Following the arc of the pitch, Marc and Luke take a look at a very interesting period in Thompson's career and life.
"We know the Hunter S Thompson of lore, the hard drinking, gun shooting outlaw and literary genius holed up in his Colorado ranch. Who we don’t know is the man that came before and the circumstances that shaped his transformation from the optimistic intrepid reporter to the rogue anti-hero known as Raoul Duke. How did he get there and who did he meet along the way until he eventually blurred the lines between his own persona and the lead character in his most famous novel Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas?"
In 1939, just 20 years after the world's last bloody war, humanity was dragged into another global conflict. Tens of millions of young men fought and died to decide the fate of the world. But there was another group of people who had just as important of an impact on our future; the millions of brave women who stepped to show us that they could contribute and sacrifice in ways many didn't think was possible. These remarkable women shifted the fortunes of World War II and changed our perception of what a woman can do forever.... This is the story of the pitch for Women of World War II.
Marc and Luke take a look at the many pitches of The Korean War. 10 years of pitching the Korean War in some way or another has provided a lot of content and conversation for our hosts to tackle. They focus on Marc's most recent form of the pitch, but give listeners an intensive, overall view of the war and the TV side of things.
The first ever episode of The Failed Pitch Podcast not only introduces listeners to the series that lies ahead, but dives right into our first selected “failed pitch.” We’ll cover the background of the pitch, the history on the actual subject, how the pitch would play out on TV had it been commissioned, and why it never happened.
Hometown Heroes was developed and pitched in 2014, with the series overview as follows:
*HOMETOWN HEROES is a refreshingly original, emotionally powerful approach to Vietnam War storytelling. For the first time, we’ll fully connect the war overseas with the war at home through the unique perspective of the small American towns and communities that were forever changed.
Each episode centers on a particular American town and tells the story of the war through the unique perspective of the men, women and families that lived there. Through the emotionally- charged experiences of this tightknit group of people – the high school friends turned into battlefield brothers... the mothers and fathers who sent their sons off to an unknown fate in a foreign land... and the childhood sweethearts who suddenly found themselves separated by physical and emotional chasms – we’ll experience the war in Vietnam and the repercussions at home as never before.*