Deadly Recall - Pitch Detective Based True Crime - 5 Tips

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Unidentified Voice: Biagio.

Biagio: Who did this episode? It’s episode 113 and we’re talking about pitching detective based. True crime five tips You need to know before pitching someone from law enforcement to TV networks. The right and wrong kinds of cases to pitch to networks. The journey to our new Investigation Discovery true crime series, deadly Recall, and a shocking truth about my appearance. I’m actually. Six foot six and 98% muscle. Music courtesy Dave Pelman. Music Dave Pelman.com. Hey, everybody. She’s joke. He’s Biagio. We’re married. We make unscripted film and television. I want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.

Biagio: All right. We’re talking a little bit quiet because we’re doing tonight’s podcast in our living room, and our kids are in their bedrooms sleeping. Luckily, they’re very heavy sleepers.

Joke: Yeah. I was just going to say. You think this is quiet?

Biagio: I’m totally turning into my grandma. She used to talk so loud all the time, and now I’m doing the same thing. Anyways, lots of exciting things to to tell you about this week. What we’re talking about today is pitching detective based true crime. And the reason is because we have a new television series that we can officially tell you about. It’s called Deadly Recall, and it premieres on Investigation Discovery on March 5th. So set your tvOS, check your local listings, see what time it’s playing in your area. This is a really exciting show for us. It’s about a cop, Pat Leone, and he has a very unique way that he solves crimes. He has a photographic memory. And so we’re going to talk a little bit more about that as we get into the episode. This was a long journey. It started with someone coming in and actually pitching us a completely different show. Right? Joke.

Joke: Yeah, there were a couple of pitches, but one of them was a crime show, as she knew that we were obviously doing a lot of crime, and it was more of kind of like a concept based, like ensemble show. So she had put some people together that she thought would be great for it. And it’s just something that had been pitched a lot, which obviously she wouldn’t necessarily have known. So we’re like, we don’t really know of that concept worked. And also the people she had put together weren’t organically together. So that’s always an uphill battle. But part of what we were looking at was the talent that she had relationships with and that she had chosen for that, and one really stood out, which was Detective Leone. So, you know, we said, look, we’re not sure the show is the right thing or this cast, ensemble cast is the right thing, but this particular man looks very interesting. Could there be a show with him? And so we scheduled a Skype interview that she helped set up. And so we got to know Pat and we really liked him and we didn’t at this point know about his memory. He was just a really solid detective who was very well liked, spent like 25 years with Nashville P.D. and look, okay, well, let’s let’s see if there’s something there. And we saw enough that we got on a plane and flew to Nashville to meet with him and to shoot a bit of a sizzle. But to be honest, it wasn’t until we got there and really started talking to him. You know, while the interview was being set up, we were in another room and Biagio and I started talking to him because the whole plane right there, we were like, oh, we have to find our second hook, right? We always tell you guys. We can hook, you need a second hook. And we’re like, well, we don’t really have a second hook other than he’s a good cop in Nashville, you know, we’ll tell you his case is. So the whole plane ride, we’re like, you know, what’s the second hook? So while we were talking to him, while the crew was setting up the interview, it just, you know, I don’t know what it was. Maybe he said something first about his memory. And we were like, wait, what about your memory? And he’s like, yeah, you know, I remember everything. And we’re like, oh, is that like something you say? And he was like, no, no, I really remember everything. And we’re like, like, like like everything. He’s like, oh yeah. You know, I spent like ten hours in a crime scene. I don’t really rely on photographs or any of that. I really just take it all in and then. Yeah, you know, you ask me about anything and so we can ask you about a crime scene from 20 years ago, and you’ll tell us, like, what’s all there and what it all meant and what wasn’t important, what ended up being important. And he’s like, yeah. He’s like, yeah, yeah. You know, I’m retired now. And I still have people call me like, remember that body we found on the corner of like fifth and 28th? I’m just making up the streets. Who was that again? And he’d be like, oh yeah, that was the victim. And this was the suspect. And he’s in jail now for this. And it’s just we were like, oh my goodness.

Biagio: So yeah, I mean, I mean, and I got to tell you at this point I am giddy. I’m like, oh my gosh, are we going to get to pitch a show about a cop with a photographic memory? Like, how can that one miss? And trust me, as I know from many pictures we’ve developed over the years, they can always miss, it’s. But we were really, really, really excited about this one. So we dove in and from that moment, like we decided in that first meeting and a half hour later we were filming and it was this is it. We’re talking about how Pat uses his memory to solve crimes.

Joke: This is real. And it was genuine. And, you know, it was very clear, like right away, you know, like I said, a half hour later, we’re in the interview chair. It wasn’t making it up. He really did just seem to remember everything.

Biagio: So now, with that little bit of background and why we’re doing today’s episode, we actually have five specific tips for you that will help you if you’re trying to find a detective for your detective based true crime pitch, these are five things you need to look for. Every detective or law enforcement person should have the qualities that are on this list before you think about really developing a show around them, and we’ll explain why as we go. But let’s go ahead and dive in. So tip number one, your detective should have worked homicide for a long time, preferably 20 years or longer, right?

Joke: Yeah. Look, here’s the thing. You need a lot of cases, right? Because you want to sell a show like a Joe Kenda homicide. Hunter, were you, like, all right, I can go six, seven seasons, maybe even more. And so you need cases. Most of the homicide detectives we’ve talked to across the country, it varies from ten cases a year to 30 cases a year. So obviously someone has worked ten years or 20 years, you know, that starts adding up and you think, wow, look at all those cases. But the truth of the matter is, is not every case. It makes for a good mystery. Sometimes it’s really obvious who did it. And, you know, the killer standing over the victim with the gun in their hand and you’re like, well, okay, that’s not going to be an episode. A lot of times, depending on the area in the country where it is happening, there might be a lot of drug homicides and so or gang homicides. And those don’t always make for a great story, because either they don’t necessarily have an ending or we kind of know who it is, and it’s not really a motive or a story that is intriguing to an audience. So it’s just you want someone who’s done a lot of cases, because with a lot of cases comes a hopefully a variety of cases, and that’s what you’re going to need.

Biagio: And that brings us to point number two. Having worked a lot of cases is not enough. They really need to have solved well over 100 cases, not just work the cases, but solve them and hopefully many more. Because if you’re going to do past tense true crime for television, they have to be adjudicated cases. There has to have been a verdict rendered in trial or a plea deal taken. Otherwise you can’t tell that story. So maybe someone’s worked homicide for a long time and they’ve worked hundreds of cases, but they’ve only solved like 25 or 30. You’re hoping that there’s a lot more than that.

Joke: Yeah. And the solve rate is important. And the networks will ask about it just because they want a really good cop and not saying, you know, what makes a good cop or not a good cop, I’m not a police sergeant. But but I do think that it’s important that for the networks, if they’re going to again, talent based crime, if they’re going to put someone forth and said, here is a piece of talent that is going to anchor the show, that is becoming a face of their network, they want it to be someone who has solid credentials behind them. So someone who has a reputation of being very good at their job is crucial. And a measuring stick of that is their solve rate.

Biagio: Again, like Joe said before, most of those cases that they solved still won’t work for TV and you need to have enough, hopefully for five seasons. So that’s why the having a huge number of cases is really important. In fact, when we pitched to Investigation Discovery, we wrote up what, 3030 cases?

Unidentified Voice: Well hold on, I mean, you know, right up and right up is two, right? So I feel like we rode up.

Joke: One really detailed, one 6 to 8 pages for one case, like broken down by acts. Then we wrote up another 4 or 5 detailed one, but not broken up by acts, but probably 3 or 4 pages a case. And then we ended up writing, probably, like you said, another 3032 like one liners. Or it was like date victim offender and then like what had happened.

Biagio: Yeah. And the goal there was for the network to be able to take a look and say, okay, already right here if we’re doing, you know, ten episodes of season, if most of these work, we know we’ve got a few seasons worth and we let them know that there were many, many more we didn’t write up.

Joke: And I think it’s also important to know that because there’s so much crime programing, what these networks are doing now is they are doing overlap checks. You don’t want to see the Ted Bundy story five nights a week, right? So they you don’t want to have the same murder case told in eight different shows on their network. The mystery is gone. You already know it. And so it’s important to find these detectives who have these cases that haven’t necessarily been told yet. And so that’s also part of what that overlap check is. They look through the whatever 36 cases we sent them to see if they, as a network, had told those stories already in other shows. Yes or no?

Biagio: Yeah. And that’s pretty, pretty crazy trying to figure that out. As a matter of fact, I’ll go ahead and give you my little secret. When we’re researching cases and we think we found the good one, the first thing I do is go to Investigation Discovery site and search their site to see if they’ve ever done it, because I would say probably a times out of ten they have. So yeah.

Joke: Also obviously oxygen’s in the game. So you’d have to check them. And then you know Forensic Files did like 300 plus episodes or something. So you know there’s there’s a lot of things to check depending on which network you’re pitching to or you’re looking at that’s going to come into play.

Biagio: All right. So that brings us to point number three. Your detective has to have a unique hook. We mentioned this a little bit in the beginning of the episode with Pat. It was this photographic memory. He would stand in a crime scene and memorize it for hours on end, and sometimes as many as 20 years later would solve a case using using his memory, which is amazing. Additionally, with Pat I, he has this really deep emotional memory. Every single victim, every single case. They stick with them. He sees them in his mind’s eye, which is very emotionally heavy. It’s as he puts it, it’s a blessing and a curse. It’s his memory is a blessing because he’s brought justice to so many families. But it’s a curse because, you know, it can keep him up at night. So that was really obviously an interesting hook for him. Whoever you pitch, you know, you got to find what that unique angle is. Maybe it’s how they solve crimes, maybe it’s the location they’re solving the crimes in. Maybe it’s a specific set of challenges they have that most other police officers don’t. But you need to zero in on what that thing is. And I’ll tell you a funny story. Before we knew about Pat’s memory. The only thing we knew is. So he was this huge, natural detective. But he was from New York. He actually came from New York. He’s got a he’s got a New York accent. He does not sound like he’s from Nashville. And so we were like, oh, maybe, you know, maybe our angle is that he’s the fish out of water. You know, he’s the cop from New York City. Cop come into the country. Yeah. And Pat quickly shot that down. He’s like, actually, that’s not what it’s like at all. He’s like, the only thing we ever disagree about is who has the accent. And clearly everyone in Nashville has the accent. Not me. But but we were like, okay, so that’s not going to work. But that just kind of shows you our thought process. We’re like, how are we going to find that second hook, find yours, make it really good, and you give yourself a much better chance of selling the show.

Joke: Agreed.

Biagio: All right. And that brings us to point number four. Your detective should have great relationships with the families of the victims. This is so important because the only thing that keeps true crime from crossing over into the land of exploitive is having the buy in from family and police who want to tell the story. You don’t want to go tell a story that nobody wants to tell. But a lot of cases, these people have become crusaders for justice. Or, you know, they want to celebrate great police work and they’re grateful that they finally receive justice. It’s important for your detective to be able to tell you. Hey, listen. These are the families I’ve worked with over the years, and these are the families that like to tell their story. And these are the families that absolutely don’t want to. Because as much as you want to find people who want to tell their stories, you don’t want to call up somebody who’s who’s still grieving and has never come to terms with what happened, because then you’re just causing them more pain. So the safest, easiest, best way to do that, in my opinion, is to talk to your detective, talk to your officer and find out who should we call? Who shouldn’t we call?

Joke: And I think it’s also good for your talent to be able to call the family. So we’ll always, you know, call the families first and see if there’s even interest. And. But if someone’s on the fence, you know, we’ve had a few times. Not that they were on the fence about participating with us or or doing a show in general. But just like us now, the right time for us to talk about it. You know, they’ll often ask to talk to the talent. And so if you have a talent who’s genuine and authentic and really is the person that you know you’re making the story about, that’s not a problem. And then it only helps. And so, you know, those victims, after talking to our our detective to Pat, we’re just like, oh, we love Pat. It was so nice to finally talk to him again after ten, 15, 20 years. And, you know, it was you know, it just it just made it better. And so it makes it easier for them. It makes it easier for the talent. And obviously it would make it easier for you as a producer. So good relationships with victims also speak to their character. And you know, it’s definitely a plus.

Biagio: It’s also important for press. You know, Pat is doing an appearance on Doctor Oz, right. And actually, yeah, this Tuesday and actually along with him is appearing one of the family members, right?

Joke: Yeah. Of the victim.

Biagio: A daughter of the victim. And part of promoting the show is, you know, her going on Doctor Oz with Pat and telling her story there. So, again, another reason why it’s important for your detective to have those great relationships. Now, I’ve been saying the word detective a lot, but that brings us to point number five. Not every detective has to be a literal detective. And probably the best example of this is on Investigation Discovery, and it show called The Coroner, and he’s the coroner. He was just involved in helping the solve, you know, many, many, many homicides over the years. And so he becomes the quote unquote detective voice in the show. That’s actually a really great thing, is if you happen to find somebody who is either working with law enforcement or is crime adjacent in their normal career, but for whatever reason, has been a part of solving many, many homicides, that might be a great way to to pitch somebody in the pitch. The second hook, you know, obviously with the coroner is the coroner, but there are other law enforcement professions. You know, there’s the CSI people, the blood splatter people. There’s, you know, you got your fingerprint people, you got your DNA people. If you can find somebody who isn’t necessarily a detective but helped solve many crimes, they can they can lead your show.

Joke: Yeah. I do think, you know, it’s best to go with someone who is in law enforcement. You know, who is on that side of things because it’ll make it easier for access. That being said, if it’s someone who’s just outside of that is more of like an independent type person, just make sure that they have really good relationships with law enforcement.

Biagio: So there you go. That is our five tips on how to pitch detective based true crime. I hope this was helpful. I will go ahead and say, I don’t think anybody else has ever talked about this anywhere, so not that I was ever able to find. So I think this may be the only podcast episode in the world discussing how to put together a crime show around a detective. I might be wrong. It’s possible it wouldn’t be the first time.

Joke: You’re challenging people now to go Google. Like, I almost feel challenged to like Google and prove you wrong.

Biagio: Well, listen, you know, it’s a that’s she’s proven me wrong many times over these.

Joke: Claims that it’s just like, really?

Biagio: I’m actually six foot six and 98% muscle.

Joke: Remember I was taught the question everything.

Biagio: Yes. She was. So listen, don’t forget, okay? Please set your tvOS. Check out our new show, Deadly Recall with Pat Leone. It premieres March 5th on Investigation Discovery. Check your TiVo, check your local listings, see what time it plays for you, and they’ll probably replay it a thousand times because they always do.

Joke: He is so great. You guys like the show is good, but he is so good. He’s genuine. He’s the he’s the real deal. So it’s really exciting to see someone that is that good at their job, seeing them do that job and bring justice and bring answers to families. It was really special working with him.

Biagio: He’s also like the nicest guy, the nicest guy. Like, we, we, we needed to do pickups for the show. So we actually bought like a really nice microphone that could connect to his iPhone so that I could do the pickups with him over the phone and like, we just end up just talking and laughing, and he’s just so down to earth and telling stories. And like a lot of times, talent can be a little difficult. He is not. He is just, you know, the most genuine person. And I’m happy for him that he’s getting the show. So the other thing, if you missed it, you know, our final two episodes of season one of Unmasking a Killer just aired. It’s there, the wrap up episodes revealing everything that we were able to learn about the Golden State Killer. If you did miss them, they’re now available on CNN. Go. You can stream them anytime. And me and joke actually also do a CNN podcast also called Unmasking a Killer. And you can find that podcast at iTunes or wherever you subscribe to the podcasts. Oh my gosh, that get so many more downloads than this show, I guess. I guess true crime is more popular than talking about how to develop unscripted television. I can’t imagine why.

Joke: Yeah, but these are the real fans right here.

Biagio: These are the real. That’s right. The people listening to this podcast, you’re you’re you’re gold. You’re the people we die for. And finally, you know, don’t forget, if you’d like to pitch to us, you can get a submission agreement and pitch through our online portal over at Producing Unscripted. Com just subscribe to the newsletter and follow the directions and listen. You know Sharon, Phil, who is an executive producer on Deadly Recall, you know she pitched to us. It was she is a more established producer. But we’ve also worked with brand new producers. And, you know, we’ve teamed up with people of basically every every level in their career. So, you know, we love to meet new people. We can’t be everywhere at once. And we think this podcast is a nice way to find other great filmmakers. And, you know, we team up on 5 to 10 projects a year and hopefully sell 1 or 2 of them. So keep that in mind again. Producing unscripted. Com you sign up for the newsletter, follow the directions. I know I’ve said that like a thousand times in the past 113 episodes, but that’s it. Do you have any any parting thoughts?

Joke: Nope. We’re working really hard. I hope you get to enjoy the shows and maybe we can work hard together on your project.

Biagio: Hey, sounds like a plan. All right, don’t forget. Deadly recall, March 5th, investigation discovery. Thanks so much. By Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.