How to Turn a Book - Or Any Property - Into a TV Show with Chad Gervich

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???

Announcer: This episode…

Biagio: It’s episode 18. How do I recognize when a book or any property is potentially a TV show? Specific steps you can take to reach out to an author or business owner even if you mistakenly think you don’t have enough clout or money.

We have our first guest interview and it’s a doozy, feature author, executive producer, TV writer and my ex-UCLA dorm mate Chad Gervich. And things get so out of hand Joke is forced to say…

Joke: His ideas are not representatives of our beliefs.

Announcer: Music courtesy of Dave Pelman Music, davepelman.com

Biagio: Hey, everybody! She is Joke.

Joke: He is Biagio.

Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same hopefully by teaming up with us. Well, today is episode 18 but more importantly, it is a milestone episode in the Producing Unscripted podcast, why?

Joke: We turned 18 which means we can bring in a guest!

Biagio: We can bring in a guest! We’re finally old enough to have our very first guest. Our producing and scripting —

Joke: We’re legal.

Biagio: We’re here – yeah, legal. We’re here with Chad Gervich. Chad is an old friend, right, honey?

Joke: Yes and old meaning he’s just old like we met him yesterday.

Biagio: We met him yesterday, he’s just old.

Chad Gervich: I would like to point out that I’m younger than Biagio.

Joke: But you’re older than me.

Biagio: Barely.

Chad Gervich: But I am older than you, and yes, barely.

Biagio: We’re all older than Joke. Everybody is.

Anyways —

Joke: Yeah, we established that in the last podcast.

Biagio: We did. Long story, go back and listen to it, Producingunscripted/017. This is ProducingUnscripted/018. And we introduced Chad who is just like when I grow up I want to be Chad. I’m not even going to do – I didn’t even do my homework, you know what I’m going to do? I’m picking up a copy of his latest book which is called, “How to Manage Your Agent: A Writer’s Guide to Hollywood Representation,” I’m just reading his bio off the back cover.

“Chad Gervich is a television writer-producer, best-selling author and award-winning playwright. He has written, produced, or developed shows for almost every major network and studio in Hollywood including E!’s “After Lately” starring Chelsea Handler, Disney Channel’s “Dog with a Blog,” Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars,” and ABC’s “Wipe Out.””

And Chad is also directly responsible for me and Joke having a career!

Joke: Yes but before that, you guys were dorm mates.

Chad Gervich: Yes.

Biagio: Yes.

Chad Gervich: Weren’t you in our dorm?

Joke: No!

Biagio: Are you kidding? She was too cool to live on campus.

Chad Gervich: Oh, really?

Biagio: She was off campus.

Joke: I had my studio-apartment off campus, thank you very much.

Biagio: People always ask me, “Is it important to go to film school?” And it’s absolutely not because you don’t learn crap at film school but I got two things out of going to UCLA. And I really can’t complain because one of them was my wife and one of them was my career.

And I got that career because I was a dorm mate of Chad Gervich’s.

Chad Gervich: Look, we worked together on one of your first shows which was super fun. But I can’t take responsibility for your entire career, only like 90 percent.

Joke: Just the start of it.

Chad Gervich: Just the start of it.

Joke: The entrance, you got us our first show running gig.

Chad Gervich: That is true.

Joke: The reason we wanted to bring him in to talk about this is because we talk about finding talent, or finding assets, finding books, finding things that could potentially lead into a show.

Biagio: Yeah, and past episodes, we’ve listed that the way to get into this business is to either attach a great cast, have a terrific tape, or attach an exciting property.

We’ve never talked about actually attaching an exciting property and going out with it, why? Because I was waiting for this very episode because today we’re going to talk about how to turn a book into a television show. And you can do this, people. You might be surprised.

Joke: Listen, if Chad can do it –

Chad Gervich: “If Chad can do it,” that’s right. If I can do it, it’s the easiest thing in the world, so yeah.

Joke: So Chad, tell us how did Foodie Call —

Biagio: How did the show, “Foodie Call,” come about?

Chad Gervich: Okay, well, first, just to kind of explain to people what “Foodie Call” was a little bit, because that will kind of maybe help people understand –

Biagio: Yeah, just keep in mind we usually keep this episodes to 15 minutes or less and we’re on —

Chad Gervich: This won’t take 30 minutes.

Biagio: We’re on track for like 75 minutes right now.

Chad Gervich: Okay, so “Foodie Call” was basically kind of like a comedy cooking, dating reality show where every week we would teach a guy to cook in order to help him get laid.

Biagio: Yeah, lodged.

Chad Gervich: Right?

Biagio: Yeah.

Chad Gervich: And the show came from one day, I was driving to work, I worked at “The Littlefield Company” which was warm Littlefields – is warm Littlefields Production Company – and I was listening to KRock which is one of the big rock stations in Los Angeles. And the morning DJs on KRock are Kevin and Bean, and on this particular day they were interviewing a guy named Ted Taylor.

And Ted had written a book called, “Cook Your Way Into Her Pants,” and I was listening to this and it was – Kevin and Bean are always very funny and they were asking Ted questions and “Cook Your Way Into Her Pants,” was a cookbook for men.

But it wasn’t really a cookbook, it was more of a “How to Get Laid Guide” that simply used food to get you there and so it had all these really kind of tricky, sneaky tricks.

For instance, I remember one of the tricks in the book was, let’s say you’re having a woman – you’ve invited a woman on a date and you’ve invited her to your house for dinner. When she gets there, women like to feel needed. So when she gets there, you’re going to give her a job to do. You’re going to give her some carrots to chop. It doesn’t matter if there are no carrots in the dish that you’re making, she needs to feel needed and appreciated so you’re going to give her some carrots to chop.

Biagio: We’re going to get hate mail after this episode. I never realized what a chauvinist show this started out as!

Joke: Wait, wait, wait!

Chad Gervich: Right.

Biagio: Now it did morph into something else.

Joke: These ideas are not representative of our beliefs.

Biagio: Let me tell you —

Joke: I hate nothing more than chopping carrots.

Biagio: Yeah, if I was like, “Hey honey, chop some carrots.” She’d be like, “Chop this!”

Joke: I’ll tell you where to put that carrot.

Chad Gervich: And I remember there were some other tricks like women like to be healthy, so you want to show her that you can be healthy. So in the fridge you’re going to have like a carton of soy milk because that shows that you’re healthy, that you’re up with organic or what you put in your body. So you’re going to have a carton of soy milk in the fridge.

However, here’s the thing, soy milk sucks so you’re going to dump out the soy milk and fill it with whole milk because that tastes so much better when you cook with it. And then she’s going to fall in love with you because you’re such a good cook.

Biagio: And so you rightfully thought, “Well, this sounds like a TV show!”

Chad Gervich: Well yes – no, no, I didn’t think this is a TV show, what I thought was, “Oh my God, where was this book when I was single? This is the book I needed throughout my entire life.” And I always feel like when I have that click, or when you have that click and something speaks to you and you’re like, “This is what I need,” that’s when you’re on the right path to “This is a TV show.” Because it’s something that’s speaking to you in like a profound – even though look, it’s like a stupid “How to Pick up Chicks with Food Guide,” it’s speaking to you in a profoundly personal way.

If it’s speaking to you that way, it’s probably going to speak to other people. That’s when I started to think, “Is this a show?” Like, “Oh my god, if this were a book and a TV show I could’ve learned so much.” And I can’t remember actually if I called KRock or went to their website but somehow found the book’s website.

Biagio: But you proactively on your own were like, “I’m going to go ahead and just reach out,” right?

Chad Gervich: Yes.

And here’s the other thing that’s important about that particular book; Ted Taylor, the author of the book he had not sold the book. It wasn’t being published by Random House, or Simon and Schuster. He had just printed them up and was selling them on his own over his own website. And this was eight years ago or whatever. This was before you could publish a book yourself and put it up on Amazon. He was just doing this entirely himself.

Biagio: This was not the “Hunger Games.”

Chad Gervich: This was not the “Hunger Games.” It was not “Twilight” fan fiction, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” this was totally on his own.

Biagio: Yeah, so not a huge crazy property everybody knew about but something that you spotted so you reached out.

Chad Gervich: I didn’t officially reach out, I just bought a copy of the book. And it was like $15.00 and I remember going into Warren’s office and the rest of the company – we were a tiny company. There were only three other people in the company – going into Warren’s office and saying, “I found this book and it’s this ‘How to Get Laid Guide for Men Using Food,’ and I think there’s like a funny cooking dating show here.”

And everyone was like, “What’s the show?” And it was like, “We would take a guy who wants to ask a girl on a date and we’d teach him to cook and then follow them on a date with cameras and see if it works or not.”

I remember they all looked at me and they cracked up. They laughed me out of the room. They were like, “That is the dumbest idea I have ever heard in my life.” And every —

Joke: And then you did what every successful story includes, which is…?

Chad Gervich: Cry.

Joke: Right, and then after you cried you said, “I would prove them wrong!”

Chad Gervich: Well actually, Warren said, “Prove them wrong.”

Warren said, “Listen, go away. Come back with the format for this.” He said, “Just go away. Don’t come back.”

No, Warren said, “Go away, come back – format this out. Show me what it would look like and if it looks like it’ll work we’ll take it out and pitch it.” And so I did. And actually just went away and started watching other shows like this and then I just copied their formats and kind of pasted my own story based on this book on top of it.

Cautious Man: Look, I’m not made of money.

Biagio: Alright, Chad, so one thing a lot of people I’m sure are going wonder is, “Well, I’m not rich. I don’t have a lot of money.” Do you have to offer people money if you want to try and team up with them or get their property?

Joke: Option a book? Yeah.

Biagio: Option a book.

Chad Gervich: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I would say first of all, money helps. If you have money – look, especially if you happen to have money but you don’t have much experience but you can offer real money that will obviously always help you. But you do not have to have money.

And very often, even producers with money in Hollywood will say to somebody, “Hey, we really like your book. Let’s partner up.” And you work on a pitch together or you hire another writer to work on a pitch but basically even a verbal agreement will work as long as there’s a mutual understanding when you take it into the network, or the studio where you’re selling it.

Biagio: So people shouldn’t be afraid about reaching out whether it’s a book, or it’s a business, or it’s a podcast just because they’re not rich or they’re not super successful. But you can reach out with real passion and you can convince someone to team up with you as long as you have a plan, right?

Chad Gervich: Yes.

Joke: But money could be $500.00, it could be $1,000.00.

Chad Gervich: It could be $1.00.

Joke: It could be $1.00. It’s really just if you are signing an agreement, a dollar amount helps make it more “legit,” so to say. Even if you don’t have to, it helps to protect you. It helps to protect someone else. But again, it doesn’t have to – we’re not talking about $50,000.00 here to option a book.

Chad Gervich: Right, the one thing you do have to do is before you go into your studio network where you’re pitching, you can’t go in and say, “Hey, I’ve got this amazing book I’d like to adapt,” and have never talked to the author, have not come to any kind of formal or informal agreement at all.

If you’re going to go in there, you have to have that relationship in place. And sometimes it doesn’t even hurt to take the author, the creator of the original property in with you. It’s very much like attaching talent.

Joke: Right. And sometimes it helps if the book has been really successful or it has a big following. But again, with “Cook Your Way Into Her Pants,” there wasn’t. So you can find that small book, that small property that can even be anywhere in Middle America and attach yourself to that and develop that into a show.

Chad Gervich: Yeah, for sure. And then we went out and we pitched it to four or five places.

Joke: What kind of places would you take this book to?

Chad Gervich: So we took this book to –

Joke: Because the book was directed at men, right?

Chad Gervich: Yes.

Joke: So did you take it to male-dominated networks?

Chad Gervich: Yes, we went to Spike and we went to Comedy Central and I think we went to Food Network.

Joke: And what were their responses?

Chad Gervich: None of them bought it. And to be honest, I don’t remember their exact – it wasn’t really funny enough for Comedy Central. And Spike, I don’t remember. I feel like they had said, “We’ve been pitched a lot of food stuff and it’s just not what we’re doing.”

Joke: And cooking and dating are also more female.

Chad Gervich: Female, yeah.

Joke: Women watch those kinds of shows, not men.

Biagio: Right. Which is funny because when you describe the book it doesn’t sound like a lot of women would be too excited.

Joke: Well, the book isn’t aimed at women.

Biagio: It’s aimed at men!

Chad Gervich: Yes.

Joke: But it plays in a world that women watch.

Chad Gervich: Yes. And the book also, it was full of pictures of the food, and the host of the book was like this: scantily, scantily clad woman showing off the food and all these. It was very much aimed toward men.

And then the last place we took it which I can remember saying to Warren, “Like, really?” was Style Network because the man who at that time was President of E! and Style Network was Ted Harbert and Ted Harbert and Warren had worked together for a long time at NBC.

Biagio: And Warren was the previous President of NBC.

Chad Gervich: And Ted was under him.

Biagio: Yeah, created Must-See TV and naming content, Warren put Seinfeld on the air, he put Will and Grace on the air, and now he’s out with “Cook Your Way Into Her Pants” with Chad Gervich.

Chad Gervich: Yes, which to be honest is like smarter Seinfeld so… And so we went and pitched to Ted. Warren kind of set it all up and then I pitched out what the show was and how we thought it would work. And Ted looked at the book and just looked up and said, “Let’s do it. I’ll buy it.” Just like that.

I’ve never seen something sell that fast in a room before. But here’s the key –

Joke: Okay, but we have to ask –

Chad Gervich: Yeah?

Joke: Were Lisa Berger and Ann Lewis in the room?

Chad Gervich: I don’t remember.

Biagio: Two female executives who were otherwise running development.

Joke: Yeah, who were right under Ted?

Chad Gervich: I don’t think Ted was the only person in the room but I don’t remember who else was there.

Joke: Okay.

Chad Gervich: But to be honest, the reason that happened wasn’t because it was a good idea. I mean, it had to be a good idea. But Biagio talks about meeting his wife, and meeting his friend at UCLA, the reason we sold that so quickly and so easily there was because there was a real relationship there.

Joke: Between Ted and Warren.

Chad Gervich: Between Ted and Warren. And if a producer off the street or a wannabe, or even a producer maybe with some experience under their belt who didn’t necessarily have a relationship with the buyer in the room had walked in and pitched the exact same book and the exact same idea, it may not have sold because I always feel like when you’re pitching a TV show it’s never the idea they’re investing in. The idea has to be good but they’re investing in the person.

Joke: In the execution.

Chad Gervich: In the execution.

Joke: And they have to believe that the person who’s pitching it can execute.

Chad Gervich: Yes.

Joke: And with that comes trust in the relationship.

Chad Gervich: Yes.

Joke: And that’s why it’s important to team up with people who have built that trust already before you can start building your own trust with the buyers.

Biagio: Now, I do want to back up a few steps because one important thing about our podcast, a lot of the people who are listening, some are in industry, some are not, some want to break-into the industry. So I’m always trying to give very specific takeaways because I don’t want people to listen us and be like, “Well, I don’t work for Warren Littlefield. My friends are not friends with a network executive.”

What I really want to focus on for a second, was your approach to the author of the book. And yet the idea that it wasn’t a very big book at that time and really anyone in America who stumbles across something they think is an interesting existing property can sort of like take steps to go ahead and reach out to the author and say, “Hey, I’ve got a plan. I want to try and do something.”

So back up a little bit like how did you approach – what was your first conversation like with Ted? How did you approach him? How did you get a hold of him?

Chad Gervich: Well, my first answer is I do not remember.

Biagio: Well, this is the most useless podcast we’ve ever done!

Chad Gervich: No, I remember, I think I just called Ted and told him who I was and that I really liked his book and I’ve heard him on the radio. And look, I don’t remember exactly how that conversation played out but it was probably something like, “Hey Ted, my name is Chad Gervich. I’m calling for The Littlefield Company. We’re a TV Production Company at Paramount Television and I heard you on the radio the other day and bought a copy of your book and I’ve got to say it’s fantastic. And it’s the book I wish I had had five years ago. And I love it and to be honest I think this is TV show idea and I’d love to sit down with you and talk about you and the book and if there’s a way to make this work.”

And so it wasn’t a call right away saying, “We want this. We want this.” It was saying, “We’re interested and let’s sit down and talk.” And so then Ted came in for a meeting.

Biagio: Great, now you might be sitting at home again saying, “Look, I don’t work at a production company. This isn’t going to work for me.” But I want you to listen to what Chad just did. Basically, he just proactively reached out to the author, said, “I read your book, I love it. I think this could be a TV show, I’d like to talk to you more.” Any one of you could do this.

Joke: I also want to point out, I mean, it didn’t seem like Ted got a lot of phone calls after that interview. So it didn’t seem like Ted was in a position where he had something to lose by going with you guys.

It was like, “Oh, okay, well, I wrote this book. It was fun and maybe something comes off of this.” You know what I mean? So I think it’s important for people to not be scared about reaching out because that person may not be getting any phone calls at all and your, whether you’re with a Littlefield Company or you’re just Joe Schmoe in Idaho, they might be interested in teaming up with you because there’s nothing else.

Chad Gervich: Yeah, I would also say - let’s say you called them and they’re not interested in teaming up with you, so what? The worse that they’re going to say is and you don’t know this person, the worse they can say is, “Ah, listen, I’m not interested in TV,” or “I’ve already teamed up with somebody,” so what?

That used to happen to us all the time. We would meet with writers or go after properties and they were –

Joke: Even with Warren Littlefield.

Chad Gervich: Even with Warren Littlefield and we would get shot down. It happens all the time.

Here’s I think the other thing that I probably said in some way to Ted or that happened in that phone call is I didn’t just say, “Hey, I like your book and I think it’s TV show.” But I probably, in the same way that when I was telling you my reaction to hearing the interview on the radio and when I was thinking, “Oh my god, where’s this book all my life? And I wished I had known about the soy milk trick, and oh my god, I’d be getting laid so much more.”

I don’t know exactly again what words I used to say those ideas to Ted but in that conversation or when we sat down I was very careful to express to him, “I’ve connected with your book. And I believe, we see the book in the same way.”

Joke: You expressed your passion and your simpatico with his vision.

Chad Gervich: And my own vision for how I was viewing his work. If I had said, “Listen, I think this cooking-dating book you’ve written would make a fantastic action movie because it just makes me want to bring women over and throw food at them or like whatever,” he’d be like, “What? I don’t think you understand what this book is.”

Joke: Right. But it’s important, as part of your pitch to the author of saying, “Hey, here’s why I’m the right partner for you.” It’s, “I get what you’re going for. I completely, 100% you don’t have to explain it to me. I get it in my idea name, my bones, it just clicked for me. We’re on the same page, we would make good partners.”

Chad Gervich: Yes.

Biagio: Yes.

Okay. So this is going to bring us to the end of this two-part “How to Turn a Book into a TV Show.”

Chad Gervich: So it’s just become a two-parter?

Biagio: It just became a two-parter. So what I want to reiterate; again, because a lot of people at home are like, “Okay, that’s all fine, well and good, you live in Hollywood, you can reach out to anybody.”

Here is what you need to remember. If you find a property, it could be a book, it could be a podcast, it could be a business, go ahead and reach out. Express interest. Let the people know you’re a fan of what they’re doing and tell them you think it could be a television show, right?

Part two, meet with them. Discuss further, see if you can get them onboard. And then part three, and this is where you have an advantage over the two of us when we were starting out, where do you take that idea once you know, “Okay, I’ve got a property attached.”

Well, I can’t speak for other companies but anyone who listens to this podcast knows that all you need to do is sign-up for our newsletter at producingunscripted.com, fill-out the submission agreement and we will consider your idea.

So feel free to pitch your property to any other production company you can get a hold of, I’m just saying we make it pretty easy here at Joke Productions.

Joke: Let us be your Warren.

Biagio: Let us be your Warren. Let us be your Warren Littlefield.

Okay, so this is going to bring us to the end of Part 1 of How to Turn a Book into a TV Show. Next week, well, two weeks from now when we come back we’re going to go into how –

Joke: How did we actually get involved?

Biagio: How we got involved and how we took something that wasn’t remotely right for women and made it work at a TV Network whose prime audience was 35 plus educated women.

Hey Chad, thanks for being here. Are you going to come back in two weeks to do part two with us?

Chad Gervich: Yeah. I’ll see you guys in a couple of weeks.

Biagio: Alright, see you in a couple of weeks.

Few last minute things, if you’re going to Real Screen Summit, the gigantic unscripted TV convention in Washington D.C. at the end of January and would like to try to meet up with me and Joke, just reply to any email from our newsletter with the subject line “Real Screen” and we’ll see if we can meet up. If you don’t want to review the newsletters, sign-up at producingunscripted.com.

Now our show “Don’t Trust Andrew Maine,” was officially announced for variety last night. And we can now tell you that we premiere Monday, January 13th at 10:00 p.m. on ANE. Lots more to say about that in upcoming eps. And thanks again, Chad Gervich, for being here today.

If you want to check out his books “How to Manage your Agent,” or “Small Screen, Big Picture,” they’re available from anyone who sells books. And we’ll post links to all of this at the blog post for this episode which you can find at producingunscripted.com/018.

Whew! That was kind of a mouthful. Thanks everybody, catch you next time.

Joke: Bye! Happy holidays.

Biagio: Happy Holidays.

Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.