MOVIES - Nov. 8, 1988

When you gather nine film production executives and/or producers--as UCLA Extension did for a seminar at the Century Plaza over the weekend--and the subject is pitching film project properties and ideas, guess what their recurrent advice just might be? Exactly: “Keep the pitch short” and “Do your homework.” In other words, as Josh Donen--Universal’s senior vice president of production--put it, “Have a great 90 seconds to give me, then have the goods to back it up.” And sprinkled amid many technical how-tos of selling ideas and buying options on stories for film or TV projects, there was also one other refrain (sometimes said apologetically, sometimes fiercely): “You have better odds of winning the lottery than getting a project onto (either the big or small) screen.” Such talk did nothing to dim the enthusiasm of the seminar’s more than 120 attendees, however.