The brilliant Bernie Brillstein passed away recently. In his honour I thought I'd repeat a post that contained some of his excellent advice:
“Unfortunately, Patchett [the producer who was the other member of their team] got lost in a long-winded explanation of
the puppet and the backstory and right away I knew we were going into the
toilet…But Fusco and I had a contingency plan. I kicked him under the table. He
took ALF out of his garbage bag, put it on his hand, did the voice, sneezed,
wiped his nose, and then smeared it on Tartikoff’s sleeve. ‘I get it!’ said
Tartikoff, laughing. ‘Let’s go!’ Boom. Deal. We walked out with a pilot order.”
As you may know, the show was a huge hit and is still seen in
reruns all over the world.
Brillstein advises: “The first step to a back-up plan is asking a
simple question: ‘What if?”” In other words, consider all the thing that might happen, and have a plan for each one of them.
One version of this I advise is when you're presenting an idea to
someone, always have at least one more idea that you can also present, at least
briefly. If the first one isn't getting a good reception, you can say,
'Actually, I've been working on something else as well--can I give you a quick
summary of that one, to see whether it might more along the lines of what
you're looking for?"
