PITCH: American Beauties

We sold this pitch to FOX — twice.

We sold this with Warner Brothers, and we used their pitch document as a basis for the structure. If you’re interested in knowing more about the Warner Brothers pitch document listen to Episode 128 of the Happier In Hollywood podcast.

Before we dive in, we should mention that we talk about a Clancy in the pitch. That’s Clancy Collins White, one of Warner Brothers’ powerhouse executives. Also, we developed this during a recession so there’s mention of that.

Before pitches moved mostly to Zoom, studios often created key art to bring to pitches, comping in famous prototypes for each character. This is the key art that WB’s brilliant graphic design department created for the American Beauties pitch:

INTRODUCTION

LIZ: A few years ago, I was on a Southwest Airlines flight from L.A. to Kansas City, and I read an article in the in-flight magazine called “Turning Pink,” about a freelance writer who became a Mary Kay Cosmetics beauty rep. Basically, she went on a journey from being a shy non-believer who barely wore make-up to being a Mary Kay disciple who was doing everything from “warm chattering” potential clients at a bar to screaming “I’m hot!” in a roomful of fellow beauty reps. I’m telling you, it sounded so empowering that by the end of that article, even I wanted to be a Mary Kay consultant.

SARAH: Flash forward three years, and we’re talking about how we want to create a show that’s set in a unique and vivid world, one with its own rules, its own language, its own culture. Liz remembers the article from Spirit Magazine…. and voila… American Beauties is born. But of course we couldn’t just do a show about beauty consultants… we had to shake it up a little.

WORLD

LIZ: We’re all familiar with Mary Kay Cosmetics, famous for its iconic pink Cadillacs. Most of us have had a friend whose divorced mom started to sell Mary Kay out of her garage, or a dorm-mate who was pushing lipsticks every time you saw her in the laundry room. Clancy’s former assistant used her vacation time to go to a Mary Kay convention in Dallas. Sarah’s Aunt Gene has been a Mary Kay client for thirty years. What we love about this world is that it’s contingent on maintaining existing relationships and building new ones – and yet it can be totally cutthroat. Which is only one of the reasons we describe the show as Desperate Housewives meets Breaking Bad. More on that later.

SARAH: Our version of Mary Kay is American Beauty, the cosmetics company that offers more than a career. In a time when out of work Americans are looking for alternate means of income, it offers hope, opportunity, and 50% off all regularly priced merchandise.

Whereas Mary Kay is all about jewels – reps reach levels of Ruby or Emerald or Diamond depending on the number of women they recruit into the company – American Beauty is a flower-based system. Every Beauty starts as a Daisy, then works her way up to Tulip, then Lily, then White Rose, then Pink Rose… and finally Red Rose. There is only one Red Rose per region, and she is expected to be part boss, part mother, and part guru.

LIZ: To be successful, a Beauty has to believe. She believes that every time she opens her American Beauty make-up sampler, she’s opening a box of possibility. She isn’t selling bronzer, she’s supplying self-esteem. She’s not hawking lip liner, she’s healing a broken heart. To make up one’s face is not to put on a mask, but to enhance and uplift who one truly is.

The evening news may be all about downsizing, but American Beauties share the philosophy that more is more. More love, more sex, more friends, more money. They want more for themselves and from themselves. The goal of every Beauty is to climb the Flower Ladder, to be a Rose. But every rose has its thorns…