Banffed

Of course there are stories. Just how many can be told is a question we may not be fully qualified to answer. Ha.

The Banff World Media Festival is an annual event designed to connect television’s Decision Makers with independent writers and producers. Major players come here to Discover. Aspiring up & coming artists come here to oblige them.

We made some discoveries of our own in Banff. Chaos stands out from the crowd in a lot of ways. We have long suspected (by observing what’s out there) that we are ready for primetime. We didn’t encounter anything to disabuse us of that fact. We’ve been playing in the big kids’ pool for a long time now, and we reckon the world is just about ready for a load of us guys.

Our pitch is ambitious. Game changing. We do not kid when we say we believe in disruptive innovation. This thing will change the way you watch tv. We turned some heads. Not everyone was receptive. One network frankly admitted they are not ready for what we are offering. Another shrugged helplessly and said they could do nothing for us. Both knew it was their loss.

But all the others – well, we have a million-dollar rolodex now, and we’re making use of it. We grabbed a piece of the Holy Grail, apparently, when Warner Bros. asked us to sign their release so they could take our pitch package home with them. You mean, we asked of the other delegates, not everybody gets one of these? No, they replied, no one gets one of those. We’ll see where it goes. It’s a foot in the door at the highest level. As much of a highlight as it was, we also had great conversations with AMC and NBC Universal that ended with exchanged cards and promises to deliver more material.

But probably our personal highlight was hanging out with Swampy Marsh, creator of Phineas and Pherb. Best BBQ we ever missed. And he would have blown off his massage but we’d already been hanging with him for four hours and we all had a lot to think about.

We’re all home now – Matt’s in Calgary catching up with his PBS writer/director commitment. Lee and Adrian are back in NYC catching up with development of their app. And we’ve got our work cut out for us – scripts and one pages have networks and distributors waiting to read them. Oh yes. Busy busy boys. Banffsplosion. KaBlanff! More news as it happens…