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| The Creators: Andrew (Left), Aramis (Right) |
On April 1st, Aramis and I decided to go on a hunt for a manager that can put "Life Is Hell" on the air. So I found a company called "New Show Studios." I notified Aramis about this company. We decided that its worth a shot to summit it to them. So I went onto New Show Studios website and I submitted our show to them. They got back to us on April 18th .It was an early morning call to Aramis's cell phone at approximately 8:00 am. Aramis answered the phone and was surprised to hear that it was about "Life Is Hell." Aramis had no idea who he was talking to and he didn't care because it was about "Life Is Hell."So at the end of the phone call, Aramis had set a over the phone meeting with the unidentified man for 2:45 pm on April 19th.
So Aramis came over to my house the following day for the meeting, not knowing who we are meeting with or what its about. The only thing we knew was that it had something to do with "Life Is Hell." Before the call came in, I had thought since we don't have any experience in the TV show field that we get my mom, Angela (a project manager at TD Bank) to sit in on the call with us.It was 2:45 pm on the dot and the phone rang. The unidentified man on the other line was Chad Murray from New Show Studios. He called basically to see what our show is about and if we are ready to take it to the next level.
He also got around to saying that his starting fee to work with us was $795. It was not a bad price compared to other companies. so after the call ended at about 3:40 pm we sat down to talk about the price. Angela said that we shouldn't rush to make a decision and Aramis agreed. So we sat on it for a few days and think long and hard before we jump into anything. To be honest I got a little excited and I wanted to sign him as soon as possible, but the right thing to do was to think before we act and thats what we did. By April 25th, we had decided to sign Chad to this 4 month contract. Chad's job was to find out which networks our show can go on, see what genre it falls under and see what age group it apply's to.
What Chad also needed from us was to take a trip down to the studio (which is in Pittsburgh) to sign more contracts and interviews. So we decided to go to Pittsburgh in June. But before that time came around we would touch base with Chad weekly. Most of our conversations with Chad were very meaningless. Chad mostly called us to tell us stories about how his kids like baseballs and make more appointments. On June 17th we drove down to Pittsburgh and met with Chad Murray on the 18th. We met Chad at 1:00 in the afternoon and we went on a tour of the studio, signed contracts that stated we will not steal ideas from other shows and we had an interview with Tony from New show Studios.
Tony asked us about our Pilot episode, characters and so on and so forth. Chad kept on saying "I don't want to tweak your guys own horn but you guys have a show like none others." He would say this in almost every conversation and every phone call and just now I'm starting to think it was to keep us on as customers. So once that was done, the next step (so we thought) was to pitch our show to networks. But it wasn't. This is when the whole project fell apart. Chad kept insisting on a $14,000 "New Show Concept Package." We didn't want to pay that money, but Chad kept saying we can't move on without it. So we told him we will let him know our decision in July.
Before our next call with Chad, Aramis spoke to his cousin Lisa (who worked on "Total Recall" in the editing room) about this package and she never heard of it. "This isn't necessary," She said. "I never even heard of anything like that." It seemed to us that Chad and his company wanted to make an extra buck on something that is not needed.So at that point we knew we were done with Chad.So we spoke to him again towards the end of August and he wouldn't let us go. So we set a meeting with him for October 4th. But we knew we weren't going to do a meeting. So through all of September he was secretly fired until we sent him an email on the 21st. The email stated that we were cutting off all ties with him and he services will no longer needed. Need some advice? I would say that if you have a show idea do not take it to "New Show Studios," its just a waste of time and money. I know from experience.
- Andrew Di Pardo
