"Queen of Sky" TV Pitch

Hello, All!

Happy Holidays!

For my holiday gift this year, could you please check out my TV pitch below and let me know what you think ...or if you have suggestions, even better!


Queen of Sky TV Series


Hook: An attractive new-hire flight attendant blogs her way through the ups and downs of her “glamorous” new lifestyle, including a string of dysfunctional relationships. (or Ally McBeal on a plane!)

Concept: Queen of Sky is a 30-minute dramedy about a new-hire flight attendant, Elena, who uses her blog to sort through her crazy life. The tone will be like Sex and the City or Ally McBeal with the occasional Scrubs-style fantasy. For example, when Elena does the safety demo for the first time, she imagines herself on a stage in the spotlight with her theme song playing. Elena has two new-hire roommates, a flamboyant Latin male and a Puerto Rican (or other ethnicity) princess. They start off in a “crash pad” for the first few episodes, but eventually share a one-bedroom apartment in Queens (halfway between LaGuardia and JFK). At the end of the pilot episode, Elena starts her blog and blog narration kicks in. The concept is based on my career-ending blog-turned-book, entitled Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant. My screen name on the blog was “Queen of Sky” and the blog was mostly written in third person. Elena, like me, is a Spanish-speaking gringa. Her Spanish is just good enough to qualify her as a language speaker and bad enough to cause a lot of misunderstandings and jumblings of the onboard announcements. She flies a mixture of international and domestic trips, but mostly to Latin America and Spain. Occasionally she gets to fly with one or both of her roommates, but normally she’s flying with catty, miserable women who are old enough to be her mother. Audiences will tune in each week to see where Elena will go next, what adventures she will have along the way, and whether she will ever manage to find a boyfriend that treats her with respect and doesn’t mind her being gone at least fifty percent of the time!

Central Conflict: The main conflict of the show is Elena’s continuous struggle to find balance in her life—particularly between her new job and her dysfunctional love life. She would really like a stable, functional relationship, but only seems to attract the opposite. Also, being a new-hire, she flies most weekends and holidays and often has to sit “reserve” (on-call duty), so she never knows where she’ll be next. Episodic conflicts include Elena’s constant conflicts with passengers, her roomies, coworkers, and Legacy Airlines management. For example, Elena and Ivette sometimes fight over their gay husband, Ricky, and Ricky sometimes brings home guys to their one-bedroom apartment without warning them in advance. And, of course, Elena is always getting into it with crazy/obnoxious passengers and coworkers. These conflicts will sometimes span several episodes.

Audience Demographics: 18- to 39-year-old females of all races; middle-aged white men who want to know what flight attendants are thinking; and gays and lesbians of all ages, races and classes. Two of the core cast are Latinos/ethnic and one is gay. There will be other recurring cast and guest stars of different races and sexual orientations.

TV Pilot Outline

OK, so the show is basically gonna be "Ally McBeal on a Plane" to put it in TV lingo. It's a half-hour dramedy (no laugh track). I'd appreciate some feedback on this, thanks in advance!
The core cast is small, because it's hard to follow a bunch of flight attendants around on their trips, and also because our main character will be a point of view character. We'll have a lot of celebrity guest stars as both flight attendants and passengers, though (think: Britney Spears as a flight attendant!) The core cast consists of:

• Elena aka “Queen of Sky” (lead/POV/narrator) She’s a cross between Carrie Bradshaw and Ally McBeal who speaks just enough Spanish to qualify as a Spanish speaker at Legacy Airlines. I'm picturing someone like Alicia Silverstone.

• Ricky, Latin flamer/party boy—He’s so hilarious he can get away with murder, like joining the Mile High Club with a random passenger while he’s working the flight!

• Ivette, Caribbean diva/party girl—likes to tease nerdy frequent flyers and use them to buy her stuff. Later she becomes a “cockpit queen” (always in the cockpit flirting with the pilots).

Queen of Sky Pilot Episode Breakdown

Teaser: The show begins in the middle of an airplane evacuation. When the camera zooms out, we see it’s actually a simulator in a training facility. Our heroine, Elena, is the last one off and she trips and falls down the slide face first.

Title sequence and theme song.

ACT 1

• Final Exam at flight attendant school—we hear Elena reading the questions aloud in her mind: “What’s the city code for Spokane, Washington?” “How many fire extinguishers are on a 757 and where are they located?”

• The uptight trainer announces everyone passed the final except Tony. (“And for future reference, Tony, PBE does not stand for ‘Pleasurable Balls Encounter’—it’s ‘Protective Breathing Equipment!’”) Tony is escorted off the premises, making a dramatic exit. (“I’ll be back!”) Ricky blows him a kiss.

• Graduation ceremony. The recruits receive their wings, donning their uniforms for the first time, then the trainer announces Base City assignments are posted in the hall.

• Scene of hysteria as most find out they got the dreaded New York base. Elena imagines her boyfriend back in Miami distraught. Elena, Ricky and Ivette decide to catch the first flight to NY to beat the rush.

• Onboard the flight to NY, Elena calls her boyfriend in Miami to tell him the bad news. He acts disappointed, but is actually thrilled. Ricky and Ivette tell her they both dumped their boyfriends when they got invited to flight attendant training and recommend that Elena do the same.

ACT 2

• The flight attendant offers them on ground cocktails—doubles!—(“You’re gonna need these…”) and some advice. Ricky asks her if she knows of any available crash pads in NY. She says she’ll ask Wanda in the back.

• Wanda, a motherly black lady, says there are three spots open in her crash pad, but she can only take them temporarily since they’re new hires. Their conversation is cut short when Wanda has to arm her doors for departure.

• At the crash pad (a two-bedroom apartment with eight bunk beds in Kew Gardens, Queens) Wanda gives the three of them the house rules.

• A grouchy “senior mama” complains about allowing new hires at the crash pad. (“They’re gonna be here all the time!”)

• Elena wakes up to a 4am call from scheduling: “We’ve got your first assignment for you!”

ACT 3

• Elena walks onto plane rubbing her eyes and yawning. The crew asks if she’s the reserve replacing Julie. She responds, “Whatever you say—this is my first trip.”

• She sits on the jumpseat with Bonnie, an outspoken bisexual Asian chick a la Margaret Cho. Bonnie explains that airline passengers check their decency and humanity at the aircraft door. She also tells Elena all about her love life (she has a boyfriend and a girlfriend). Elena is shocked.

• After takeoff, a man goes into the lav next to their jumpseat with a thick newspaper in his hand. Bonnie says, “See what I mean?!”

• Then, during the beverage service, a passenger yells at Elena for not having his drink choice (hot chocolate). Bonnie nods at her as if to say “I told you so.”

• Then, as they’re picking up, a passenger lowers his seatback abruptly, causing the passenger behind him to hit him over the head. Bonnie nods to Elena again, knowingly.

• Montage of three more FULL flights with city codes captions (ex. ORD-MSP). We see Elena and Bonnie pushing the beverage cart up and down the aisle in a seemingly endless loop.

• Last leg, video equipment breaks and they have to do the safety “dance.” As Elena does the demo, she imagines herself on a stage with the spotlight on her and her theme song playing.

• Elena returns to the crash pad late at night to find only one snoring flight attendant with eye mask and ear plugs in place. She can’t get a hold of any of her friends to debrief, so she starts a blog (“The Queen of Sky’s Life of Glamour”) to recount her first crazy day on the job. “I’m already wondering what I’ve gotten myself into…I mean, really, I thought this was supposed to be a glamorous job!” Fade out.

*****************
Any thoughts? Rereading this, I think I need to adjust the Act breaks. I believe the rule is "your characters can only sleep on the commercial break."

Christmas Shopping

Hello All,

I was in Target today doing some Christmas shopping (mostly for myself!) and was shocked to notice a certain pre-packaged gift item on the shelf. It was the "Rim it" cocktail kit, including three colors of rim sugar for martini glasses and three flourescent-colored cocktail mixers. In other words, it was a rainbow-colored collection of vials with a dish in the middle that proclaimed "Rim it!"

Does anyone else see the crude double entendre here, or have I been hanging out with too many gay guys? I was going to take a pic, but someone else did it for me:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kcaroline/3044256995/in/photostream/

Anyway, stay tuned for updates on my TV pitch. I've finished it and am debating whether to post parts of it here. Maybe I will even post the plot outline of the pilot... need to think about it.

Ciao!

TV Hook

I finally finished school last week, except for one final on Saturday, and had a little too much fun this weekend, so I'm just now getting to my TV pitch. What do you all think of this for the hook:

An attractive new-hire flight attendant blogs her way through the ups and downs of her “glamorous” new lifestyle, including a string of dysfunctional relationships.

P.S. I wanna give a shout out to my virtual now ex-husband, John, who married me on Facebook by accident today for 2 hrs and 23 minutes (apparently his real wife is also named Ellen)

Holiday Blessings and Sadness

Hi All,

I made it back in one piece the other day. Had to stuff all my crap into one carry-on bag, like back in my flight attendant days, since AA is charging $15 each way to check a bag. That meant I had to put all my toiletries in little bottles in Ziploc bags. What a pain in the butt! Anywho, I managed and had a good trip home.

No, I didn't pop out a baby while I was away, although I certainly felt like I could have after all I ate last week!

I actually got to visit my Astro Twin who moved to NC (my home state) last year. You may remember that I met her through MySpace after seeing on her profile that we had the exact same birthday. That is her 3-month-old cutie pie.

Apparently a lot of big girls were born on our birthday!
(BTW, the hairspray didn't make the cut into the carry-on bag.)

While I was enjoying a deep-fried turkey on Wed.with my friends and then a vegan buffet on Thurs. with my family, unfortunately things were not so happy and prosperous over on the other side of the world. I'd like to send my condolences to the people of Mumbai and India. A good friend of mine lost a close friend in the attacks. My heart goes out to all those affected.

Blessings,

"Queen of Screen"