Some people don't test well. I totally get it. If you point a camera at me and ask me to name a Supreme Court decision I disagreed with, I will probably blank too. (Well, not really -- the one that illegally installed Bush in the presidency is rarely far from my mind.) Maybe Sarah Palin is a wonderful executive, smart and canny, capable of inspiring others to their best work, able to negotiate complex networks of ever-shifting political alliances and directing huge forces of manpower and economic strength. Who knows? I don't.

Here's the thing:

When I go to apply for a job, that is, when I go to a studio to pitch an idea for a movie, I am expected to, at the very least, have some basic understanding of what I'm talking about. If I pitch an idea for a movie about, say, a talking giraffe, the studio folk have a reasonable desire that I be able to explain to them why a movie about a talking giraffe is a good idea, and a reasonable expectation that I deliver that explanation in a coherent fashion.

If I can't give a compelling argument for why the Talking Giraffe Movie will be a four-quadrant smash, I don't get the job.

If I go to the studio people and say something like "Talking Giraffe, tall, big movie, long neck, animal, a mammal really, long purple tongue, long box office lines, 'Mommy Mommy, let's go see the Talking Giraffe Movie!' Kids love Giraffes, the horns, on the head, little tufts of hair on top, I spoke to an elderly woman in a nursing home once and she told me her one regret in life was that she had never seen a movie with a talking giraffe, and the smell of the popcorn in the lobby, the excitement of movie-going! A giraffe, talking! Isn't that what it's all about?"

If I do that? I don't get the job.

No, in that pitch meeting, I am required to supply specific data that will back up my claims. I am required to say something like "Several of the most popular movies of all time have prominently featured talking mammals, including 101 Dalmations, The Lion King, The Jungle Book, Shrek and Pinocchio." I am also required to supply a credible plot, one featuring dynamic, interesting characters set on relatable, compelling trajectories, and be able to cite, again, other hit movies where characters like mine and plots like mine have succeeded in the past. That is, I am required to say something like "Talking Giraffe Movie is Gone With The Wind meets Titanic meets The Sound of Music."

Otherwise I don't get the job.

Are curve balls thrown at me during these meetings? Absolutely. Let's say I'm stating what I feel are the strengths of Talking Giraffe Movie and the studio executive says "Does it have to be a giraffe?" The answer is, of course, "Well it couldn't very well be Talking Giraffe Movie if it's not a giraffe," but I can't say that -- the stuido person's role in the meeting is to test the commercial soundness of my pitch, and if he or she has misgivings about the idea of a talking giraffe, I am required to, first, explore the possibilities of some other talking thing (a car, a chair, an orphaned boy) and then work through all the different possibilities until the studio person is brought to the ineluctable conclusion that a talking giraffe is, indeed, the soundest commercial choice for this project.

Otherwise I don't get the job.

While discussing various hit movies, the studio person might detect some amount of cynicism in my pitch, as though maybe Gone With The Wind with a giraffe on an ocean liner in the Alps is merely a soulless, pandering formula I don't really believe in, that is, my pitch is just a spiel to get me a job, and that I don't really have what it takes to actually deliver a hit. That studio person might throw in an oblique question like "Can you name for me a movie that has a great script, but isn't a hit?" A question like this might completely throw me, make me focus on the questioner's hidden motives rather than the actual question itself, and, this far through the process, with so much on the line, I might conceivably draw a blank.  And that happens, and I think of five wonderful examples while I'm walking to my car.  But, if, while I'm still in the office, I give an answer like "Movies, you know, box office, money is essential to a strong box office, and music, Star Wars, editing, dialogue, montage, happy ending, and you know, effects, special, and I've seen a lot of movies, I'm not some guy who's never seen a movie, where I come from we would have movies all the time, growing up on the shores of Crystal Lake where we would catch bluegills from our little Sunfish sailboat, Saturday nights at the Bijoux, I don't know what you're implying, and you know they're not really moving pictures, they're actually a long succession of still photos shown in rapid succession, so box office, with a script, and yes, let's shoot this puppy! Action!"

If I do that?  Sorry, I don't get the job.