If Ask a Ninja and Wallstrip are chortling, sipping on Dom and rolling on dubs at one end of new media’s spectrum of monetary success, Break a Leg is quietly nursing a bottle of Manishewitz – a couple steps up from Thunderbird – way on the other side. Yuri Baranovsky, his brother Vlad (happy belated!), and the rest of the creators, cast, and crew of the surreal sitdotocom haven’t struck it rich, at least not in a financial sense, at least not yet.
In a Gawker tell-all, Yuri admitted that in two years of producing the show – which uses pro-grade equipment and has other trappings of something made for broadcast TV, like said cast and crew, who work on pizza in lieu of a budget – he’s attracted around 3 million views and made a whopping $2,500.
But such a low sum doesn’t deter artists of the Baranovskys’ constitution, and self-purported April Fools’ rumors of the show’s cancellation were highly exaggerated (and had me totally fooled, e-mailing Yuri reflective sincerities). The Break a Leg team are in this for the long haul, with hopes of acquiring a television deal before being beckoned by “greener pastures – like porn and carpentry.”
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On an romantically lit NYC set at For Your Imagination, I got a chance to talk with Yuri, Justin Morrison (who plays former-porn star Chas Cougar in the show), and Dashiell Reinhardt (who does the editing and visual effects) about how the series started and where they want it to go:
In the meantime, instead of paychecks and mainstream distribution, Break A Leg‘s (sometimes obsessive) fans and creative spirit are riches enough to continue…until Sumner Redstone comes a-knockin’.
