Rich Girl, Poor Girl, the latest original web series from Warner Brothers’ Studio 2.0 premieres today on TheWB.com, swapping the lives two popular alpha-girls from radically different Los Angeles area high schools. The 12-episode comedic reality series is the brainchild of reality icon Gary Auerbach, the creative producer behind MTV’s teen reality hit Laguna Beach and A&E’s ghost-hunting Paranormal State.
19 year-old Angie Riccio lives in a low-income East Los Angeles neighborhood with her single mother Irene, and her 17 year-old sister, Clair. About 20 miles west of her is 19 year-old college student Tarra Woolen — former prom queen and cheerleader — living in wealthy Pacific Palisades. The two girls are said to both “rule their respective cliques” before the series uproots the girls for one week throwing them into a world neither one has any clue how to navigate.
The concept isn’t exactly novel, as British TV series Poor Little Rich Girls from ITV essentially traced the same line — take two women from opposite ends of the socio-economic bench and see what happens when they switch places. Even Wife Swap toyed with the class contrast in both the UK and US import versions. At the very least most American teens at least will feel some déjà vu via Paris and Nicole’s Simple Life slumming.
But Auerbach is known for entwining a compelling story with unforced substantive accuracy, letting viewers observe the layers to his subjects without forcing judgment upon us. His two-hour MTV documentary Decade scored a Peabody Award for linking music to the social issues of the 80’s.
Auerbach’s casting choices for the two leads hint that he wasn’t looking to rehash the same race-driven have and have-not narrative. His East LA native Angie is actually a sassy Caucasian with cornrows, fully adapted to her Latin-culture dominated environment. On the flip side, wealthy Tarra is actually of half Mexican descent, complete with a spanish-speaking grandmother who makes the transplanted Angie feel oddly at home in the upscale suburbia.
Rich Girl, Poor Girl is one of the first serial web projects out of Luckey Lifestyles, the new media division of Auerbach’s Santa Monica-based Go Go Luckey Entertainment. The first two episodes are up today, with two more each Monday until its finale on November 24th.
From Thom Woodley and Bob McClure comes All’s Faire, a comedy slice of life web series with an ensemble cast of minstrels, wenches, warlocks, and royals. Think The Office at a Renaissance Faire. Previously, Woodley created The Burg and The All-For-Nots with Dinosaur Diorama partner Kathleen Grace. (See our recent interview with Woodley and Grace.) McClure may look familiar on the web screen too — he played Jed in The Burg.
In the same manner as the MMOG-obsessed gamers chronicled by The Guild, All’s Faire explores a rich subculture full of a few very committed (and costumed) people. Woodley tells us the idea came from McClure. “It was something we both felt was funny as we knew people who quit college to join the Faire. Sort of like running off and joining the circus.”
Now, if you heard tell of the Ren Faire film starring Christina Ricci that is now in production, and noticed it’s very similar name, it may be more than a coincidence. McClure and Woodley originally conceived the idea as a screenplay in 2004 and took it to some producers. “They suggested it be more mainstream, either a sex comedy or about guys hiding out from the mob in the Ren Faire. We declined, and did nothing with it.” Three years later, a film is announced with the title Ye Olde Times about “a guy hiding out in the Ren Faire.”
“Our eyebrows raise,” says Woodley. “We decide rather than compete in the feature script area, we’ll do what we do best and take it online.
In July 2008, we release our trailer. On September 10 [of this year] we release our shorts online.” Two days later, Ye Olde Times announces it is now a sex comedy and has changed its name to All’s Faire in Love, and “our eyebrows shoot off our faces,” says Woodley. Go to! Fie upon that.
Like its Dinosaur Diorama predecessors The Burg and The All-For-Nots, All’s Faire is artfully shot, well edited, and directed with a good-natured tone that never sneers at its merrily anachronistic characters. So, real Rennies, fear not. The folks of All’s Faire come in peace. As you might expect, the funniest moments come from the modern day slipping into the medieval world. Ben the stage manager (Joe Thompson) walks around with a clip board, Ploppy the Mud Mistress (Maryll Botula) asks whether there are any other mud mistress gigs opening up. The gifted cast has impeccable timing; they go from medieval speak to singing Bob Marley without ever winking at the audience.
And what about that “coincidence” involving the upcoming film? “It’s doubtful anything was stolen from us,” Woodley adds. “It’s a fairly obvious title. The bigger thing is how we hope to have our show out in full force before the movie hits, and hopefully make the case that internet video, even with no money, can move faster and funnier than Hollywood can.”
You can check out all the merry players in their shire at www.allsfaire.tv.
There was no shortage of Big Apple fun this week on Tubefilter News. Monday came the news that NBC and SNL-producer Lorne Michaels are teaming up to launch a new web comedy portal on the backs of decades of old Saturday Night Live clips. Also out of New York comes news of Rod Corddry’s new medical comedy web seriesChildrens’ Hospital set for a December nod over on TheWB.com. Manhattan-based Norm Golden is proving that seniors can have some web fun too with his new series 50 to Death. And Brooklyn’s web creative duo Thom Woodley and Kathleen Grace caught us up on their latest series and what’s next for their indie-rockin All-For-Nots.
Frank Clayton heads MoCap LLC., the motion capture company that does the mocap (yeah, now you get the name) that no other studio will. Jeff Reynolds is the eager, if clueless, talent, getting punched in the face for MMA fighters, sitting on toilets for Sim City expansion sets, and ghost ridin’ the whip for GTA. Claire Owens is the hard-nosed line producer with a mouth like Luke Skyywalker from Two Live Crew.
Famous for his roles as creepy serial killer Eugene Tooms on The X-Files and as sadistic prison guard Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile, character actor Doug Hutchison has added a new notch to his impressive resume by creating the new horror/action web series Vampire Killers. “I’ve always been intrigued by vampires,” Hutchison told Tubefilter. “Every year on Halloween, I dressed as Dracula! Now, in my adult life, I find myself continually turned on by vampires.”
The series is about a team of five slayers (played by Tim Fields, Nick Heany, Marco Mannone, Kit Paquin and Ginger Pullman) hunting decadent vampiress Charlotte Ross (Ania Spiering) and her growing pack of sexy “Vampire Gurls” through Los Angeles. Hutchison explains: “I originally conceived Vampire Killers as a TV series and then a good friend of mine suggested I consider it as a web series, instead. My hope is that we’re taking the whole web series thing to an elevated level. We’ve shot a gritty, dirty, sexy, dark, violent, urban vampire series: a cut above the rest.” With enough gore and half-naked lesbian bloodsuckers to satisfy your daily quota, Vampire Killers is a great way to spend 15 minutes.
The show is directed, edited and shot by Tim Baldini (The St. Francisville Experiment), who also co-writes along with Hutchison and Mannone. While Vampire Killers is produced on a small budget, you wouldn’t be able to tell from the show’s slick look. Regarding the show’s cinematic style, Hutchison says, “I viewed a plethora of existing web series and – with all due respect – was, frankly, floored by how amateurish most of them were! I thought: what if we created a web series that was episodic/filmic/professional? Kinda like Buffy shot Shield-style.” Clever vampire slayer drama meets gritty police procedural… not a bad way to rejuvenate the tiring genre, if you ask me.
The six, two-minute episodes currently available on the website serve as a prologue to the series and feature a couple of neat twists on the usual vampire lore. Hutchison sees the show’s diminutive running time as a welcome challenge. “To tell a story in 2-3 min demands a lean-mean-story-telling-machine. If I can seduce viewers to WANT MORE after the 1st episode, then I’m hitting a home run.” Though there is no mention of a release date for the next installment, you can personally help “keep Vampire Killers alive” by donating money in return for, among other things, a chance to act in or direct a future episode, or a drink with your favorite Vampire Gurl (beware, she may be drinking you!!!).
So what does Hutchison, an actor known for his television and film roles have to say about the future of web shows? “This is the burgeoning Wild Wild West of the 21st Century. Everyone’s jacked into the web. We’re on the fringe of the transformation of entertainment at large. At some point, maybe even in our lifetime, television will become obsolete. Internet programming is the wave of the future.”
Bo Burnham, the singing, 18-year-old funny-guy we covered in June, just hit it bigger.
Billboard reports that Burnham is in negotiations with Universal to write and create the music for a comedy that Judd Apatow will produce. Burnham may also star in the project.
Burnham, who recently signed a four-album deal with the record arm of Comedy Central and taped a special for the cable network, is set to co-write the movie that has been described as an “anti-‘High School Musical'” with Luke Liacos.
Was your high school like Saved By The Bell? The OC? My So Called Life? Heaven forbid, Degrassi? In my high school kids were rarely calm, collected, and confident, and almost never responded to a put-down with a cool rejoinder. Instead, the folks around me were perpetually confused and insecure, frequently aimless, and the schemes and drama they concocted tended to fall apart with a whimper instead of a climactic explosion.
I’m not sure where the writers for those teenybopper stories got their sugar-coated ideas, but it certainly wasn’t from Ariel Schrag.
Potential is one of a series of three graphic novels where Schrag writes about her four years at Berkeley High School in the mid ’90s. The books were a hit with critics in a time where almost no one in the mainstream took comics seriously, and they launched Schrag’s career at an abnormally young age. Potential, the most well regarded of the series, chonicles the artist’s junior year (and is currently being developed into a feature by the studio who brought us Boys Don’t Cry and I’m Not There.
But for the most direct page-to-screen adaptation of the book, look no further than Potential: The Video Comic (NSFW – language) hosted at OurChart.com as well as Schrag’s official website.
I imagine there are several extremes in the way people will react to this series. Both the story and the way it’s told strike an unusual chord. The four short episodes revolve around Ariel’s highly detailed plan to lose her virginity before she turns seventeen.
After months of tracking the exploits of The All-For-Nots on their popular web series, we wondered what would become of our favorite make-believe indie band now that their season has ended. Particularly after their rocking set on Kimmel, we were curious if this fictional group had become non-fiction. Will the band play on? Will Vuguru renew the series? We caught up with star Vanessa Reseland and the show’s creators Kathleen Grace and Thom Woodley (of Dinosaur Diorama) over the phone to find out what’s next for the band, the show, and the blurring line between web and TV.
Vanessa Reseland is an actress/musician based in New York. She plays Farrah on the show and writes some of the songs.
Tubefilter News: Had you been in a band before The All-For-Nots?
Vanessa Reseland: I’d never been in a band, no. I’ve written music since I was twelve, but all kind of solo stuff on piano or guitar, so this was definitely my first endeavor, especially in rock music. I did more introspective singer-songwriter-y stuff.
Tubefilter: So what was it like doing your first live gig then, in a rock band, having never done that before?
VR: Our first live show that we booked ourselves was last December at the Mercury Lounge in the Lower East Side … I wasn’t nervous, I was very excited, but I think I was much more reserved than I have become. Because at that point, too, the songs were all songs from the show and I sing backup on them, and I don’t think I had any lead songs yet. Since then, Kevin and I have both – Kevin plays the other lead singer – have both written songs for the show and the band, so I think that helped us find our voice. Because when we first started we were pretty chill, but now we have a lot of fun and jump around a lot. It’s more of a show, I think.
Tubefilter: So, what’s next for the show? Do you have a second season in the works?
VR: We aren’t sure yet. Basically at any point Vuguru and the producers there can tell us at any point that they want another season. They haven’t let us know yet. So as of now, we’re kind of assuming that we’re going to go along with the band thing and each pursue different endeavors, and then if they come calling, all of us are really eager to do it. We all had a lot of fun doing the first season and I think we figured out some ways to improve upon it both from the production side, storyline side and even as actors obviously too.
Tubefilter: Can you play gigs now as The All-For-Nots, or does Vuguru and the show’s producers own the rights to the songs?
VR: They own the rights to the songs, but they don’t mind. It’s good promotion for them. Since we’re not selling CDs, we’re not really making money from these shows, so basically we still play as The All-For-Nots. We actually draw pretty decent crowds, so we’re all very eager to keep the band going even if the show doesn’t continue … But we don’t really play in character anymore …
Tubefilter: What are the differences when you’ve played as yourself or when you’re playing as your characters?
VR: There were only a few times when we really tried to play up the characters, and those were the few events that Vuguru had booked us for. The rest of them we booked ourselves … We had done some preconceived banter, or decided that beforehand we would have some tension between me and Johnny, or I would be over flirting with Caleb, and Erica kind of be off in her own little world … and Thom is just the same as he is in real life — no major difference.
Tubefilter: Do you have any gigs coming up that you want to tell us about?
VR: Yeah, actually, we’re booked up through December. I think all of the dates are on our MySpace page. Our first tour is coming up which is exciting. We’re going to Montreal. Friday night (October 17th) we’re playing a show at Fat Baby in the Lower East Side, and that’s kicking off our weekend tour, and then Saturday we’re playing Montreal and Sunday in Boston.
Tubefilter: Any plans to come to the West Coast?
VR: I don’t know … In June we were out there for Kimmel and we played the Knitting Factory out there, that’s the only time that we’ve been on the west coast. We all really want to … so I think we’re going to keep playing and keep trying to plan these things … this tour kind of happened because we knew some bands who were going, and they — that’s really how we’ve gotten anywhere so far- really through the music scene, it’s really not really through the show itself getting us the gigs. At least three of the band members are more into music than acting. So between them we know a lot of people in the music scene, and people seem to like us so far.
Tubefilter: How did The All-For-Nots come to be?
Kathleen Grace: Well, Thom and I created a show called The Burg that was online – we posted our first episode in June of 2006, and about a year ago, early 2007, we got an email from Vuguru – Michael Eisner – and it said, you know, “we really like The Burg, and we want to work with you, whatever you want to do next, tell me about it.” So we had this idea for a sort of cross country road show, that we’d been talking about for a while, but along the lines of we’ll never have the money or resources to do this, but wouldn’t it be cool to do.
Tubefilter: Right.
Thom Woodley : A road show.
KG: So, we’re with someone who did have the resources to do it. We went for it, pitched it, and he really liked the show. We started shooting August 2007, and created the band the prior month literally, like did auditions and Thom and a friend of ours Kyle Jarrow, this composer and we shot it.
Tubefilter: What was it like working with the folks at Vuguru?
KG: It was great. They were really supportive of us, and it was definitely a learning experience for both sides in a good way.
TW: they had just come from doing Prom Queen, and they had a lot of things they wanted to differently, and things they were kind of discovering, and one of the things that we were able to do was say well, you know — they had some more TV ideas of how to do some stuff that we thought didn’t really apply to the web world — and so, yeah. They were open to hearing ideas and suggestions about promotions and episodic structure.
KG: And also, they aren’t music people, and Thom and I – you know, Thom has been in a lot of bands and has a lot of experience, and we kind of know the scene more in terms of Brooklyn and so we brought a lot to the table in terms of that. For us it was a learning experience because on The Burg. There was no one to say “no,” we could do anything we wanted as long as we could afford it. Time wise, we could take four months to shoot an episode if we wanted to…. Having an executive producer was really a good learning experience for both of us – Thom in his writing and me in my directing and producing – to go through the process of getting notes and realizing that sometimes it’s good to have another voice — most of the time it is. Someone to look at it and say “Oh, you’re crazy. That doesn’t work” or “That’s good, but why don’t you try it this way?”
Tubefilter: The band really gels. How did you go about casting that?
TW: We had to cast people who were non-SAG and good, and funny, and they had to play an instrument. Also, they had to get along well, and also because of the way we were planning on shooting The All-For-Nots we were actually going to travel around the country, shoot it very, you know, dirty—
KG: Verité.
TW: Yeah, very rock-u-mentary, kind of gritty style, but also we were traveling around the country so these people couldn’t be crazy.
KG: That was the third category. They’d come in to audition and we’d say “Okay, good voice. Okay, they’re funny,” and they’d leave the room and we’d say “Can I spend three weeks in the car with this person? Can I go to the rest stop and not feel weird?”
TW: There were some people…. Anyway, we put the feelers out, we put out an open call … It so happened that all the people we ended up casting were either friends or friends of friends … We have talented actor friends and they have talented actor friends … The sort of last minute hitch was we thought we would have intense difficulty casting the female drummer, but we had several candidates for that, and we only had a couple for the piano player … [none of them were working out] mainly because of scheduling reasons … it ended up being that about a week before we started shooting, um ….
KG: Thom submitted a tape of himself that he, like, shot in his apartment. He was like “I know you think I’m crazy,” but he gave it to me, and I said “Well, y’know, you’re pretty good at it.”
TW: Up to that point I hadn’t planned on being in it, so that necessitated us bringing on another producer so, you know, it wouldn’t all be Kathy … It just so happens for the most part people have gotten along pretty well musically … We thought we would just cast people who just looked convincing playing instruments, but what actually happened is we ended up with people who had an interest and ability to write songs, and so…
KG: They wrote songs, too.
TW: They wrote a bunch of songs, and, yeah, and a year later we’re on Jimmy Kimmel playing songs that the actors had written.
Tubefilter: So what’s the future for The All-For-Nots, the show, and what’s the future of The All-For-Nots, the band?
KG: The All-For-Nots the show, right now we’re not planning on shooting a second season, I think that … you know, it did well, we liked it, Vuguru liked it, but as the web video economy figures itself out, shows like The All-For-Nots are great, but they’re big shows. It’s not Lonelygirl15, it’s not funny sketches on YouTube, it’s a production, it’s a TV show. I mean, we shot HD, it’s broadcast on HDNet, it’s broadcast quality TV but it’s on the internet. Thom and I are playing with ways to scale the production back … But then [we wonder] do we have a production partner and a brand that is interested? I think it doesn’t help that advertising agencies are cutting spending because of the economy. So it’s a business decision right now …
TW: … As far as the band goes, that’s another we’ll see thing, I think everyone has fun with it.
KG: We have three shows this weekend, one in Montreal …
TW: We’re playing pretty regularly … so I don’t know, we might keep doing it. So there’s the grey area now: you know, real band or not real band. It’s like – it’s a real band, but we’re calling ourselves The All-For-Nots, which is a Michael Eisner property, so it’s an unusual situation … but we’re all into pushing it farther.
KG: And the great thing about the web, and we discovered this with The Burg you can not do an episode for a year, then if you come back with something really good, people will pay attention again. It’s a little more flexible – it’s not like “we canceled this” – its’ constantly evolving, you can change your mode of production, you can change your style of storytelling – look at Lonelygirl15 versusThe Resistance — things can evolve and change and your fans are a lot more forgiving – or not forgiving, but adventuresome.
Tubefilter: Do you have any other web series on the horizon?
TW: It just launched very, very quietly. That’s a comedy about the Renaissance Fair, so we’ve got nine episodes up now, and more coming soon.
KG: We’re actively developing a lot more. Pitching, finding new partners to work with … probably more stuff will launch … in the next four to six months.
Tubefilter: Do you guys have aspirations to take any of the shows you’ve already done or show ideas you have to television or to film?
KG: I am currently working on a TV show, Thom and I are developing a TV show together, and he’s working on stuff. We’re opened up to all mediums. We’ll do anything at this point. It’s not like don’t want to do TV, or we only want to do TV and we want to leave web.
Tubefilter: Right, that’s what we’re hearing.
KG: The thing that we firmly say to everyone whenever anyone asks that question is in three years –not even three years, whenever everyone gets fiber optics and everything is really fast — there is going to be no difference between TV and the internet … It’s going to be digital. You have to learn how to tell stories that can cross to both mediums. It’s got to be a TV show that has interactive elements like a web series. Or a web series that can be expanded to thirty minutes, or there will be more interstitial programming as we get farther away from a traditional broadcast television ad model. That’s just going to change.
I’ve missed Maria Sansone ever since Yahoo’s pop culture newscast, The 9, ended last April. Nobody can deliver internet news with quite the same winning sparkle…
Well, according to the Hollywood ReporterThe 9 and Maria Sansone are back as the Google-produced and Pepsi-sponsored YouTube curator du jour, PopTub Daily. But the concept created in 2006 ended for a reason. We’ve moved on.
Warner Brothers announced today that Childrens’ Hospital, a new medical comedy web series created by and starring Rob Corddry (The Daily Show) and produced by Warner’s digital production arm Studio 2.0 will premiere this December on TheWB.com.
The hospital spoof series looks to be holding nothing back creatively and promises “beautiful doctors with tragic flaws [that] struggle with charged emotional and sexual politics in the workplace.” That workplace of course is a working childrens’ hospital complete with the impressionable pre-adolescents to bear witness to these candid doctors’ affairs.
The comedy powerhouse cast is headed up by Corddry and features a who’s who of the New York comedy scene. There’s web hit Wainy Days star David Wain along with SNL’sJason Sudeikis, Ken Marino (The State, Veronica Mars), Lake Bell (Boston Legal), Erinn Hayes (Worst Week), Rob Huebel (Human Giant, The Awful Truth), Rob’s brother Nathan Corddry (The Daily Show), Ed Helms (The Office), Nick Kroll and two-time Emmy® winner Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) as “The Chief.” Oh, and let’s not forget the voice of Stepen Colbert (The Colbert Report), in the trailer at least.
There’s an obvious satirical nod at Patch Adams, only this time Corddry faces fierce competition as the clown doctor looking to heal the children through laughter. The only way to settle it? “A healing-power-of-laughter-off” of course.
Despite its bovious star-power and studio backing, Corddry and crew were given a pretty long leash creatively, allowing for much racier jokes than would make muster on even the cable networks. “On the Internet, you can have an idea, write it up, cast your friends and have people watch it all within a ridiculously short period of time. And you can swear,” said Corddry, who also directed the series.
Casted will most likely tickle the funny bones of any forlorn actor who has auditioned with one self-absorbed jerk of a casting director. The web series chronicles the daily auditioning life of Derek Riffchyn, “the greatest casting director in the world.” Riffchyn is a venerable nightmare, played by Jonathan Togo who is best known as the dashing Ryan Wolfe on CSI: Miami. Togo went all-out nerding himself up to play Riffchyn, and clearly enjoys taking jabs as the ruthless character.
Vassar college buddies Justin Long, and show director, Will Carlough, round out the team behind the show. Togo endlessly insults his assistant Long as the Riffchyn character, throwing punches like “If I am you, and I am not you… I am NOT you, I would be worried about the man breasts.” Like any good straight man, Long takes the insults in stride.
Of the creation of the show, Carlough nonchalantly says, “It all started a few years ago. Justin met Sam Rockwell and convinced him to do a [Batman-inspired] short film, Robin’s Big Date [above]. That made the internet rounds, and to all of our surprise went to Sundance. So we decided to make another short.”
Casted was born, but Carlough felt the plot tying all the auditioning actors together wasn’t working, so he threw it up on Youtube as a series. As far as more episodes, or a plan for Casted, Carlough says, “assuming there was a plan forCasted is giving us all a little too much credit. We just made it in the hopes that people would like it. We never thought further ahead than that.”
Carlough himself has a plethora of content on his website, redheadedleague.com. As far as more collaborations his old college buddies, Carlough is currently working on a web series starring Togo for Comedy Central. He also has a project with all cronies involved that he can’t yet talk about, so stay tuned for more on that one.
Rich Girl, Poor Girl, the latest original web series from Warner Brothers’ Studio 2.0 premieres today on TheWB.com, swapping the lives two popular alpha-girls from radically different Los Angeles area high schools. The 12-episode comedic reality series is the brainchild of reality icon Gary Auerbach, the creative producer behind MTV’s teen reality hit Laguna Beach and A&E’s ghost-hunting Paranormal State.
The concept isn’t exactly novel, as British TV series Poor Little Rich Girls from ITV essentially traced the same line — take two women from opposite ends of the socio-economic bench and see what happens when they switch places. Even Wife Swap toyed with the class contrast in both the UK and US import versions. At the very least most American teens at least will feel some déjà vu via Paris and Nicole’s Simple Life slumming.
Auerbach’s casting choices for the two leads hint that he wasn’t looking to rehash the same race-driven have and have-not narrative. His East LA native Angie is actually a sassy Caucasian with cornrows, fully adapted to her Latin-culture dominated environment. On the flip side, wealthy Tarra is actually of half Mexican descent, complete with a spanish-speaking grandmother who makes the transplanted Angie feel oddly at home in the upscale suburbia.
