First, watch the 3rd Mister Glasses, I edited the middle part.
Second item, I want to make a new show. I like making shows, but I’ve had a two-ton, cake-frosted albatross around my neck for the last year. I have a bunch of semi-developed ideas (many of these are really old), but I can’t tell if any of them have merit.
The more the trend towards really short one-off sketches continues on the internet, the more I want to make complicated, multi-scene, involved shows. I don’t care what they end up on, though I like seeing them live with an audience. These shows could be for any venue online or off.
Here are the top candidates, to keep a record of them for my sake as well as the handful of peeping peteys who read this blog (both of you).
Sui-slider
Main character is a overly-sensitive Poetry grad student who after a series of disheartening encounters with his advising professor, therapist, and ex-girlfriend; commits suicide. What he soon realizes that rather than find a tidy end to his put-upon life, he has become a sui-slider cursed to jump between alternate realities with each attempt to end it all.
Pro:
Anything can happen. Limitless episode possibilities
Nerds love sci-fi
Cons:
Too much fucking work
Suicide may be off-putting to audiences
Matt DeCoster: Dream Assassin
DeCoster is a hit-man with the unique ability to enter his victims dreams and kill them without leaving any evidence. The half of the episode sets up his target’s evil deeds, second half is the dream.
Pro:
Would look awesome
Nerds love sci-fi… and hitmen
Cons:
Too much fucking work
Not funny enough
Dumpy
CathymeetsNeil LaBute. Neurotic-but-lovable office worker Mandy Dumphries (nicknamed “Dumpy”) struggles with all the problems of a modern woman in the big city. She has a crush on her boss, an overbearing mother, loves chocolate and is trying to quit smoking. All standard Working Girl, Bridget Jones cliche plot lines, but the hook is that while she’s this (sym)pathetic good-hearted Pollyanna, all of the people around her are cruel to the point of abuse… spitting in her face, her boss dressing her down while being serviced by a leather-clad gimp, lighting her desk on fire. The more likable and sponge-like her personality; the more awful the world is to counter.
Pro:
Mitch Magee-penned theme song already promised; his personal favorite idea on list
Female-centric plots (even if main character man-in-drag)
Cons:
Need to find office to shoot in
The theatre-of-cruelty aspect which I personally delight in, some audiences find off-putting; show could be a repeat of Being Glenn
Name too close to “Cakey!”
Bowling Noir
The one hack move that pisses me off more than anything is badly done Noir parodies… sketches, videos, whatever. It’s always the same stock shit off a detective in his office and the dame comes in, voice over…zzzzz. The detective in his office shit is like less than 5% of the genre, and it’s 99% of the parody. I’d do a show that’s the rest of the genre, poor suckers getting pulled into schemes they don’t know how to get out of, insurance fraud, lots of night driving.
And the main character is the world’s greatest bowler, continually suckered into doing illegal things, played by Matt DeCoster
Pro:
Would look Awesome
Can steal first episode script from Hines/DeCoster’s stage show
Cons:
Have to do a lot of chromakey’ed backgrounds since I couldn’t get locations
Getting period costumes and shit a lot of work
Still might be hack
Too close—aesthetically—to Mister Glasses
