So, You Are A Star...

... we are making a show called "The Future Is Awesome!"(... tv show... website... podcast... etc.). I am blogging about the process... also, as we make the transition to our spankin' new title, and 'official' site, I'm gonna be posting in parallel at The Future Is Awesome!... Don't wanna lose anyone. :)

Star Making Performances.

They're more common then you think.

There's a million of 'em you haven't seen.(.. and, I'm not just talking about Mexico. It's like a cute summer camp for non-english speaking actors, down there. A hot, sticky, smelly summer camp. They've got little cameras, put on little skits... all in their little nonsense language. Trust me, it's adorable.)

Watching 'dailies' in a trailer of a previous day's filming.... on the sofa in a palatial hollywood hills home, fast-forwarding through rough cuts.... in an editing suite, combing through the raw elements of a television pilot.... I can't tell you how often a director, producer or editor will lean across to the person in their immediate vicinity and declare in a whisper; "They are going to be a star. This is a star making performance."

Don Simpson (half of the 80's and 90's Simpson & Bruckheimer blockbuster production team that launched Eddie Murphy in "Beverly Hills Cop" and Tom Cruise in "Top Gun" amongst others... and, the poster boy for hollywood's 'culture of excess'; read High Concept for all the salacious tales)... once claimed that, even for a notoriously indulgent Caligula-like figure, nothing superseded the thrill of sitting in private, looking at tapes and 'discovering a star'.

[... this from a guy who had a $60,000 a month drug habit at his zenith, and a well documented penchant for demeaning and sadistic sex parties with high class escorts. My personal favorite was a story involving two beautiful young call girls sequestered away in his bedroom... forced to eat several greasy BLT sandwiches, while Simpson looked on and rubbed himself.

On a personal note... if ever I had the money and means, I would totally try this; "Okay Kimber.... you're just as young and lovely as your blurred on-line portfolio suggested. At these rates, it says you're willing to do... well, pretty much anything. I'd like you to get into your bra and panties... climb up on the bed on all fours... and finish all three of these deep-dish pizza pies."

"Yeah..", sitting in my oversized chair, hand down my pants; "Oh, god yeah.... slowly.... slowly.... take your time.... twirl the cheese around your finger... yeah, you are filthy..... you are a filthy, dirty little girl....... No really, you've got tomato sauce all over your face. Use a napkin for christ sakes. You're filthy."]

There is an undeniable thrill to discovery.

Even those of us with less sophisticated palettes(.. those of us who haven't pored over tapes or, been blown by an aspiring starlet... at least, for 'star making' purposes) can identify a 'star making' turn, when we see it.

For instance... I have seen the next Conan O'Brien.

His name is Michael Swaim.(.. his stuff can be found at Cracked.com... and, his more personal, 'channel' Those Aren't Muskets!)

He hosts a recurring segment of viewer and forum member submitted/suggested video clips with commentary. Like the best of web content, what it lacks in polish and production value, it more than makes up for in being funny as fuck, see...;

The 7 Most Mind-Blowing Foreign TV Moments.... the 6 Worst 'Professional' Music Videos.... 8 Local News Segments Gone Horribly Wrong... 8 Least Necessary YouTube Tributes... To "Home Improvement"... and, the horrifying freak show episode, 8 Videos of People Who Look Like Special Effects Creations.

Y'know what, Don Simpson might have been right(... road of excess, palace of wisdom n' all that).... discovery might actually be better than wanking while watching whores eat bacon sandwiches.(.. I'm probably gonna have to look into that some more.)

Conan O'Brien(.. for those of you who don't recall) had never worked on camera, before hosting NBC's "Late NIght With Conan O'Brien".(... though he was probably a shoe-in, if they'd already settled on that title.)

Conan went through his awkward first steps on late night network television. Live studio and huge tv audiences all collectively howling and giggling and, in between, asking each other; "Who the fuck is this guy?"

NBC made him a star, then Conan O'Brien went out on air and made himself one.

Nowadays.... you get quiet, unnoticed bits of spun gold that bedroom and basement performers have spun themselves, Rapunzel-style, from straw.

Felicia Day made her own star vehicle with her on-line series about role-playing video game communities The Guild(... the whole series is pretty great)... then found her way into Joss Whedon's viral web musical Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog(... the whole series is better than great. It's pretty fuck-tacular.)

Josh Faure-Brac created a series of animated satirical shorts that became, SuperNews! (Note the exclamation point, telling you it's both super fun and yet pressing and important..! I should try to work that in, somehow.)

("SuperNews!" is designed for that future where 'broad'-casting is quickly dying... so, they partnered up with Al Gore's "Current TV" and now everywhere the shorts go, virally n' otherwise, they carry the "Current TV" logo in the bottom corner of frame.... "The Daily Show" and "South Park" do the same for Comedy Central.)

Of course, none of this would matter at all, if the "SuperNews!" creative team wasn't churning out cultural and social satire like Your Dad Asking Computer Questions, Trouble With Twittering, Celebrity Twitter Overkill.... and their chronicle of the Death of MTV.

Aussie comic Jim Jefferies has an HBO Comedy Special "I Swear To God" under his belt. He's been on the exceptionally popular and remarkably good Adam Carolla Podcast.(.. as of my writing this, the linked episode was his second time and that'd qualify as a 'star making performance' in it's own right.)

Still, the clip that made Jim Jefferies known... the bit of video that garnered him notice and netted him these bigger platforms, is this clip; Jim Jeffries Punched.(... it's exactly what it sounds like.)

A friend of mine works at Google in San Francisco, and discovered the Kasper Hauser comedy troupe as part of their 'Authors @ Google' series. The guys came in to do some combination of corporate seminar and public 'crazy' demonstration.(... then did so again, two years later...Kasper Hauser @ Google '09).

I told him that I'd long since been a subscriber to Kasper Hauser's comedy podcast... read their hilarious book, SkyMaul... and long been a fan through their exposure as part of The Sound of Young America (Kasper Hauser hour) family of comedy shows.

I went on to point out that his 'cutting edge' juggernaut of a company was laughably out of touch. We then argued on the obligation of a huge company to stay culturally relevant and then, came to the resolution that while I may be an embittered relative failure.... he, almost certainly, could never compensate for his micro-penis condition regardless of how high his stock options seemed to get and, that every woman he's ever been with, including his current wife, had only been pretending to have any interest him.

So, yeah... we both made discoveries in our own ways, on our own schedules. For instance, wediscovered, we never genuinely liked each other and didn't need to speak to each other any longer.

Point is...... who cares how or under what circumstances, you're discovered. Our future in an infinite content universe allows for infinite opportunities for discovering 'star making performances'.... and, that's infinitely thrilling.

"The Future Is Awesome!" is going to offer a platform for this thrill of discovery through it's recurring segment Dance, Monkey, Dance.(.. see the linked post, and the broader concept post;Dance, Monkey...)

Ask uber-producer and uber-lecherous and sadistic hump, Don Simpson... discovery is more thrilling than watching taut, beautiful, young girls seductively dripping mayonnaise on your 1000 thread-count, Egyptian cotton sheets.(.. turned on? Thought so.)

But then(.. if you read his posthumous bio and articles on his legacy), Don Simpson's dead naked body was discovered sitting slumped on his toilet, a copy of Oliver Stone's biography smeared with his poop and resting between his rank, distended thighs.... so, that had to be a thrilling discovery for someone too.

To illustrate my point... on the 'Golden Age'

(... we are making a show called "The Future Is Awesome!"(... tv show... website... podcast... etc.).I am blogging about the process... also, as we make the transition to our spankin' new title, and 'official' site, I'm gonna be posting in parallel at The Future Is Awesome!... Don't wanna lose anyone. :)

I was trying to illustrate a point with my last post; A Comprehensive Recipe For Becoming An Anti-Social Shut-In.

Something about our living through the best, most ambitious and most creative period in the history of television; 'the Golden Age'... plus, my list and links make for a nice little tv time capsule.

That's right, I said;

We Are Living Through Television's Golden Age.

... don't take my word for it. JJ Abrams(... one of tv's current golden boys; "Alias", "Lost", "Fringe") said exactly that on this super-entertaining episode of "This American Life"; What I Learned From Television.

Though it might warrant noting; if everybody's telling you, you're 'King Shit Of Fuck Mountain'... you'll probably spend some of your time talking up how awesome Fuck Mountain actually is. A way of giving yourself a sneakily self-aggrandizing, reach around.

Truth is.... myself, J.J. Abrams, and a whole host of others, are absolutely right.

(Right about the 'reach around' for starters. They are fantastic. Especially, when they're sneaky and surprising. 'The Stranger', anyone..?)

As television becomes less and less important... it's becoming more and more interesting.

They're forecasting the coming decade as 'the one where we stay home'.... from there, we stay in our own little hamster balls, like the Virtusphere... then, in our heads. As we progressively climb further up inside our own assholes. "Race you to the bowels!"

So, I made a list(.. a long list), highlighting what makes this the 'golden age'.

Shows... a list of some of the brilliant, innovative, ground-breaking and awesome shows of our era.

Everything that was missing from that list of what I most love and appreciate about my oldest and most reliable friend, television(... a profoundly sad realization but, probably true)... everything I left out, I did by design.

See, I wanted to sketch something out further... to illustrate a point.

The Best, Smartest and Most Amibitious Television Of Recent Years Has Been Animated.

Does it make you mad, when somebody says; "cartoons are for kids."... or, like me, does it just make you sad for them?

Sad, that grampity old 'Gramps' cannot... will not.. ever open himself up to the crazy, colorfully veiled genius of The Venture Bros.

Sad, that the brilliant Harvey Birdman would have completely passed them by.

So sad, that those same sad sacks rightfully raged and ragged on the new Star Wars prequel trilogy... when all the while, under their noses, a far superior [dare I say, almost satisfying] pre-prequel, animated series called Clone Wars, lay waiting to be discovered. (forget the movie version with the cloying, whiney, dark lord jedi-vagina... in this series, Anakin Skywalker is terse, tough and kind of a B.A. That's short for 'bad ass', like Mr. T from "The A- Team".)

Sad... that they'd sneer at HBO's fantastic anti-hero Spawn, or... Ben Edlund's under-appreciatedThe Tick, or... 90's cop and private eye homage Stroker and Hoop, or... perversely, delightfully insane Frisky Dingo, or... the horrifyingly believable Metalocalypse, or... the perticularly delightful, when you're stoned Aqua Teen Hunger Force (seriously ;), or... the simple, sweet and snide Home Movies.

I'd be sad as shit.... if I'd deprived myself of Futurama, King of the Hill, Robot Chicken, Justice League Unlimited or Dr. Katz Professional Therapist.

These cartoons are definitely not for kids.... they have, in fact, ushered many of us into our own unique, if somewhat stunted, brand of manhood.

I'd be a sad, miserable person, if I hadn't come of age in those Conan O'Brien and George Meyer halcyon years of The Simpsons.

The primacy of writing in television(... the reason for it's 'golden age') can't be more perfectly demonstrated than in those groundbreaking shows.

The care and thought taken in crafting brilliant cartoon satire puts most other tv in its place. Animated television put most other television on its ass.

But..... it's only truly culturally transcendent because it evolved.

This family... to this one... to this......

And, canonical and fantastic though "The Simpsons" was...

The Best Television Show Of Our Generation is... "South Park".

I would likely be less the person I am today(.. not half as hyperbolic as you may think)... if I hadn't grown up with South Park.

I have grown with "South Park", and neither of us are the same as in our youth.

"South Park" has uniquely aged it's characters... made subtle voice changes, moved up through elementary school grades... expanded its universe... and, pushed at it's boundaries...

"South Park" has practically, tackled and hog-tied every sacred cow... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...... ...... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... you get the idea.

Like "The Simpsons", "South Park" has aged, evolved and improved in ways only animated television truly can... and we, of a certain generation, bore witness.

One of the first 'viral videos' was this animated christmas card made by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, called The Spirit of Christmas: Jesus vs. Santa.

Now, in our endless on-line media landscape no other show is as available, if not ubiquitous, as "South Park"; every episode free, fast, easy to find and consume on the net.

And, though they're surely too modest to say... the awesome peaks and valleys (and plateaus) that plague all long running television have not been an issue for "South Park".

From humble cut, paste and profanity-laced beginnings.... "South Park" has gotten sharper, smarter, more dynamic, more ambitious, every passing year.

"The Simpsons" aren't making episodic television like The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers, Le Petit Tourette or World of Warcraft. They're just not anymore.

Particularly for my generation and those who've come after, everything is re-adjusted for post "South Park" television.

Comedy, as it was in a post "Python" era... is re-jigged for a post "South Park" one.

Saying goes... 'if someone's pushed the envelope, then you just have to pick up from where they've pushed it to'..... I think...?(.. never had a great handle on that 'pushing the envelope' expression... that might not be an actual saying.)

"South Park" geniuses Trey and Matt figured out they could push, prod and outright provoke.... they could do and say almost any damn thing behind a rough, unrealistic animation style and the naughtily naive and wonderfully unaware guise of four school children and their home town of South Park, Colorado, U.S.A.

They were absolutely right.

"South Park" gets away with murder ... at least once an episode.

"South Park" is the best, most consistent, most creative, most ambitious and nuanced series for television that I have seen.(.. and, I've been looking.)

I made one of our 'hosts' for "The Future Is Awesome!" into a cartoon avatar ( see; "Dance, Monkey, Dance".... the break down) because of the lessons I've learned from the "South Park" model.(.. behind a mask, I can say and do more.)

"South Park" demonstrates how you can to be 'of your time'(.. lack of polish, episodes written and created in a three-day turnaround lets commentary be relevant and timely).... and still be absolutely 'timeless'(... these guys have written and voiced every episode to assure quality never wanes).

[.. want to know why Matt Stone and Trey Parker are my tv heroes..? Listen to them wax poetical on South Park's evolution and South Park's fight for freedom of speech... and, do yourself the favor of watching all 5 and 3 parts, respectively, of the interviews.]

Mostly..... to not use animation for a new show speaking to a young demographic, and to not wring out all its unique strengths and freedoms is to deny that these guys have already set the table for the next incarnations of tv.

Many years from now, as I become the grampitiest 'Gramps' that ever did gramp (no idea what that means).... as I move into my own golden years and aggressively bore my niece or grand-niece with stories of my 'golden age of television'........ I will force feed that child South Park.

Damp it down her little throat with a chimney brush.(.. she'll thank me, eventually.)

In the interim, I will aspire to build my show on the shoulders of these giants... these foul mouthed, four year-old, construction paper cut-out kings of cartoon comedy.

If "South Park" is any indication of the future of comedy, the future can't help but be awesome.

Until then.... I can only aspire to a future that tries like hell to get there.

Still don't think we're living through the 'Golden Age Of Television'...?

Try not to look directly into the gleaming brilliance of these animated shows... I'm pretty sure they illustrate my point.