Ultimate Wingman
I had mentioned in a previous post that my friend and fellow Boston comic Courtney Cronin got tapped to write a series of shorts/vignettes for the new Comedy Time Network and she asked me to be a part of it. We had the shoot yesterday and it was more fun than I even imagined.
Comedy Time is a content provider for mobile phones. Apparently, they are one of the top subscribed to channels and are also a part of a package with MobiTV.
It started a few weeks ago when Courtney told me about this project idea she had pitched to Comedy Time and they loved it. It was "The Ultimate Wingman" and it revolved around two friends, I played the dude who was always after the hot girl and Matt Iseman played the titular character. It was great as I didn't even have to audition for the part. We were who she had in mind when writing it and she just pitched us to the network (via our respective websites) and they dug us enough to give us the gig.
The week started with a production meeting on Tuesday at the office. I met the heads of the network and then we convened to a conference room for the meeting and a table read. I had met Matt briefly a few years ago but this was the first time we had ever worked together and it was amazing how well we just gelled and came off like we'd known each other for years. We read through all three scenes and there was a silence. "Oh shit," I thought, "we just sucked."
But then both the producer Mike and network head David said "wow, you guys really came prepared. That was awesome. I have no notes". So that went well.
Now imbued with a new sense of confidence (and happy that we could hit a home run for our good friend Courtney) we headed to the Ice House in Pasadena yesterday afternoon for the actual shoot. We only had about 2 hours to get everything we needed but that time limit turned out to not be an issue at all. We shot all 3 scenes and had at least 3 or 4 takes apiece in a little over an hour.
The shoot was about as much fun as I've ever had acting on a set. Matt was a true professional and a blast to work with. We had an easy chemistry and Courtney seemed thrilled with everything we were doing, even allowing us a take on each scene to just "have fun and play around". I was sad when it was over. They do want me to perform at the Ice House for the Comedy Time standup tapings, so that should be a lot of fun and I'll post that date on here once I book it.
Courtney gave Matt and I the nicest compliment I think we could have recieved when she said, "when I wrote the scripts, I thought they were funny and cute...but what you guys did with them made them hysterical!" I don't think you can get any higher praise from a writer than that.
From all appearances, Comedy Time loves this series and mentioned spending more money producing this than anything else on the network. As we were wrapping up, Mike made a comment about wanting to do a ton more. So it's nice that they are so excited about it. I think it could lead to some cool stuff, what with a major studio looking to buy into the network. You never know what can happen or where things may lead.
At the very least, I'm going to have some great tape for my reel. At the best...who knows.
I'm going to check into the legalities of posting the three vignettes up on this site once they're completed. So keep checking back and I should have some news about that before or right after Thanksgiving.
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