I didn’t create a web series in hopes of getting an award, a TV deal or for a web site with money to discover my show. When it comes to web series, I’m familiar with the excitement of “What if?” and the disappointment of “Here’s why not.” The first time I worked on one was in 1999.
I’m staring at a to-do list, written in green on a white dry-erase board. There’s enough white space to make me think I’m making progress or that I’ve forgotten a few to-dos. Everyday I lower the launch countdown by one day and that number is in front of me as I write this.
It’s hard work and fun and frustrating and rewarding and one of the best times I’ve had working on anything. And I hope someone watches it! Working this hard on something and having few watch it is a very real possibility, luck or not.
I didn’t know I was lucky when I moved into a little bungalow in Hollywood with my wife, Kathy and our now late cat, Dave. He was 18.
What seemed unlucky in that neighborhood I lived in for ten years included gang activity, hookers, cops pulling me out of my house because they thought I was robbing it, two houses full of squatters across the street, a douchebag landlord, a lot of barking dogs, a meth-addict neighbor with two of those dogs and getting threatened with a defamation lawsuit for a video protest site I made to get the houses full of squatters boarded up.
Sounds lucky, doesn’t it?
In retrospect, that unlucky shit-storm made a lot of lucky things happen, like when I met John Colella and Reamy Hall. I had no idea how lucky that was going to be for a variety of reasons, personal and professional.
We shot a short I wrote and directed, “The Swear Police,” in the alley next to the houses my video protest site got boarded up. John acted and helped me cast it, Reamy was the only human I knew who was in good enough shape to run with a boom pole for the chase scene. It was August, it was hot, there was a lot of running and it was a tremendous amount of fun… and then it won an award at the 2009 LA Comedy Shorts Film Festival! Lucky.
In July ‘09, I came up with the idea for “Vampire Mob,” which was going to be a short, a one-off. But as I cooked the character, who wasn’t originally going to be a hitman, I thought episodic, this is a story that has way more meat on it than a short could tackle.
THAT’S why I decided to do it as a web series, the form and budget fit the story.
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