Category Archives: Web Series

All My Children Gets the Axe Again

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It’s not every television series that can boast (?) of being cancelled more than once, but that’s the case with the once-perennial fixture of early afternoon viewing, All My Children. While there hasn’t been “official” official word from the show’s producers Prospect Park (at least publicly as of this writing), tweets from star Debbi Morgan (Angie Hubbard) expressing thanks to fans have been widely circulated and quoted by generally reliable sources such as Michael Fairman On Air On Soaps and retweeted by Cady McClain (Dixie Martin).

(Update: Cady McClain [always a class act, BTW] confirms via Michael Fairman.)

The cast of the "new" All My Children included many familiar faces, including original cast member Ray MacDonnell and longtime co-stars Cady McClain, Jill Larson, David Canary, Julia Barr and others. Image: Ferencomm/The Online Network.

The cast of the “new” All My Children included many familiar faces, including original cast member Ray MacDonnell and longtime co-stars Cady McClain, Jill Larson, David Canary, Julia Barr and others. Image: Ferencomm/The Online Network.

There’s going to be a lot of snarky fan reaction on the Innerwebs in the coming days and weeks along the lines of:

  • I knew it wouldn’t last.
  • Why couldn’t it have been every day?
  • I didn’t want to watch on Hulu.
  • I couldn’t figure out how to get it on my computer, so I gave up.
  • They didn’t have Erica Kane.

And here’s what I have to say about that, quoting that wonderful singer-songwriter Phoebe Kreutz — boo frickin’ hoo.

Honest to God. I’m just happy to see someone try to do something differently. I was appreciative of the opportunity, as a viewer, to meet these characters on this new canvas for a while. To have produced 43 episodes in this new format is not a loss, it’s a win. Producers are finding more and more ways to interact with audiences through the Web than they ever have before:

  • Cady McClain made a cool short movie;
  • Freddie Smith, Shawn Christian (DOOL) and company are making a web series;
  • Indie phenom Adam Goldman is producing his second brilliant web series;
  • Broadway’s Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Kate Wetherhead produce, script and star in a smart web comedy
  • Kit Williamson and Van Hansis (ATWT) starred in Williamson’s exceptional web program….

I could go on and on. But to the naysayers, just remember, small, closed minds have never discovered new worlds, written great novels, played great music, developed cures for disease or launched the next life-changing app. They laughed at Edison, too, you know.

Pine Valley
It was terrific to see folks like Cady McClain and Debbie Morgan and Darnell Williams and Jill Larson in old familiar roles — even the never-count-him-amongst-the-dead Matthew Cowles — but it was even better to watch some terrific new talent like Eric Nelsen and Denise Tontz and Rob Scott Wilson emerge and breath new life into characters whose names, but not much else, were familiar to longtime viewers.

So, again, we write the elegy — and eulogy — for Pine Valley, but we move on, figuring out what’s next and where we’ll be tomorrow and what we’ll tune into then. Something new. And different. The world still turns. Well, as it were.

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Recent Ramblings on All My Children:

Victims of the Hollywood Paradox

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Seth’s Blog: Victims of the Hollywood Paradox.

The studios spend ever more on the blockbusters they make because that demonstrates their power and pays everyone in the chain more money, which creates more (apparent) power for those in charge.

But since they pay so much, they have no choice, they think, but to say, “This must work!” So they polish off the edges, follow the widely-known secret formula and create banality. No glory, it seems, with guts.

Every meeting is about avoiding coming anywhere near the sentence, “this might not work,” and instead giving ammunition to the groupthink belief that this must work.

And as soon as you do that, you’ve guaranteed it won’t.

Every bestseller is a surprise bestseller, and in fact, nobody knows anything.

(And of course, it’s not just movies, is it?)

Ah, Seth Godin, you sayer of sooth. Scratch around on this blog and search for references to “EastSiders” and “Husbands” and “The Outs” and “Whatever This Is” which are all independent productions, done for miraculously little money by writers and filmmakers who are truly committed to telling great stories and presenting them in innovative ways. None of the banality of “Hollywood,” I can assure you.

Actor Hunter Canning Talks ‘The Outs,’ ‘Whatever This Is’

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Actor Hunter Canning talks to MBS about acclaimed web-series The Outs and new series Whatever This Is.

Tommy Heleringer as Scruffy and Hunter Canning as Jack, two of the stars of the web series The Outs.

Tommy Heleringer and co-star Hunter Canning on the set of The Outs.

Nice interview. Of the web series’ I love, ‘The Outs’ is right at the very top. Adam Goldman’s Rascal Department is filming their latest creation (also starring Canning) right now. I didn’t discover ‘The Outs’ in time to contribute, but I did to ‘Whatever This Is.’ I am enjoying immensely watching these talented young people work.

Submissions Only

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For the record, I LOVE Submissions Only. Start with season one and work your way up to season three, coming soon!

Interview: Filmmaker Adam Goldman on “Whatever This Is,” “The Outs,” and Crowd-Funding

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Interview: Filmmaker Adam Goldman on “Whatever This Is,” “The Outs,” and Making Crowd-Funded Series | Tribeca.

AG: And that allowed us to finish up the show. But with Whatever This Is, you know I talk about this a lot. We don’t purport to take any responsibility for this but if you look for the release schedule for The Outs, it turns pretty clearly with the way that people have evolved the way that they watch television online. And when we started The Outs the first episode is 12 minutes and people said “fuck you, nobody is going to want to watch something that is 12 minutes long online.” And I had to sort of say you know I bet they will if it’s good. And then by our last episode they sort of grew and grew and the last one is 43 minutes and by the time out last episode was out, House of Cards was out and Netflix has been so huge in that arena.

This is a great interview with Adam Goldman and, if you’re interested in this sort of thing, it’s well worth the read.

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(l-r) Hunter Canning, Sasha Winters and Adam Goldman star in the exceptional Web series, The Outs. Winters and Canning are back in front of the camera in the latest Goldman-penned series, Whatever This Is. Photo: Interview/Unusually Fine Photography

What he says above is not sui generis, people absolutely will watch something long online AS LONG AS IT’S GOOD. This nonsense about not watching anything longer than a 2 or 3 minute YouTube video online is lunacy. It flies in the face of all conventional wisdom we know about motion pictures and television viewing. Now, with online viewing patterns changing, we know that not only will someone watch an hour of House of Cards on their laptop, they’ll watch a whole damn season in one sitting!

Anyhow, Goldman and his Rascal Department are possessed of significant talent. I am so looking forward to the next episode(s) of Whatever This Is and am ecstatic that I was able to contribute to this project and help it get off the ground.

How “Husbands” Predicted The Future For Gay Marriage And Digital Hollywood

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How “Husbands” Predicted The Future For Gay Marriage And Digital Hollywood.

Fortunately, Husbands has not had to worry about suffering from performance issues. When Bell and Espenson launched it two years ago as a web series on YouTube, it won a rave from no less than The New Yorker, and generated enough of a passionate fan base that the duo was able to raise $60,000 on Kickstarter for a second season. That season, which debuted on YouTube last year, saw a roughly 35% boost in viewership. “Everybody has access to the ability to make their own product now,” says Espenson. “It really is ‘the best will thrive.’ Like, whole networks are set up to guess what people are going to like. You don’t have to guess anymore. You can put it up and see what they like. That’s what we did. And they liked us.”

Excellent article and interview with Bell, Espenson and Hemeon about the impact of Husbands and finding new venues for content.

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Husbands’ co-star Sean Hemeon is flanked by series co-creators Brad Bell and Jane Espenson at the 2013 Entertainment Weekly San Diego Comic Con party. The much-lauded marriage equality series centers on Hemeon and Bell, who play a hilarious mismatched married couple in the crisply written show. | Image: Chelsea Lauren/WireImage.

It’s very interesting to me that the trio no longer use the phrase “Web series” to describe the show, now beginning its third season (and this time on CW Seed, the companion site to the broadcast network), but rather simply call it a “series.”

I think they are right — and it’s very interesting to see language and usage change — sometimes practically overnight.

Says Espenson: “There’s nothing on YouTube that you can’t see on your smart TV. There’s nothing on TV, essentially, that you can’t find online in some form. So [saying “Web series” is] like saying, “I heard a radio song” vs. “a CD song!” Well, what’s the difference? You can get it either place.

I’ll have to start checking myself.

Meanwhile, you can watch — please do; it’s terrific!! — the new season of Husbands on CW Seed.

Watch the first two seasons and some behind-the-scenes videos HERE.

Read some of the Husbands-related posts I’ve made over the last year HERE, HERE, and HERE.

“Whatever this is.” — New Web Series from the Creators of “The Outs”

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Can’t believe I haven’t talked about this yet, but the latest Web series from The Outs’ Adam Goldman and company has met its rather significant Kickstarter goal. I’m excited about this for several reasons. First, I was one of the Kickstarter contributors and I nudged a couple of other people to contribute as well. Second, The Outs was probably my very favorite Web series of the last several years, even though I was a significant supporter of several others.

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The WTI ensemble consists of several familiar faces for viewers of The Outs, including Tommy Heleringer (second from left), Hunter Canning (second from right) and Sasha Winters (kneeling). Image: Whatever this is. Facebook.

Goldman and company have already proven that theirs is a unique voice and one that has connected with the audience. The gelling of a true ensemble is making their Rascal Department an independent force to be reckoned with. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Here’s a link to the first episode.

For Adam Goldman, a Place That Isn’t Out to Get Him – NYTimes.com

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(l-r) Hunter Canning, Sasha Winters and Adam Goldman star in the exceptional Web series, The Outs.
Photo: Interview/Unusually Fine Photography

Adam Goldman lives in one of those Brooklyn prewar buildings near Prospect Park where the buzzer doesn’t always work, and the vestibule and lobby doors are frequently left unlatched. “But I feel safe here,” said Mr. Goldman, the creator, director and star of “The Outs,” the cultish online TV series that chronicled the dissolution of a romance between two gay 20-something men in contemporary Brooklyn. “This apartment is a step up.”

via For Adam Goldman, a Place That Isn’t Out to Get Him – NYTimes.com.

Pretty good article about Adam Goldman and his Brooklyn apartment. I enjoyed his Web series, The Outs, immensely. I thought it was so well-written and acted. It was witty, urbane, gripping and had an edge. It was the opposite of the bland fodder which comes out of Hollywood. That’s why the note in this piece that Goldman now has “representation in L.A.” makes me want to cringe a little. I hope the Left Coast doesn’t eat him.

Brad Bell: Fine-tuning the Image of Gays in Hollywood: An Open Letter to Amy Pascal

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Great article by Brad Bell. There’s not a single point he makes that I don’t agree with. Take a read. It’s extremely thought-provoking. Also, take a few minutes and watch Husbands, the great Web series that Bell co-created with Jane Espenson.

First, I applaud your acknowledgement of this issue and want to thank you for setting a precedent which makes this dialogue possible. Yes, I agree with you that an alarming volume of movies and TV shows thoughtlessly rely on anti-gay slurs for humor, thus perpetuating the idea that homosexuality is a shameful and comprehensible source of ridicule. Just one example is The Hangover, which manages to call texting “gay” and use the nickname “Dr. Faggot” in the first few lines of the movie. However, I also think that calling for an across-the-board ban of the word “fag,” with no consideration to context, is counterproductive for creating a climate of learning and compassion. I assume, of course, this is a concept you’re familiar with, after the public’s polarizing response to Django Unchained.

via Brad Bell: Fine-tuning the Image of Gays in Hollywood: An Open Letter to Amy Pascal.

husbands

“Submissions Only” – How’d I Miss This Great Web Series Until Now??

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I am completely late to the table on this one, but if you are at all interested in backstage shenanigans, watch Submissions Only, the Web series created by Kate Wetherhead and Andrew Keenan-Bolger.

“Backstage shenanigans” really doesn’t do this series justice in the slightest. It’s ostensibly about a struggling casting agent and his friend, a struggling actress, but it’s a warm, witty, often laugh-out-loud funny look at the relationships — and indignities — that occur backstage and in the wings.

For any of us who are, or have been, “in the business,” you know every one of these people. The last show like this, for me, was the Canadian series Slings & Arrows. For those amongst us who have not spent any time backstage, watch it for the cameos and great writing. There’s hardly a Broadway name that doesn’t get a couple of minutes of face time. I mean, they got Chita Rivera, Harvey Fierstein and Beth Leavel, for God’s sakes!

Wetherhead and Keenan-Bolger are no slouches as Broadway names either. You may have seen her in Legally Blonde or The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee or him in Mary Poppins, Seussical or until recently as Crutchie in Newsies. The “sizzle reel” below is linked straight to YouTube. Watch the entire series at www.submissionsonly.com. You’ll be glad you did.