Thunderant

Under-sung SNL genius Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein make funny, intimate little videos under the name Thunderant. This one will be familiar to all of the humorless feminists out there (and the people who love them):

Prop 8: The Musical

Another entry in the "using your power for good" category -- holy star-studded musical theater activism, Batman - check this shit out:

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Eve Ensler Presents Offensive Women This Weekend!

The time has finally come! The show I've been co-producing with Julie Goldman for over a year is blowing up big time with the help of Eve Ensler (the only person to whom I've ever written a fan letter - and she wrote me back!). With Eve's backing, we've taken the show from the funky Slipper Room to the funky (but much bigger) Zipper Factory Theatre for a two-night-only engagement that features some of my favorite funny ladies.

For those who think "funny" and "feminist" don't belong in the same sentence, I submit into evidence the following video featuring the show's own Rachel Feinstein:



Here's more about how to get tickets, who's on the show, and like that:

EVE ENSLER & JULIE GOLDMAN PRESENT...
OFFENSIVE WOMEN: TALK IS DANGEROUS
A no-holds-barred, rock-n-roll comedy show featuring the next generation of outspoken, outrageous women comedians!

Friday December 5th @ 8pm
Saturday December 6th @ 8pm

TWO NIGHTS ONLY!

Presented by EVE ENSLER (founder of V-Day and creator of The Vagina Monologues) and JULIE GOLDMAN (co-star of LOGO's Big Gay Sketch Show), this show is guaranteed to be a balls-out comedy throw-down. No subject is off-limits and these hysterical ladies are guaranteed to ruffle some feathers saying the dangerous sh*#t you think but are SO not supposed to say out loud.

With live music by The Totally Offensive Band, host Julie Goldman, comedians Rachel Feinstein, Kate Rigg, Betsy Salkind and Shazia Mirza (all the way from the U.K.), plus the dirty R&B stylings of Wendy Ho and the antics of burlesque superstars The Wau Wau Sisters, put on your party dress and pull up your big girl pants - it's going to be one incredibly funny night.

Produced by Julie Goldman, Erin Keating and Eve Ensler
Directed by Virginia Scott

@ The Zipper Factory Theatre
336 West 37th St. (between 8th and 9th Aves.)

Tickets are $28 at thezipperfactory.com
or call 212-352-3101

This is the perfect "girls night out" for people who think "girls nights out" are lame! Bring your posse and have dinner and drinks before or after the show at The Zipper Factory Tavern! Call 212-695-4600 for reservations.

More about the performers:

Julie Goldman – HOST - co-star of LOGO's Big Gay Sketch Show

Rachel Feinstein - opens for Sarah Silverman, Comedy Central's Premium Blend

Wendy Ho - The Gospel According to Ho, "Bitch I Stole Your Purse" (LOGO's #1 funniest video of 2008)

Shazia Mirza - NBC's Last Comic Standing, BBC's Have I Got News For You, CBS' 60 Minutes

Kate Rigg - NBC's Late Friday, Comedy Central's Women In Comedy, Vh1's Awesomely Bad...

Betsy Salkind - The "Squirrel Lady" from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, former writer for Roseanne

The Wau Wau Sisters - Jimmy Kimmel Live!, John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus, The World Famous Spiegeltent

More details at www.offensivewomen.com!

Old School Comedy

Even though comedy retrospectives never manage to rate (even on Comedy Central), the comedy gods still see fit to keep them coming, and I for one an thrilled. I caught a great doc this weekend called Hail Sid Caesar: The Golden Age of Comedy that told the story of Your Show of Shows and the comedy writing dream team that made up its staff: Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, and other brilliant dudes who dominated the scripted comedy business for the next 50 years. It was great to see - and still find laughs in - clips of Caesar and Imogene Coca (who you might remember as the grandmother from National Lampoon's Vacation films) doing all sorts of proto-sitcom scenes and the first-ever television parodies. Amazingly prescient stuff, considering the show ran in the very early days of TV (1950 - 1954), and TV was only invented in 1945.

This January, PBS will be airing a six-hour series hosted by Billy Crystal called Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America. The series is co-produced by Thirteen/WNET and Ghost Light Films, each episode spotlights a different American comedy genre and will include interviews from more than 90 comedians, writers, producers and historians including Rosanne Barr, Carol Burnett, Sid Caesar, George Carlin and Chris Rock and many more. Sounds right up my alley.

Here's Carl Reiner and Sid Caesar doing his spaced out Jazz guy, Progress Hornsby. It's over 50 years old and it still feels fresh:

Smart Girls at the Party

From the "using your power for good" department: ON Networks launched its latest show Smart Girls at the Party about "people who are changing the world by being themselves." The people in question are talented young girls, and the series features Amy Poehler interviewing her young subjects Larry King style. Amy created the show with her friend Meredith Walker, former senior producer for Nickelodeon's Nick News, and former head of talent for SNL. Watching this adorable, empowering show literally moved me to tears. To quote Poehler, "You hear that? That's the sound of something awesome!" In a counter-intuitive marketing move, Mattel's Barbie is the show's sponsor.

Check out this interview with 10 year-old writer Cameron K. - I dare you not to love it!

Monty Python on YouTube

I wouldn't be a card-carrying comedy geek if I didn't get all giddy about the news that Monty Python has entered the digital age with their own YouTube channel, which features a ton of clips, outtakes, and interviews. While they're better known for dressing up as women than working with them, these geniuses (geni?) have influenced every comedian since time immemorial. Just a flesh wound? I fart in your your general direction? The lumberjack song? Every sperm is sacred? Not laughing yet? Then I dare you not to giggle at the Python classic Ministry of Silly Walks:

Cusack it to Me!

The inimitable Joan Cusack has a project in the pipeline for NBC, per The Hollywood Reporter. She is developing a comedy about psychiatry based on her own idea in collaboration with the network and Universal Media Studios. John Markus (from The Larry Sanders Show) will write and executive produce while Cusack produces with Julie Yen.

I loved her recent performance in Nicole Holofcener's Friends With Money, and of course her classic roles in Working Girl and Sixteen Candles. To me, Joan is living proof that being a one-of-a-kind is the best way for funny women to have life-long careers in comedy.

Two New Ladies Join SNL

SNL has jumped to fill the post-election, post-Tina-Fey-moonlighting-as-Sarah-Palin, Amy-Poehler-leaving-to-have-a-baby void by casting two new female LA-based comedians, both of whom will make their debut this Saturday night. The comics are:

21 year-old Abby Elliott, daughter of comedian Chris Elliot, whose list of credits is short but you may have heard her as Hipster Girl on King of the Hill or seen her in The Midnight Show at UCB LA. Here's a reel of her doing a bunch o characters:



Groundlings mainstager Michaela Watkins, who you may have seen on The New Adventures of Old Christine. This clip of her as Arianna Huffington tickled me:



Mazel Tov to both Abby and Michaela - I can't wait to see them both shine!

EconWomen

In the midst of election craziness last week I went to the EconWomen conference, a half-day event put on by the folks behind PaidContent about "the economics of women-centric digital media". I went to hear mainly about what's happening with video in the content-created-specifically-for women-online space and how that might effect or support the mission (and eventual business plan) of Saucy Media. In addition to video, there were panels on advertising, deals and community building, along with Q&A's with folks who publish several leading women's publications both online and off.

To use businessspeak, here's the topline takeaway (er, the stuff I found interesting and relevant presented in a delightfully easy-to-digest format). Lots of business stuff below that I'll try to parse for how it's relevant to Saucy Media's mission of celebrating and creating comedy for, by and about women.

WHY DO WOMEN LOVE THE INTERNET?

Per Wenda Harris Millard, President, Media and Co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the internet is a medium "made for women," who are by nature "interactive." In this recession, women are using it to "seek the comfort of home".

Saucy Says: The "comfort of home" angle may be a bit of a biased perspective - to my mind, recession or not, women are looking for all sorts of things online, from information to entertainment and so much in between.

SELLING ADVERTISING IS THE ONLY WAY PEOPLE ARE MONETIZING ONLINE CONTENT:

Per Millard, Web ad sales will match print magazine ad sales by 2010. Cathie Black, President of Hearst Magazines, said that Hearst makes $100 million in ad sales online annually. The web presents a huge opportunity for intelligent integrated marketing that is context and content specific. But one thing stopping sites from monetizing content, especially video, is that 53% of women found any video advertising disruptive. Advertising is, by nature, intrusive, but when it disrupts your experience it's doing more harm than good.

WHAT'S BLOGGING GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Per Lisa Stone, CEO and Cofounder of BlogHer, BlogHer arose as a response to women who wanted to justify (through income from ad sales) to their husbands and partners why they were spending so much time writing blogs. There are 2 currencies for women who blog: revenue and recognition. Women want to participate online - they love social media and like to be asked for their opinions and contributions (even in the service of evaluating or promoting products).

Saucy Says: I love this idea, that women who create content (like, um, me) are happy to be compensated for their efforts by more than just monetary means. I think this is true for content creators who make video as well for whom hits and comments are almost as good as hard cash money.

WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO WOMEN'S PRINT MAGAZINES?

Per Cathie Black of Hearst, it's hard for magazines to compete with the multimedia nature of the web. Cosmo does well online because it is such a successful, massive brand. Visually-driven print magazines will survive but most text-heavy publications will have to go online

For her part, Tina Brown, Cofounder and Editor in Chief, The Daily Beast (former Editrix of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and the short-lived Talk Magazine) says that she loves the Web's ability to be relevant and responsive up-to-the-minute and that she's "finally found a medium that's commensurate with my attention span!"

Saucy Says: That print magazines are going online and will be looking for more multimedia can only be a good thing for female-oriented comedy. I have long thought that funny videos could be a smart supplement (and potential traffic-driver) for women's magazine sites.

Also, Tina Brown was awesome - sharp and sassy, dressed in all black (wearing a gorgeous buttery leather jacket), I related to her excitement about the possibilities of the web to contribute in real-time to the cultural dialogue and her impatience with the limitations of other media.

SHOULD WOMEN'S CONTENT SITES GO MASS OR NICHE?

Per Dana Settle, Partner, Greycroft Partners, for women's companies, it's probably better to be niche-y and very cost aware in order to get venture capital funding. Many of these women's sites, like SheKnows and TheKnot/The Nest/The Bump, wowOwow, approach content for women via segments that are relevant to "Life Stages": college, single, wedding, home buying, pregnancy, parenting, empty nest, retirement, etc.

Some of the execs asked the question "does personality scale?" They seemed to think that it's not a smart idea to build a site around a single person's voice (like Dooce.com or PerezHilton.com) but rather, magazine-style, to find voices to populate a site and fill in content areas.

Saucy Says: The "Life Stages" conversation was interesting to me and made me think of that punk song by The Godfathers that goes "Birth! School! Work! Death!" I know that women are obsessed, and rightfully so, with whatever's right in front of them in their lives, and that we're more driven by time because of fertility and the limited number of childbearing years we have. But I also think it underestimates women to think that they aren't also united by sensibility and intellectual/cultural interests as well. For a mass audience strategy I think Life Stages is probably right on, but for a niche audience, as I imagine Saucy's will be (educated, affluent, culturally-engaged women 18-34) it seems more like a targeting approach to parody than one to build a business model on. Or maybe I just don't like being reduced to a "stage."

HOW MANY PEOPLE WATCHED TINA FEY'S SARAH PALIN SKETCHES ONLINE?

Tina Fey's Sarah Palin videos exceeded online what the viewership numbers were on TV. These clips spike in popularity within 48 hours, but have a long tail: the 5 week total for all 5 Tina/Sarah vids was that they were screened 40 Million times.

Saucy Says: Fuckin' A.

WHAT ARE WOMEN'S ORIENTED SITES DOING WITH ONLINE VIDEO?

Many publications think about "use cases" when deciding whether or not to use video: if women are looking for entertainment, video is a must. If they're looking for information (e.g. searching), it's optional. But...iVillage has 2000 pieces of evergreen, service-oriented video and CondeNet distributes their "quite beautiful" videos to sites where their audience lives, like Hulu and their channel on YouTube, plus has deals with viewers/devices like Adobe's video viewer, Verizon's VCast mobile and Sony's Bravia.

The Knot finds that its viewers love the branded advertiser-financed video they present, but it's too labor intensive for them to create and it "doesn't scale." UGC wedding videos, which are usually professionally shot, cost little for The Knot to clean up and post, and generally do well. DIY cooking shows and home tours do well on The Nest.

Saucy Says: We're all about entertainment here, and I see a lot of opportunity for all kinds of video, from branded entertainment to service-oriented fare, to use comedy to drive viewership and up the entertainment factor for pieces that might otherwise be dry or precious. I'll bet the most successful UGC fare is either funny or super upscale.

HOW DOES THE iPHONE PLAY INTO ALL OF THIS?

The iPhone has become a tool for transferring site content -- if your iPhone app is gorgeous, it can help drive ad sales across the board. CondeNet's content is on 160,000 iPhones. Also, the geolocational nature of the iPhone can serve specific advertisers, like realtors.

Saucy Says: Women can be funny in any area code!

WHAT ARE WOMEN LOOKING FOR ONLINE IN TERMS OF COMMUNITY?

A community site for women, e.g. wowOwow, Yahoo's Shine, Disney Online, Dooce.com, NY Times' Motherlode blog, must have personality and voice. Women respond to warmth and are looking for connection and an "I know you" vibe. Women's online communities are self-correcting -- editors shouldn't censor anything. The audience itself will enforce appropriateness of communication. Besides, a little controversy online is fun for women.

Saucy Says: Amen. Comedy is great for stoking discussion, creating buzz and building a tone or voice for a site. Plus, ain't nothing like a joke to get people all riled up.

So that's the haps. I know I geek out a bit on this stuff, but I hope you've found it interesting and perhaps a bit inspiring that there is so much room and demand for online content geared to women. It's only a matter of time until it gets Saucy.

Strike.tv is Unleashed!

Strike.TV, which I've written about before as one of the few benefits of writers having down time and creative angst during the WGA strike earlier this year, has come out of beta. That means you too can have the pleasure of watching Kristen Wiig and Aasif Mandvi's adorable tech support romance Global Warming, or Mindy Kaling and Lester Lewis' House Poor or the painful-but-true Joe and Kate written by Kate Purdy. There are these and plenty of other shows already up on the site - some soaps, some dramas and a couple other comedies.

My understanding is that the criteria for participating in Strike.TV, at least at this phase in the game, is that artists be members of the WGA or DGA. This is a bummer for the novices and newbies out there who might want to contribute, but it does tend to guarantee that Strike.TV series have a certain level of polish, and I love to see these pros paving the way for what is sure to be (at a later date to be named once the revenue model is worked out) a game changing era for all writers, directors, producers and other folks who are passionate about the future of scripted programming.

Interesting to me that these funny, charming, independently produced web series seem to have lots of women in key creative roles, and have a different texture from commercial fare - they're no less crisp or professional, but they feel more honest and organic. Kudos to the creative and business minds behind Strike.TV, and chalk this one up to "good things that come from shaking up the status quo."

CEO Peter Hyoguchi's blog post about the genesis of Strike.TV is worth a read for folks interested in independent media and the future of scripted programming - I loved its combination of cynicism and idealism so much I posted the whole thing:

It was just shy of a year ago when I was picketing on a strike line at Disney when a casual idea popped into my head. Hey – why don't us screenwriters create a website where we could produce and stream our own original shows? We could call it "StrikeTV". Why the hell not? Sounds simple and easy to do, right? Well, it's a year later, many dedicated and talented people came together, pooled resources, donated elbow grease and burned the midnight oil. It was far from simple or easy but Strike.TV is here.

In total, Strike.TV has forty new web series created by the writers of The Office, The Daily Show, Die Hard, Robot Chicken, Malcolm in the Middle, The Black Stallion, Star Trek, Top Gun, Farscape, Prairie Home Companion, Newhart, Knight Rider, Friends, General Hospital, The Six Million Dollar Man, Child's Play and many, many more. To date, this is the largest collection of original Hollywood produced content ever created for an Internet audience.

The writer's strike helped but there was much more happening to make Strike.TV possible. 2007 was a perfect storm. New electronic inventions were unleashed setting off the largest tectonic shift Hollywood has ever known. Looking back at the history of motion pictures, there's nothing really to compare it to. Even the advent of sound, color or television are eclipsed. Making movies has always been reserved for the very rich. The term "silver screen" comes from the fact that film is actually made from silver - a precious medal. At a hundred dollars a minute for 35 millimeter film, only the super elite can afford to make movies. Until now.

Working as a screenwriter in the film industry is much like the game of musical chairs. There are only a handful of scripted TV shows in production at any one time, and the same goes for feature films. In fact, only 5% of Hollywood professionals are working at any one time. Most of the time, we are going round in circles trying to find a chair before the music stops. Movies and TV shows cost millions of dollars and there are only so many slots. Until now.

I'm used to spending six months to a year writing a TV pilot or feature spec script, then six months shopping it hoping someone will like it enough to buy it. And even if that happens, that doesn't mean it will get made. Not to mention the notes. And there's a lot of 'em. Your personal story about kids who play Dungeons and Dragons might resemble High School Musical meets Saw by the time you're done with that process. But that's fine cause they most likely won't go into production anyhow. That's because 90% of the screenplays purchased by the studios and networks never get made.

Strike.TV represents the opportunity for creators in Hollywood, many of whom are insanely talented, to tell their stories totally unchanged and unaltered. Their vision exactly realized for the audience. A first in Hollywood history. And because they don't have to make back X amount to pay the huge costs the networks and studios need to cover their vast overhead, these shows can be as odd-ball, strange and as niche as they want to be. They don't have to make millions of dollars. They don't have to appeal to Everyone. A smaller audience who really digs it is enough to support the show. And the coolest thing of all, Strike.TV's shows are totally free. No cable bill. No movie ticket. No video rental charge.

Strike.TV works in a new economic model that is still being tested. Ad-supported entertainment. The reality is there's nothing new about it. Shows in the Golden Age of TV like Kraft Television Theater, Ford Theater, Goodyear Television Playhouse and others were funded directly from Madison Avenue. History repeats itself. Right now, the Internet is where television was before its first hit. Cynics were saying TV is a fad. A gimmick. There's no money to be made in TV. Then Howdy Doody became the first smash hit and a whole economy was created around TV. We now are standing on ground zero of the Golden Age of the Internet. We are pre-Howdy Doody. And of course there will be a hit Internet show. And that show will be a Global phenomenon. A new economy will be created around original web shows. There will be modest niche hits and out-of-the-ballpark mega-hit shows. They're all coming. And who knows, you might be watching them on Strike.TV.

Warmly,
Peter Hyoguchi
10/27/2008

Ok, so that's the manifesto. Go to the site, see the content for yourself and let me know what you think!

P.S. Special thanks to Erica Reitman from Dear Famous Asshole for the heads up on the launch!