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Feb. 3rd, 2004 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oakenguyJust back from a special screening and Q&A for my favorite show, Home Movies, thanks to B.U.'s quirky Communications department!
They started out by showing us a new episode (new in the sense that it won't air on TV for about six months), "Those Bitches Cheated on Me!". Then they had a panel with the producer, Loren Bouchard (who looks about fourteen years old), the art director, Aya Fukuda, H. Jon Benjamin who does the voices for several of the characters (Jason, Coach McGuirk and some others), the writer, Bill Braudis, and...um...a couple others. (Yeah, sue me for focussing most of my attention on the two comedians.)
It was really interesting. Jon Benjamin's natural voice is exactly like McGuirk, and he was the best at working the crowd--he kept tossing out these one-liners that sound rude or mean when I type them, but he had such a lazy, laidback tone that they came across as funny and non-threatening. It might've been the pauses. "So this is B.U.? (pause) UGLY campus. (pause) I mean, just ugly." "So you're in a frat? (pause) Yeah, I could tell before you said so. Sideways baseball cap (pause) chewing gum with your mouth open (pause) You're drunk right now, aren't you?" "Excuse me, hey, that guy beside you...he's totally asleep, isn't he? Asleep or dead."
I asked them whether they'd ever thought of or fantasized about what they'd do for a Home Movies feature film, which caught them completely off guard--finally the writer said, "Um...string several episodes together." Then the producer asked me, with equal amounts of suspicion and greed, if I was a studio executive. I should've said yes. They might've given me a t-shirt.
As it was I got to shake hands with Bill Braudis afterwards and thank him, and we chatted for a minute. He asked me if I was a fan, and I said I was a fan AND a struggling comedy writer, which made being there a double whammy. (Even as I said it I had no idea what it meant). But I managed to get through the entire conversation without nervous laughter or flailing my hands around in spazzy 'spirit fingers', so go me! The exotic art of schmoozing is sloooowly starting to come more naturally.
They started out by showing us a new episode (new in the sense that it won't air on TV for about six months), "Those Bitches Cheated on Me!". Then they had a panel with the producer, Loren Bouchard (who looks about fourteen years old), the art director, Aya Fukuda, H. Jon Benjamin who does the voices for several of the characters (Jason, Coach McGuirk and some others), the writer, Bill Braudis, and...um...a couple others. (Yeah, sue me for focussing most of my attention on the two comedians.)
It was really interesting. Jon Benjamin's natural voice is exactly like McGuirk, and he was the best at working the crowd--he kept tossing out these one-liners that sound rude or mean when I type them, but he had such a lazy, laidback tone that they came across as funny and non-threatening. It might've been the pauses. "So this is B.U.? (pause) UGLY campus. (pause) I mean, just ugly." "So you're in a frat? (pause) Yeah, I could tell before you said so. Sideways baseball cap (pause) chewing gum with your mouth open (pause) You're drunk right now, aren't you?" "Excuse me, hey, that guy beside you...he's totally asleep, isn't he? Asleep or dead."
I asked them whether they'd ever thought of or fantasized about what they'd do for a Home Movies feature film, which caught them completely off guard--finally the writer said, "Um...string several episodes together." Then the producer asked me, with equal amounts of suspicion and greed, if I was a studio executive. I should've said yes. They might've given me a t-shirt.
As it was I got to shake hands with Bill Braudis afterwards and thank him, and we chatted for a minute. He asked me if I was a fan, and I said I was a fan AND a struggling comedy writer, which made being there a double whammy. (Even as I said it I had no idea what it meant). But I managed to get through the entire conversation without nervous laughter or flailing my hands around in spazzy 'spirit fingers', so go me! The exotic art of schmoozing is sloooowly starting to come more naturally.
