by You might remember NYC-based sketch group Elephant Larry from their original shorts such as the movie trailer for an adaptation of Minesweeper (which won an ECNY award two years ago; they're up again for best sketch group this year).
With pilot season in full swing, the guys — Geoff Haggerty, Stefan Lawrence, Chris Principe, Jeff Solomon, Alexander Zalben — decided to produce and release their own 20-minute presentation. It's called "The WOW," a parody of those "entertainment" programs you see at the cinemas before the coming attractions. So if you want to see their take on Lifetime and Syfy original movies, corporate-sponsored awards and segments, a special behind-the-scenes look at Spider-Man 4, fake ads and more…roll the clip!
I got Elephant Larry member/director Alex Zalben to submit to some serious questioning. You know, like, hey, tell me more about your pilot, please? "We produced and shot The WOW around NYC late last year with a bunch of friends because, honestly, we loved the idea. We have a number of scripts we've written, and ideas we've fleshed out, but this was the first one we not only got excited about, but we also thought, "Hey, we can do this." So we wrote, shot, and edited the thing over the course of a month, on basically no budget."
What were your hopes and dreams for it? "Our plan was always to release the show on the internet in some way, unless it was magically picked up on TV immediately, because we were very proud of it, and also, wanted to show off all the awesome work everyone did. So when it wasn't magically picked up by TV (we may not quite understand how TV works), we put it up on our YouTube channel. Which, we realize, at 21 minutes is a bit longer than most YouTube videos. But so far, we've found that people don't have a problem watching a video that long, and all the feedback has been great!
"Hopefully? We get to do more The WOW. We love the format, and have a bunch more episodes already worked out, as well as some ridiculous ideas of where we'd like to take the show. As is, though, we're putting this pilot episode out there, and want to see what the response is. If people want more The WOW, we'll do it. If they don't, we will kill ourselves. No, just kidding. Maybe."
What do you plan on telling everyone at the ECNYs? "Hello. But only if we see them."
You can see Elephant Larry tonight at Joe's Pub in NYC, as well as Monday, March 8, at the ECNY Awards. In May, they'll be participating in MaxFunCon in California.
