Are Hollywood and Silicon Valley dating?

by Carlos Menezes

The QuirkStation's latest recruit, Damian, recently burst onto the sacred turf of Gottaquirk (thanks for that Nic) with his blog post on the future of film. Being a bit of a cinephile (please look at the Wiktionary definition before calling the cops on me) I eventually came across this article in the New York Times: Comedy Business Turns to the Web.

It turns out that Will Ferrell, he of Mugatu and Ron Burgundy fame, has recently been thinking along the same lines as Damian. Two months ago he invited a small production crew and a camcorder to the guest-cottage in his Los Angeles home. Included in this crew were Ferrell's production partner, Adam McKay, and McKay's 2-year-old daughter, Pearl.
45 minutes later they had sufficient footage to complete a sketch of Ferrell's down and out tenant being harassed by his foul-mouthed, beer guzzling landlord. The actor playing the landlord - Pearl.

The next step? Post it on Ferrell and McKay's relatively new video site, Funny Or Die.com. The cost? Next to nothing. The rewards? 30 million views in seven weeks. The recently posted outtakes alone have already been watched more than 1.6 million times. A defining feature of Funny or Die is that, like YouTube, users vote for videos that they like. Unlike YouTube however those that aren't deemed to be funny “die” and are condemned to the site's crypt. Those that are get to stick around.

As actor Nick Thune puts it, “The thing about YouTube is that it is so broad. If Will Ferrell is there, it must be good.” (Thune currently has one of the most popular submissions on the site – a stand-up routine surrounding the trials and tribulations of masturbating.) This filtering out of mediocrity really gives actors and comics free reign to strut their wares.

This is not to say that Funny or Die is an elitist haven for Hollywood's snobbish community. Ferrell seems intent on the site remaining Web 2.0 kosher. When a user posted a video making fun of Alec Bladwin's paternal misadventures, McKay and Ferrel initially took the submission down on account of Baldwin being their friend. Soon after, however, it was back up again with the explanation that they didn't want to set a precedent for censorship. No hate crimes. No porn. For everything else it's up to the users' votes to decide what stays or goes.

The success so far of the site has prompted Ferrell's company, Sequoia and Gary Sanchez Productions, to pour an extra few million dollars into the site.
Currently Funny or Die seems to be occupying an attractive space that is away from both the diluted content of YouTube and the myopic, restricting presence of Hollywood studio executives. High quality videos and recognizable personalities make the site a good launching platform for both budding new stars and those already established ones that are seeking a lucrative new creative outlet.

2007/06/04 | permalink | comments (0) | trackbacks (0)

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