The New Show

This was like a couple winters ago (maybe last winter? I dunno. Time is a blur these days.) but I never really said anything about it so I'll write about it now.

I had this idea for a public access show so I asked a friend of mine who just got a new digital video camera if he wanted to make a show with me. The show was called 'The New Show' . The concept was us going around the neighborhood here in Brooklyn and looking for things that are 'new'. Anything new. We'd film it and interview people. Like new store. New construction. New sign on the street. New pothole. New things. New products. New restaurant. Anything we could find that was new to us. Or new to other people. It just had to be new in some way. "What's new?" was the slogan.

So one night in the bitter cold (it seriously was like 10 degrees) around midnight we set out to shoot the pilot for 'The New Show'. (Not sure why we started late night but whatever...)

The first thing we did was interview people as they came out of the local movie theater. The third Matrix movie had just come out that night. New! We had a light for the camera and a microphone on a wire. I stood there asking people what they thought about new movie. There was some awesome responses. People love being on camera for stuff and giving their opinions! I'd be like, 'You wanna comment on the new Matrix?' and people would come over and say crazy stuff. Everything from how bad it sucked all the way through weird bible stuff related to the movies. Great stuff!

Then we went and interviewed this sanitation engineer as he was driving around picking up trash. I asked him if there was anything 'new' in the world of sanitation. The guy told me that recently there was some approval to have three people on the truck. There used to be only two. Three was better. So that was new. I asked him about 'new' equipment but there wasn't any.

Then I stood in front of some new scaffolding and talked about scaffolding. Then there was some new graffiti on a wall and I talked about that.

Then we walked down the street with all the bars and interviewed people standing in the street smoking. The new law had passed that you can't smoke inside anymore and it was the first bitter cold night. So I went to get their new thoughts about standing in the cold. The responses were surprisingly mixed. Probably 50/50. Smokers seemed to appreciate the law half the time. I was like, 'Interesting!'

But then some drunk guy who was standing there thought we were being dicks for some reason and he flicked his lit cigarette butt at me. It bounced off my chest. I surprisingly spoke up with a, 'Yo! What the f**k!' His friends sort of stepped in and professed his drunkerdness. The drunk guy sort of stepped toward me like to fight or whatever- and I thought, 'This is awesome! A new fight! On the new show! What a great pilot! Maybe I'll get a new black eye! Or even a new trip to the hospital! Think of all the new stuff that might be there!' I was actually ready to fight! But then his friends grabbed him and took him into the bar. I was proud of myself for standing up for...umm..  myself. (I think I might have been a little drunk come to think of it...) But I was psyched! This show was gonna rule public access! I couldn't wait to see what we taped!

The next day my friend came over looking depressed. He told me he messed up. I was like, 'What? What!' He told me the light on his camera wasn't...umm... bright enough. Apparently everything came out way dark. I was like, 'Oh no! How dark?!'

He showed me. The answer to that question was 'extremely'. Extremely dark. Barely anything came out! Argh! I was like, 'Oh no! Our pilot! Rooned! Doh!'

I guess it sort of killed the motivation because we never pulled it together to hit the streets again. Oh well. So that's the story of the old New Show that never was...

ok bye!

tOdd