Gawker Underminer: From YouTube To Boob
Live from the pages of The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, we invited everyone's favorite frenemy to chime in from time to time on various hot topics. That's right, The Underminer has a Gawker column now. But keep trying! You'll get one someday! You trouper!
[MySpace The Movie] was so slick that it helped land [David] Lehre, a college dropout who still lives with his parents, a deal with Fox to produce his own half-hour late-night television show. Still untitled, it's "an open-format sketch-variety show with music videos, short videos and comedy skits," as he put it. It is being shot here in his hometown near Detroit, and features his friends both in front of and behind the camera. Fox has given him $300,000 to make the pilot. Also part of the deal is a film project that he hopes to start this summer.
You put something up on You Tube? That is so cute! And you got 233 hits. Wow. Awesome. That is such a good outlet for you.
So what's your little vid, you cute uploader? Oh wow, it's a play about a relationship? Uh-huh. With public-domain blues soundtrack? Great.
Oh come on, I'm just teasing. You can still be hip and savvy. Wearing your Brooklyn Industries Hoodie or something.
Wait—it's SEVEN MINUTES?!
No, it's just—that's like very, very rare and unheard-of for a featured or top-viewed video on YouTube. But you should do what feels right, you know?
I'm just so glad I decided a long time ago that I wanted something more out of life? I don't really TRY to become successful. Frankly I just invited magic into my life. And that's basically how I found my passion projects, and my converted barn in Rhinebeck and Viggo. I just let love, my
self-sufficient entertainment career, and Real Estate happen instead of burning with ambition about it?
I mean I hope you aren't trying to get some sort of TV deal out of this YouTube thing right? It's sort of like if you aren't already successful in the entertainment industry by 30, then it's just not really going to happen. But you know that.
Oh my god I'm sorry I can't stop thinking about the seven minutes. Oh hold on a second, someone's calling on my i-phone (yes! I got an advanced prototype. Steve and the Apple guys just wanted to give it to "Early Connector Cultural Czars" to see how it holds up with our lifestyle).
Oh look it's my business partner! The results are in: we just invented the first reliable revenue model for the Web 2.0! I just made 16,000 dollars.
So yeah, the Third Screen wave is just the same as it's always been—young, sexy, straight white boys making money by farting and Mentos and whatever. But it's pretty hilarious, I have to admit, but that's just like my sense of humor. I don't like overthinking. Like Daniel Lehre for example. He is going to be the next Letterman. He's genius. He just gets it.
All I can say if you're trying to break in is don't make something polemical or complainy like you always do.
Watch these young new auteurs. It's so much fun to watch them fool someone into trusting them and then completely destroy their faith in humankind. Here's a simple example, I'm going to trick this guy walking by us on the street. Watch:
Hi there, sir? Hi! What's your name? Jim? My name is Roberta. Nice to meet you!
(Ha ha what an idiot! He thought my name was Roberta!)
You know what is really hot right now? Cyberbullies!
Those cyberbullies at North Babylon High School just cut a deal with Universal to make a full length film. Their antics are now going to become a major motion picture starring Hugh Dancy and Anna Farris! It's going to be groundbreaking. It's sort of Borat meets Jackass meets Bosnian Rape Camp. Their first gag is to go to recently jittery Boston with a dirty bomb and watch the entire city freak out!
And you know those kids who recently scalped a young violin prodigy with her own hair elastic? I'm helping them broker a deal with Bravo. It's going to be a reality-variety-gag type show. Also really groundbreaking. In the first episode they're going to pretend to infect a Sri Lankan village with the rotavirus. LOL!
Maybe you should try something like that? But yeah. You have the timing issue. Hm. Maybe you should try YouTubeSenior. It's a new site for people over the age of 30 who want to share their old, weird, long format lives with each other.
Wait what are you saying? You're speaking so slowly. I need my information sort of more quickly. Can you text it to me?
