StrikeTV Review: Bumps in the Night
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog wasn’t the only online video project born during the WGA Strike. There’s a whole slew of projects created by professional writers and their colleagues, and they can be found on the website Strike.tv. A portion of the profits from the website benefits entertainment industry professionals impacted by the strike.
One of these recently launched web series is Bumps in the Night, which parodies shows like Ghosthunters and has already received positive reviews. Pink Raygun had the opportunity to interview the creators, Greg Benevent, Emmett Furey, and John Reha.
Can you tell us a little bit about StrikeTV, and how you became involved with it?
EMMETT: StrikeTV is an internet venture that was started towards the end of the Writer’s Strike, one of many online experiments to cut out the middle man of the studio system and facilitate writers using the open distribution network of the internet to make professional-quality, original programming available on the web. I was very active during the strike, and was covering it for ComicBookResources.com, and it was in that capacity that I first became aware of StrikeTV.
GREG: We’d wanted to do an internet show for a while, particularly this idea. Emmett had gone to a meeting about StrikeTV, and he brought the idea of them back to John and I. Signing on with StrikeTV seemed like a good way to throw our support behind the writers who were staking a claim on the frontier of new media. Just our little way of advancing a cause we all very much believe in.
How did you come up with the idea for Bumps in the Night?
GREG: As you might imagine, we came up with the idea for “Bumps in the Night” while watching “Ghost Hunters” in early ’07, around the time “Primeval” came out, starring Dominic Purcell and Orlando Jones battling a serial killer crocodile in Africa.
EMMETT: The thing about “Ghost Hunters” is, not only has it lasted for a number of years, despite never once providing any proof positive of paranormal activity, it’s also Sci-Fi’s highest rated show. But week after week, the monotony of watching ghost investigations that proved inconclusive at best got us to thinking: “What would happen if these guys actually saw a ghost?” And thus was “Bumps in the Night” born.
JOHN: Another big influence on “Bumps in the Night” was Sci-Fi’s “Destination Truth,” which is more about cryptozoology than ghosts. It stars this guy Josh Gates, who isn’t the most serious guy in the world. Now, we’re fans of “Ghost Hunters,” but this guy, he is “our people.” He runs his show like we’d run ours, with his friends, hanging out in different countries, running around in the dark and cracking wise.
Can each of you share a little bit about your backgrounds in film/TV/web videos?
EMMETT: “Bumps in the Night” owes a lot to Drexel University. John, Greg and I all got our undergraduate degrees from there, and Laurel Rankin is a Drexel alumnus as well. Ian Abrams, creator of “Early Edition” and director of Drexel’s Dramatic Writing program, is also one of the creators of the show. As long as I’m giving shout-outs to the cast and crew, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Ry-Heen Kline and our DP Jeff Sobel. I’ve worked with Ry-Heen on a number of projects, including my short film “Origin of Species,” and Jeff was also the DP and editor for the first episode of my other web series, “Fury of Solace” (www.furyofsolace.com). Last but definitely not least is John Leonetti, who shot some of the pilot episode as well, and did a great job editing our hours of footage into the finished product you see on StrikeTV.
JOHN: I played the title character in a little-known web series called lonelygirl15. There was a lot of makeup involved.
Most of my work so far has been in acting. I was a guest star on “How I Met Your Mother,” as a nerdy schlub, and I had smaller roles on the shows “Gilmore Girls” and “Quintuplets.” I also show up for a few seconds in “Live Free or Die Hard” to blow Jason Long’s cover to Bruce Willis.
I’m currently developing another web series with our new director Alethea Root (production designer for “West Bank Story” and Joss Whedon’s “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”). In it, we tackle serious environmental issues and how people can make small changes to save the earth and their money. I don’t want to give too much more away until we’re in production, but it’s going to be hilarious.
GREG: I was an intern on “Enterprise” in 2003, through the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. I have nothing to do with the internet, other than this show and reading too many political blogs. I’m developing a couple scripts with Facilitator Films that hopefully develop into something. (I really can’t use the word “develop” enough, as if these scripts are large, slug-line filled flowers.)
EMMETT: Oh, as long as we’re talking about upcoming projects, I should add that I’m currently developing compromising photos of John and Greg. You know, to keep them in line.
All three of you are credited as writers. How did you divide up the writing? Was it challenging to work as a team?
JOHN: Oh my god, it’s a clusterfuck. We meet, bullshit for a while, and then one of us goes off and writes a script.
GREG: For the first episode, I did the first pass at it. And it was this gargantuan nonsense. Like, it was fifty pages of just wild-ass jokes, one after another. Funny, sure, but so all over the place I barely kept the damn thing in the margins. I learned quickly the difference between “movie” and “internet funny show.”
JOHN: Luckily, Emmett cut it down to about 25 pages, and then I came in to pitch jokes, sweeten the dialogue, and generally bullshit a little more, and then by some miracle there was a completed script for the shoot. Which we generally forgot about when we came up with funnier stuff on set.
EMMETT: I personally don’t have a lot of experience working with writing partners, but it’s been a great experience so far on “Bumps in the Night.” There’s compromises made to be sure, but each of us brings something different to the table, and I truly believe that the show would not have worked as well as it did if any one of us had tried to write it ourselves.
GREG: Even more so than a lot of other projects, writing the first episode was really, for us, establishing a context for all this wackiness to take place in. It became this very exciting kind of “piecemeal” writing, in that, we all wrote various bits to make scenes funnier, as we were filming it. It was pretty cool.
Can you tell us a little bit about the three main characters? How did you come up with each one? Did you tailor each character to your specific acting talents, or did you cast the parts after the fact?
EMMETT: At no point did I think I would hear the terms “acting talent” and “Emmett Furey” in the same sentence (and I’m still not sure that they SHOULD be in the same sentence). If there’s one thing the first episode taught us about my character, it’s that a facial expression is worth a thousand words.
JOHN: I think when we wrote it, we decided to act in it essentially to make it easier to film, so we tailored the characters to ourselves. When we were hashing out the characters, since I have a bit more experience acting, we decided that I should play the skeptic. I’m not sure why that all came about, but we knew we needed one skeptic, and it ended up being me, which is hilarious, because I probably believe in this stuff a lot more then Emmett and Greg do.
GREG: The show really is the three of us hanging out. Like, that’s what I always wanted it to be. Sure, there’s ghosts, and we’re wacky, and all this, but we’re still more or less those same people, if only down an octave or so. What little I’ve seen of this Ghost Hunting stuff really lends itself towards that familiarity. Like, we really do think the main reason that “Ghost Hunters” is so much bigger than the myriad rip-offs is that Jason and Grant (the two dudes) have obviously known each other a long time. Like, you see them together for two minutes, and you can instantly see them in the corner of the pizza joint in high school, debating whether to go to the high school game on Friday night or skip that to check out the abandoned house near the power plant. That’s what we want to make this show. We knew that if we kept it more or less “us” then we’d be able to: film it quickly, keep it funny, and give us confidence to do this. Hell, I hadn’t acted since my senior year of college.
After this four-part episode, will we see more installments? Will Fury of Solace ever make a special appearance?
EMMETT: More episodes of “Bumps in the Night” are definitely in the cards.
GREG: Oh, hell yes. We’re making these damn things until someone makes us stop.
EMMETT: The format may be slightly different (we’re anticipating shorter installments and shorter investigations overall), but NOGHOST (the North Hollywood Ghost Strike Team) won’t be giving up the ghost anytime soon. To keep up to date on new “Bumps in the Night” developments, become a fan on Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/Bumps-in-the-Night/61708014803) and/or MySpace (www.myspace.com/bitn).
GREG: We have a twitter now (this whole technology thing baffles me) where you get a daily tip from us on how to hunt ghosts (www.twitter.com/bumpsinthenight). We’re totally having future episodes where the boys really do encounter a ghost, and werewolves and psychic phenomena, and all that. We want to capture that kind of vibe with this, only through the prism of three guys that live to prove the paranormal, and drink afterwards. (And sometimes before or during.)
JOHN: We’re also going to start a blog so we can see a bit more of what makes our trio tick, and who knows? Maybe we’ll add a member or two eventually. We’ve got a lot planned, and more ideas every day, so until our friends won’t work for free anymore, we’ll be making these!
EMMETT: As to the possibility of a “Fury of Solace” crossover, at this point, there are at least three Emmett Fureys: Emmett the filmmaker, Emmett the ghost hunter and Emmett the supervillain. I’m not sure that the twain shall ever meet, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility of seeing nods in one project to the other. Of course, Laurel also plays a prominent role in both shows, so that muddies the narrative waters even further!
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?
EMMETT: In the words of Fox Mulder, I want to believe, and I don’t discount the possibility of the existence of paranormal phenomena, but I would absolutely require definitive proof before I said anything one way or the other. Interestingly enough, I am not nearly as open-minded as my on-screen counterpart, and may, in actual fact, be the most skeptical of the three of us.
JOHN: I do believe in ghosts, because why not? In human culture, since the beginning of the recorded history, there have been spirits: the benevolent familial spirits of your ancestors, bedeviling spirits, faeries, imps, and the idea of the soul. I feel like there’s too much in the way of mythology and religion to discount them completely. Now, what exactly ghosts are, I don’t know. I’d sure like to meet one and ask. Not the Nahual, though. That is terror.
GREG: I actually do believe in ghosts. I can’t say specifically what it is I do believe, but I will say that I do believe that there are things we don’t know. It’s a big world, and there has to be stuff we don’t know. Once, as a kid I thought I’d seen a ghost. In retrospect, that probably didn’t happen. It’s one of those things that, for me, there’s simply too much out there (in evidence, in people’s experiences, etc.) for absolutely nothing to be going on. Now, is it: somehow, electromagnetic fields taking a “picture” (more or less) of a person in a room, and the “ghost” is just a “mindless” image? Or, is it a creature from the beyond with a mind/intent of its own? That I have no idea. But I do think there’s something. In a way, wouldn’t it be a more unbelievable story if ghosts didn’t exist at all?
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four will air next Tuesday, March 10th
Juliana Weiss-Roessler is an aspiring Television writer in Los Angeles. She currently works as the head of the web content department for the star of an Emmy-nominated reality series. You can read her spec scripts at WeissRoessler.com.
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