Living in a small town can sometimes be a boring experience, but when it’s a town filled with a group of offbeat, unpredictable and just plain hilarious characters, there’s never a dull moment. Such is life in the fictional town of Misery, North Carolina, the setting for the new mockumentary comedy series THE AMERICAN DREAM, created by Chris Moore and Nina Scholl of Schmoore Productions. As of October 1st, the series has unveiled its first of 10 episodes on Blip.TV (see link below), although Moore says that because of continuing post-production, the total could actually come out to 9.
THE AMERICAN DREAM follows the lives and dreams of a group of offbeat individuals with goals just as unique as their personalities: greedy gubernatorial candidate Sandy Duncan-Hines, loving and devoted spouse of the town’s mayor, Will Hines. Sandy, in a desperate attempt to prove she’s got the chops for the state’s top job, hires a documentary crew to film her over the course of a year; a crew that captures not only her efforts to convince voters that she’s the best choice to lead the state – but also her obnoxious personality.
Yet, she’s not the only quirky character viewers will find in the town of Misery. For instance, there’s Sandy’s spoiled and pampered daughters, Trisha and Heidi, each of whom seek to follow in their mother’s footsteps by running in their school’s student government election; the Bobbits, a husband and wife country music duo who spent a brief time on the pop charts, and who now try to launch a comeback; Herbert and Mary Esther Schmidt (he’s a maniacal pastor, she’s a woman who can’t stand to be in crowds, i.e. agoraphobic), Nipsey Van Cartier, a former Broadway star who’s fallen from grace and who now desperately wants to get back into the spotlight, and Frank Mancini, a vicious, controlling ‘stage dad’ who seeks to succeed in show business along with his kids, who comprise a boy band trio known as “The Franks, Etc.”.
Moore and Scholl portray many of the roles listed above, while several other actors seamlessly transition between multiple characters: Kevin Johnson plays the role of Frank’s son, Frank Jr., plus Bubba Bobbit, who left his brother Dick and his wife Lorraine high and dry in Misery as he achieved fame and fortune, and who now wants to get a prize bigger than any gold record: Lorraine.
Mariangelica Velasquez portrays the roles of Donna, Frank’s embattled girlfriend and assistant manager of “The Franks, Etc.”, who wants him to get married rather than pursue his (and his kids’) dreams of pop stardom, and Sister Mary Sledge, a guitar-slinging, drug dealing (allegedly) Catholic nun who’s popular with the students she encounters at the local school. Rounding out the cast is Timothy Thompson as the hard-headed – and blunt teacher, Mr. Pederson.
Moore and Scholl, who first met while studying at the University Of North Carolina School Of The Arts, initially created a series of short films that featured many of the characters that will appear in THE AMERICAN DREAM. The shorts quickly became popular among viewers, and as Moore explains, it was only a matter of time that he and Scholl figured that the wacky characters of Misery, North Carolina would have plenty of comedic mileage. “We thought a series sounded like a lot of fun. I wrote an early outline and then Nina polished it a bit and put in her ideas. I’d say it really only took a few months to really get an official outline going. We never wrote a script, because the entire show is improvised, so it was mostly just about figuring out the main story beats,” he says.
The show’s cast not only features Moore and Scholl in multiple roles, but also includes many of their close friends from their college days. “We usually developed the roles especially for certain performers. I still can’t believe how we got so lucky. I’m madly in love with this cast. They’re each so unique and add something really special to the show,” Moore says. Filming both the teasers for THE AMERICAN DREAM, as well as the series proper, proved to be a whirlwind experience for Moore and Scholl; one that would take them from the city that never sleeps to the twin city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“The very first thing we shot was in New York City for the Nipsey Van Cartier character, who is a faded Broadway star. That was a lot of fun. We did a little shooting in D.C. and then really went to town in Winston-Salem. We spent about 2 months there in the spring. If we weren’t shooting, we were planning what to shoot or cutting together what we just shot. It was pretty fast and furious. Everyone’s schedules were so different that it became difficult to get everybody there at once. Sometimes, we even had to completely re-design scenes when certain performers couldn’t show up. That’s the great thing about improvisation, though. We shot about 6 or 7 days in and around Jackson, Mississippi this summer to finish off the series. The most surprised and exciting thing about doing a show like this is that it keeps evolving as you shoot it. We really didn’t know just exactly how it would end until we got there. It was quite an experience,” Moore recalls.
The heavily improvised nature of THE AMERICAN DREAM is just one factor that sets it apart from most sitcoms produced for the web, but as Moore says, the journey of its eccentric characters will keep viewers hooked. “I think people are going to be very surprised by the journey these characters go on. I’ve never thought it was just a run of the mill comedy. While many of these characters might seem over the top at first, as the show progresses, we start to peel off the layers and you begin to see them as real, raw human beings who, deep down, just want what we all want. They want to be loved, to be noticed, and to feel like they matter. Some of these people do and say terrible things, but, hopefully, by the end of the show, you’ll still feel something for them, even if it’s only pity. Since we played most of these characters, we were always very careful to play it straight. Even though, to us, some of these people might seem strange – deranged even – they really have no idea how they come across. In their minds, they’re perfectly normal.”
THE AMERICAN DREAM is a comedy that proves no matter how big the dream or how small the town, it’s people that count the most; people who pursue their dreams, no matter where they come from. “I think the message is that we’re all a lot more alike that we’d think. I think the idea of the American Dream these days is almost laughable. It seems like it’s getting further and further away from us as a nation. It’s a very modern show in that it reflects who were as a nation right this very moment, but it’s also very timeless. Everyone wants their moment to feel special and like their life is worth something and that what we’ve done has counted for something. I think everyone, at any age, can relate to that.”
(Note: the series is not currently closed-captioned, but Moore hopes to make that feature available to deaf and hard of hearing viewers at some point in the future.)
BLIP.tv: http://blip.tv/theamericandream
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