From the makers of ’The Golden Girls’, ‘Roseanne’ and ‘Gilmore Girls’ comes a new web series …
Saturday, Aug. 1, 1981, a day of no particular import, a music television station was launched called MTV that played music videos around the clock. The show was hosted my music video jockeys, or VJs, and in the blink of an eye, a generation of teenagers were hooked. Many critics blasted MTV and blamed them for shortening the attention spans of what were then ‘today’s youths.’ But for the gen xers who grew up during this time, it was PokemonGo on steroids. New musical acts, a second British Invasion and a 10 year stretch of visual eye candy eventually gave way to reality programming while fewer and fewer music videos were played. But the cultural cache it lent to so much musical talent was undeniable.
April 23, 2005, ironically a Saturday too, Jawed Karim posted the very first video on a new network, the only one for the digital age, titled “Me at the zoo.” It appeared on a site Karim had co-founded called YouTube and it would ignite the same cultural enthusiasm for millennials that MTV had done nearly a quarter of a century earlier. With the tagline “Broadcast yourself,” YouTube was an Internet platform that allowed anyone to upload videos of anything, save porn (though there were those that tried). And in those nascent years, people answered the call with everything from cats playing on keyboards to original songs – and I’m being purposefully understated here – like “Chocolate Rain” to some unknown named Chris Crocker who pleaded with the world to just “leave Britney alone.”
Now in its second decade, YouTube, owned by Google, has transmogrified into a force for social change. But it has also opened the door, like MTV did for many unknown artists in its heyday, for artists, writers, actors and others, to develop mini-shows in any format, any length and, seemingly, any frequency. Despite some 400 programs available on television, cable and other players that each beg for our every shrinking piece of the content pie, there is still a need to tell stories that reflect the way we live our lives now and not have it filtered through a still predominantly white, male, heterosexual lens.
One of those programs is Skirtchasers. The series, which had a five-series limited run in late May and early June, is the story of Robyn, freshly single after a breakup with her long-time girlfriend the day before their wedding. As Robyn deals with mending her broken heart, she realizes her issues delve further than her issues with commitment; they go way back, to her father. After the split of her parents, her best-selling novelist father, remarried a much younger woman, and became a father again, abandoning Robyn.
If the plotline sounds familiar, it should. Themes of lost love, hurt, grief and abandonment are staples of episodic television content. But what makes Skirtchasers novel, perhaps groundbreaking, is the sheer talent of its ensemble. The show stars Elizabeth Keener (The L Word), Meredith Baxter (Family Ties, Days of Our Lives) and Barry Bostwick (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Spin City), is directed mainly by Amanda Bearse (Married With Children, Fright Night) and written by James Berg and Stan Zimmerman (The Golden Girls, Roseanne, Gilmore Girls).
So what drew some of Hollywood’s A-list talent in? “The honesty of the character relationship between the daughter and the dad, the long road ahead for them to interact in a unique and fun way,” Barry Bostwick admitted. “The potential stories seemed original and inspiring [and] the pedigree of those involved and their connection to the LGBT community.” Asked if there were parallels to the scripts for Spin City, Bostwick added, “I just think both were smart and clever and funny and well-cast.”
Meredith Baxter agreed. “The biggest attraction of Skirtchasers was the incredibly sharp writing. You know, if it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage. I’m a sucker for seriously flawed characters and Skirtchasers is full of more self-centered folks than I’ve experienced in one setting. Glorious. Network television in the past didn’t have much capacity to embrace such characters, although Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox on Family Ties) was a good start.”
With all this praise on the writing, I was interested to learn more about what drew some of the biggest lights in television writing to a project that lacked the sort of marketing prowess a television network could provide. “Hopefully we can put an imprint on the world of web series,” confesses Stan Zimmerman. “But we actually wrote Skirtchasers as a spec network pilot. While many producers we gave it to loved the writing and felt they had never seen this complicated father/daughter relationship before on TV, not one would take it to a network. They told us that the networks had already bought their one gay sitcom. This was the year of The New Normal (a short-lived comedy from Ryan Murphy). We feel very fortunate that Tello Films took a chance with us and we’re hoping to sell this show as a full half hour now that the networks (and cable outlets) can see it. It’s not just another script sitting in someone’s inbox on their computer.”
Zimmerman joked, when asked about what it was like writing female characters. “I love writing women characters. I find women much more verbal and available with their emotions than men. No wonder I’m single. Plus, I grew up in a house with a very vocal mother, sister and grandmother. I observe and steal from them constantly. I hope they’re not reading this. Or their lawyers.”
For director Amanda Bearse, it was a labor of love. One of her goals was to bring about the comedic elements of an already formidable script. So I asked her about the specifics of directing comedy. “Directing is often a progression that many actors make because we do understand the process from that point of view, and know the vocabulary, both verbally and instinctively. I went on to direct sketch comedy, too, and directed for years on Mad TV as well as creating the sketch comedy show for LOGO called, The Big Gay Sketch Show, which I also produced. Directing and producing on Skirtchasers was a wonderful experience, not only reuniting with many TV comedy folks along my career path, but also getting to work with other TV veterans like Barry Bostwick and Meredith Baxter.”
But it was star Elizabeth Keener who seemed to thread the needle when discussing her character and whether or not people would relate to her. “We will love this character because she’s flawed and knows it. And wants to fix it. Your question is would I, Elizabeth Keener, have reacted like that … cavalierly? Two things … first, Robyn is a character in a show on a page of a script … she depicts a particular character that must act like she has it altogether and doesn’t want people to think she doesn’t. I, and let’s be real, hope most, if not all, people would not respond like that. It’s cold, icy even. And she even blames her fiancé for reading the emails. But she’s flawed and doesn’t get how she hurts people. That’s the beauty and hilarity of this show. You’ll get to see her live and push through these flaws and hopefully learn to love. And her father the same! Love each other and genuinely love someone else.”
Beautiful and hilarious, to be sure.
Be sure to check on the trailers for Skirtchasers on TelloFilms.com.
