I made a tweet or two about how much I loved Cool Dad-Official Trailer on [adult swim]. I expressed simply what I wish I knew more about it and amazingly co-director/writer/creator Ariel Gardner sent me a message asking what I wanted, then proceeded to give an excellent Post-Mortem, stating I could contact him if I had follow-up questions.
ME: Everything Ariel, from conception to the final product. How it was devised, why, developing the full on crazy logos, getting the actors, having it be an [adult swim] “infomercial” versus anything else. I’d love an entire post-mortem.
Ariel’s long thread reply:
It’s something we’d been giggling about for years to do as a sketch, but we knew we couldn’t do it without money. Adult swim brought us in to pitch ideas and fortunately they liked that one best, it was our favorite too.
Initially it was built around the idea “Jelly Daddy”, which was in the script as the second beat after cool dad until just before shooting.
We were having trouble executing the concept and then we realized family guy had already done a dad with no bones concept anyway, so we scrapped it, restructured the script with planty daddy
Also the climax of our first draft had to be completely rewritten at the last minute as it was becoming clear it would be unfeasible to shoot with our budget.
The initial idea was the trailers would start coming faster and faster with all sorts of daddy premises until it devolved into sort of This Boy’s Life evil stepdad story until he wishes for his dad back. Would’ve been fun and more chaotic, but I prefer how it turned out
Jerry was our first choice and we were so happy he said yes. He’s a great guy. Andrea we’ve always been a fan of from her work on Stella. Parker the son is someone we’ve been working with for a long time, initially on our web series “fishbowls are definitely my thing”
Nathan the cop is a long time friend, the others were suggested to us by abominable and they were perfect
As to why it was devised, idk, as long as I’ve been alive there’s been so many father-son centric family fantasy comedies, the repetitiveness of these concepts seemed like a fun idea to play with and was right in our wheelhouse to write
It was ambitious but accomplishable and we laughed a lot throughout the whole process. A fun culmination of all the sketch work we did over the years. V grateful adult swim took a shot on it.
And here are the follow up questions I sent. I actually sent them all at once, but for ease of reading have it broken down and edited structure by question/answer where applicable.
ME: When was Cool Dad shot? Jerry has been so focused on his new cop show that I wonder if it was awhile ago? How long was the shoot?
ARIEL: We shot late last year, maybe late October or early November. It was a one day shoot. The original script had a lot more to it and we had to do everything we could to wrap it all in one day.
ME: In terms of structure of something with a more complicated linearity in which it might take a viewer a second to get it, how was the shoot structured for continuity?
ARIEL: Not sure if this question is what you mean, but the shoot was structured by location. We would shoot all the pieces in one part of the house with two cameras then quickly change wardrobe and shoot the next one. (ed note: this is exactly what I meant. Knowing it was shot location to location helps perspective of editing)
ME: Do the fake names of the director, writer, etc. have any significance?
ARIEL: I came up with a list of fake names and those were the ones that happened to be cleared legally. No significance but fun to do. Stan Loriette is something our editor uses a lot apparently. Timothy Michael-Creeksy is my personal favorite.
You gotta watch Cool Dad-Official Trailer from the team of Alex & Ariel Productions starring Jerry O’Connel, Andrea Rosen, Jay Jackson, Jay Lambert and more. It claims to expire July 6th. Hopefully it’ll be uploaded to Youtube or elsewhere. It needs to live forever.
Too Many Cooks blew up all over the internet. If you missed it… well…just relax your brain and sit back for 11 minutes.
I literally became obsessed after. The brainchild of Casper Kelly, co-creator of “Your Pretty Face is Going To Hell!” as well as other great stuff it’s just a creation of insanity. Taking information from their reddit today after this thing literally was “selling like flapjacks”, it was a “shower idea” which only became something when the joke reached Mike Lazzo who even said that not even Andy Kaufman would try to turn this into an 11 minute sketch. The work by editor Paul Painter is just as impressive… taking all that footage and turning it into a cohesive piece of such expert humor which everytime you think my lag or feel too long finds just that right beat to make you stick along for the whole bit is amazing.
The awesome music was by Shawn Coleman and Michael Kohler, and seriously how they were able to create an earworm that just won’t go away is mindblowing. It was meant to be a parody and instead in their spare time they designed something that is UNDENIABLE. I’ve listened to this as much as I’ve watched it… maybe even more and that’s saying something. (It’s saying I’m crazy).
My addiction went much further though. I wanted to know more about the actors. I’m not going to reference all of them, just a select few who had a cool internet presence.
Katie Adkins’ webseries DORMS (she was creator and director)
Katelyn Nacon plays ukele and sings and acts. I’d keep an eye on her. Also if the show becomes a series, she’d be the breakout maybe. I felt she was the breakout in the skit even.
One of the office workers, Marc Farley does his fair share of acting, but this bit from STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW is hilarious.
The female office worker, Karen Cassady is a great stand up and improv and she also like various others in Too many Cooks appeared in Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell.
The girl who doesn’t mind being topless, Victoria Sun has a model mayhem, unsurprisingly. Actually shocked she doesn’t have more of a portfolio, she’s beautiful.
The “nerd” who spies on her and is also a superhero, Will Dove, has a VIMEO channel with some great stuff.
Jennifer Giles, the gun slinging lone female star of C.O.O.K.S., also has her own Youtube with an acting reel and really nice singing clips.
The “cool kid”, Gwydion Lashlee-Walton, has a Youtube as well with various different kinds of videos full of quality comedy/
Interesting enough, the serial killer played by William Tokarsky (who also was in Your Pretty Face) and the cop, Ali Froid (who has a demo reel on IMDB) both appeared in Swamp Murders, but albeit different episodes.
Also, two of the young girls, Morgan Burch and Jayla James appear in the currently in post production, Santa’s Boot Camp, as elves.
There’s SO much more I found in my addiction of discovering who the amazing people who were involved in this project are, but at some point, one must stop because they are getting murdered. I’ll just press this button here though.
I had the excellent opportunity to interview Mike Tyson, as well as producer/writer Hugh Davidson and writer/actress Rachel Ramras of [adult swim]’s MIKE TYSON MYSTERIES which premieres OCTOBER 27th, 2014 at 10:30 PM EST (or your equivalent to that).
Do not miss this one. It is hilarious. I have seen the first two episodes and they are great.
I didn’t have anything NOT miss till 5 PM, so I used today as a chance to further walk the floor and try and accomplish what I could through exploring Artist’s Alley, the rest of the floor and more. Time permitting and length of lines determined a lot.
The place was an utter madhouse.
I had at one point considering trying to get into Speed Dating, but when I saw the extreme line gathered just an hour before, I decided if I’m going to find the love of my life or even just some good, funny, cute dates who likes geekdom and pop-culture it’ll be through everyday life.
It was nice to be able to see some old friends and make some new on this day though. I could be mishmashing days here, but it was great to see folks like Paigey Pumphrey, Laura Lee Gulledge, Reilly Brown, Kathleen David and Peter David, Jamar Nichols, Tim Piotrowski, Jennifer Hayden and many more who I am probably, if not most definitely forgetting but not on purpose.
I helped Peter and Kathleen recreate a scene from X-Men First Class, with an excellent Wolverine cosplayer and Kathleen’s amazing Xavier and Erik puppets.
I also was able to make it over to myplasticheart in The Cult Yard to say hello to my street art buddy Matt Siren and was able to see a few other good friends while there. So that helped the day immensely.
At a certain point my good friend Trish called me and we played phone tag for about a half hour if not more till I found her and fellow buds, the very talented MF Grimm and Infinit Evol. I basically spent the rest of the day with them taking photos of cosplay, chilling, and mainly relaxing.
At 5 PM I rushed over to the panels room to catch the “The Heart, She Holler” panel. This would be the only panel I would make all show, but knowing I had press hours after with the cast and being pretty blind to the show, I had to check it out.
They showed the entire first 12 minute episode which premieres November 6th on Adult Swim and it was one of the funniest things ever. The panel had excellence because of bards back and forth between moderator David Cross and show star Patton Oswalt, but as usual, fan questions were quite silly and didn’t help provide any insight, but they did provide guffaws. John Lee, one of the main dudes at PFFR really handled the fans in a wonderful sardonic style.
I headed over to the press room after wards and despite their obvious exhaustion it was great talking to Kristen Schall, Heather Lawless, John Lee, Patton Oswalt, et. al.
I had decided I wanted to make it to at least one after party. I actually wanted to go into Brooklyn to see Wrona, but I knew if I did that, I’d never make it into the show Sunday and I had a scheduled interview I looked forward to.
Instead I went down to a bar in Alphabet City where there was a street art “battle”, essentially some of the best street artists and toy customizers out there drawing on sheets of paper and then being judged for no actual prize.
Sketchbot, Shiro, Emi Boz, ChrisRWK, El Toro, Josh and more were involved and it was a great way to end my Saturday night, even if it ended way later than I planned.
I made a tweet or two about how much I loved Cool Dad-Official Trailer on [adult swim]. I expressed simply what I wish I knew more about it and amazingly co-director/writer/creator Ariel Gardner sent me a message asking what I wanted, then proceeded to give an excellent Post-Mortem, stating I could contact him if I had follow-up questions.
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I also was able to make it over to myplasticheart in The Cult Yard to say hello to my street art buddy 
