Break a Leg

As a beginning actor years ago in San Francisco, I would scour several trade magazines, and eventually had memberships with a few websites once those became fashionable. I would mail, MAIL, headshots and resumes by the handful on a weekly basis, just trying to book a part in a student film or independent production.

This was before YouTube mind you, before digital video, before HD. Students shot on film or basically nothing, and independent filmmaking, while relatively inexpensive, still had a minimum buy-in of a couple thousand dollars for film stock and processing alone, not to mention renting an editing bay at some production house once the film was in the can.

I eventually stopped doing this, all of this running around like a maniac and trying to get work. First of all, it got very very exhausting to be constantly seeking the next job. You also never had any idea who you would be working with and whether or not they would have any idea what they were doing or could contribute anything of value to your career, such as it was.

The point where I was consistenly more knowledgeable about not just my role on set but everybody else's was the point where I finally decided enough was enough, and just stopped blindly submitting to every amateur and student film I came across. At some point in your career, even if nobody has heard of you yet, you have to decide to value yourself or no one else will decide it for you. I just don't have time anymore for student productions or random independent filmmakers off the street.

It sounds snooty and egotistical, but this is the truth: I know I'm the right guy for every job I audition for, but you as a filmmaker are auditioning for me more so than the other way around. Sorry bro.

So fast forward to today. I still do independent stuff (and of course paid professional stuff too), but I don't go onto sets blindly. I do plays that are written and directed by friends and colleagues that I've worked with before or come reccommended by someone whom I've worked with. I do independent projects with the same criteria. I met Yuri through another acquaintance while working on a feature film, and our love knows no bounds today.

Break A Leg is a great project to be involved in, not just because it's well-written and well-produced and has a great cast and crew. It's fun to do not just because we have a rabid fanbase, figuratively and literally, that treat us like gods walking amongst mortals. No, Break A Leg is one of the greatest things to happen to me as an actor because in a weird, non-paying, still working full-time, and bagel-dog eating sort of way, it offers me job security.

Fuck trade publications and websites. It's like I'm doing a real TV show we shoot so damn much, and I wouldn't even have time to do anything else even if I was motivated to do so. So I keep acting, the world is watching, and I don't have to mail (or email these days) one damn headshot. Ever.

Thanks Yuri!

I'd still love to do a film though. Yuri, go write something.

-Drew "Goat Legs" Lanning

Happy Jenday, my friends!

So, there are a lot of times where you have dreams that you can barely remember upon waking.  This is usually what happens to me.  Or like this morning, when I had a dream that my alarm when off and I hit snooze.  Now the LED screen on my Ihome doesn't work very well, so when my eyes opened for real and saw what I though read 8:30, but actually read 7:30 I thought "Oh crap!  I slept through the snooze and I'm gonna be late!"  I jumped out of bed, hurriedly showered, and raced to work.  When I got there I wondered "Where is everybody? I mean it's already...8:10..and we open at 9...."  Yeah, I was an hour early to work.  I took the opportunity to have breakfast at the cafe next door.  But every once in a while I have a dream where I remember every single detail in HD clarity.  The other night I had one of these dreams.  And it wasn't one of those dreams where you show up to school without any pants and then hide in your locker which really turns out to be a closet at the TCBY and the raccoon is trying to get you to sign over Texas so that Batman and Spiderman will stop squabbling over the toaster, and then suddenly you're Wonderwoman.  What, nobody else has that dream?  Anyway, this was a full-on action-adventure-apocalyptic movie with a plot and continuity and everything.  This will be the only written record of it until somebody comes along and steals my dream and makes millions of dollars, all because I was too lazy to do any thing more than blog it.  Anyway, without further ado...Attack of the Mutant Salamanders.

See with the mind's eye rolling hills thickly covered with evergreens.  The sky is cloudy, but the air is warm.  The trees begin to thin and then stop altogether several hundred feet from a wide but shallow stream; more of a bog, really.  On the western bank sits the castle: classic stone crenellation and walls are offset by asymmetric placement of towers and levels. Plus, the clean white asphalt that surrounds the very modern pool near the top of the eastern wall give the place a sort of neo-seudo-feudal look and feel. 

 We (this is the dream-we where the actual participants of being "we" or "us" is somewhat undefined) were staying as guests in the castle, our visit indefinite.  We had signed a contract with the Duke to come under his employ as privateers, and the castle was to become our base of operations, so to speak.  I certainly couldn't complain about the arrangement, as I was currently pool-side with a cool drink in my hand.  There was an umbrella in it.  Things were good.

After a quick sip, I decided it was time for a quick dip.  The pool was designed so that I could swim right up to the castle wall and look out over the stream below.  This was not the highest part of the castle, only about fifty high, so I could clearly see the traps that Scott had set out: glass jars with one-way caps anchored to rocks with a length of rope.  What was he after?  Salamanders.

Scott had learned that the salamanders in the area released a gas that could, in sufficient quantities, be quite explosive.  Scott likes explosives.

While watching the stream drift lazily by, I noticed movement and a flash of bright color.  Emerging from the woods was the Captain, the Duke's right hand man; a very important man; the man that we would be reporting directly to.  He was dressed in bright red pants and shirt, over that wearing blue lacquered breast plate and blue cape.  He forded the stream, and as he passed, he adjusted the placement of the glass traps to be closer to the shore.  Apparently, the Captain knew his salamanders.  He caught my eye and gave me a nod, the proceeded on to the castle's main gate.

I hadn't yet met the Captain, and it suddenly occurred to me that wearing nothing but a pair of swim shorts was not the best way to meet your new boss.  So went into may room and wrapped myself in a towel and put on a shirt that was probably clean.

The inside of the castle was very little like its outside.  The halls and main areas mostly had pale hardwood floors and panelling polished to a shine with white ceilings and track lighting.  Large, overstuffed white couches and love seats and thick, fluffy tan carpeting adorned my living area, positioned to have the best view of the country beyond and the huge flat screen tv that adorned one wall.  The rest of the place was something more like a townhouse than a castle. 

When I emerged from my room the rest of the crew were already greeting the Captain in the foyer.  He seemed very gregarious, laughing loudly and slapping crew members on the back as he shook their hands.  He greeted me with a cheer and nearly crushed my hand as he shook it.  There was some general chit chat amongst the lines of "make yourselves at home" and "let me know if you need anything".  For a man that was supposed to be as powerful as he was, he sure seemed like a likeable guy.

Later, after the Captain left, Scott and I went down to see what his traps had caught.  Most of the jars just held some river water and mud, but in a few, tiny creatures wormed their way through the muck.  They looked more like slugs than salamanders, though the Captain had assured us that salamanders they were.  It seemed the larger they got, the more like salamander they would become.  The largest one I saw was about 2 inches long and had no limbs, but did have two huge eyes on the ends of stalks coming from what one could only assume was its head.  It looked at me, almost plaintively.  Creepy.

Then there was a montage (yes, folks, I had a montage in my dream) of working down in the lab, harvesting salamander gas, injecting the little buggers with various liquids in needles, submitting them to radiation: all in the name of making things go boom.

Flash forwad to several months later: we had build some additions onto the castle: specifically and refrigeration/incubation area that lead directly out to the stream where Scott was harvesting his salamanders from.  It was basically a corridor like you might find in the basement of any given hospital, lined with large refrigerator-looking cases with glass doors so that you could see the specimen inside.  These specimen were extremely grotesque.  They looked like some sort of tumorous bread rising out of their ceramic dishes.  As I proceeded down the hallway, the corruption grew worse.

There were doors along the hallway of increasing security risk deterrence(...is that a phrase?), finally coming to the one that I thought was supposed to lead outside.  Apparently at some point we had also learned how to build doors to other planes of existence, because behind this huge, steel-bolted door was not the regular outside as expected, but some strange lava world where giant beasts (that were decidedly not slug-like at all) breathed fire indiscriminately.  Wrong door. WRONG. DOOR.

I finally found the door to the "real" outside and noticed that the door was actually right up against the waterline, as opposed to several yards from it as originally created.  And now brown sludge started to seep in the door, and not like regular brown sludge does, no.  This brown sludge was doing it on purpose.  It was at this moment that I knew we had gone too far, played with things well beyond our realm of understanding, meddled where mere mortals should never have ventured, and several other clichés.

Another door burst open and a swirl of frost spewed out.  I looked upon the impossible: the room was not a room, but a world of ice.  A cousin of the fire-breathing salamander I had met moments ago stood before me.  Guess what he breathed.  Can you guess?  I bet you can guess.  Yeah.  Friggin' frost breathing mutant salamanders!  In our basement!  And they were getting loose!

At this point we did several things.  First we called the Captain to let him know the situation.  Then we started trying to get everybody out of the castle.  This included the crew, the serving staff, and all the other grounds personnel.  But OF COURSE, just before we could start getting everybody out, helicopters show up and Army guys start repelling in.  And OF COURSE, they have the area quarantined so nobody can get in or out, because with the salamanders' morphic ability, ANYBODY could be one.  Oh, and apparently the door down stairs that lead outside actually lead into another pocket dimension, which is why the door wasn't in the right place.  So now, we're all trapped in the foyer and the only real way in or out is through the foyer.  Which means now we, a meager privateering band, were stuck between killer mutant salamanders and a tight-fisted army.  So we did what any group of impoverished adventurers would do: we fashioned an escape, stole a helicopter, and bombed the hell out of everybody.  And the last thought I had as we sailed off though the smoke was "Hey, I never did finish my drink!"

And that's how I dream.  I had consulted Yuri about possibly doing an episode based on this, but he said giant, mutant, fire-breathing salamanders weren't in the budget.  Which is Yuri-code for "Chad, you're and idiot".

And my eyes feel like banana pudding.  Yes, that is right.  It was an yet another all nighter for the crew, making sure the newest installment of Break a Leg was ready for your hungry, oh so hungry eyes. (and ears too I guess)

So get ready, for more crazy Child Actors, more Larry shooting things, more David... getting mad at stuff, and of course more naked Chase.

So please, sit back and enjoy the first part of the Season Finale of Break a Leg!

And of course, please visit us on YouTube to rate and comment the hell out of us.

Thanks y'all
-Justin 

Hey all,

I'm going to keep this blog up for the rest of the week, as I want everyone pumped and ready for the new episodes, starting on Monday.

Two things that the Press Release below doesn't necessarily mention. The Holiday Inn Express sponsorship is specifically for a show they're producing, called The Smart Show. They did a smaller sponsorship with us for Ep 3, so they're doing a bigger one for this episode. Also, Blip.TV played a huge part in the deal, so thanks to Dina Kaplan and the rest of the folks there!

On to the rest of the blog...

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Over the last few years, the popular web sitcom Break a Leg has given viewers explosions, The Child Actors Guild, an adult-sized Gary Coleman, mimes, unrequited love, sword fights, adultery, ‘triples’ and the introduction of the word Swamblers (Swinger + Gambler) into the American lexicon.   On July 7th, it all comes to an end as Break a Leg unveils the first episode of their much anticipated season finale.

“We’re so thankful to our audience for supporting us as the show has grown,” said Break a Leg co-creator and star Yuri Baranovsky.  “But after all the plot twists and turns, puns and porn, it’s time for a nap.  This definitely isn’t goodbye but more like ‘gone fishing – be back soon.’”

"This is the biggest episode we've ever done. The finale will include everything from a peyote-induced drug trip, to an epic civil to the tragic death of a character. It will have claymation, ghosts, murderous children, and even a guest appearance from one of the members of the Partridge Family. I'll go as far as saying that this is the best produced and highest quality episode of any internet sitcom -- ever." says Yuri's brother and fellow co-creator, Vlad Baranovsky.

But fear not Break a Leg fans, the cast and crew are set to release a DVD, “tentatively and very cleverly titled Volume One” according to Baranovsky, in the coming months.  Additionally, this season of the show is being sponsored by Holiday Inn Express for a four month period, stretching the season into late October.

“These are great examples of how a strong web series can cashify their content,” said Paul Kontonis, the CEO of For Your Imagination, the executive producers of the series.  “Holiday Inn Express recognized how special this show is and we’re confident that the show’s incredibly loyal audience will love the DVD.”

Over the course of the series, the show has attracted nearly four million viewers and has regularly been featured on YouTube as well as on other popular distribution platforms like Blip, Revver and Dailymotion.  A critical darling, Break a Leg has received rave reviews from the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Huffington Post.  “If we could only have gotten into The New York Times and USA Today…” Baranovsky said.

For Your Imagination will continue to manage the development, marketing and advertising and sponsorship sales for Break Leg, starting with its inclusion in the company’s forthcoming comedy video network.  In addition to being the cornerstone property of the new network, the show’s episodes will continue to live on video sharing platforms including YouTube, Blip, DailyMotion, Revver, Metacafe and as a podcast on iTunes.

Hey, guys. If you haven't seen it yet, this week's video is a K? News update -- with interviews from Stan Marley, Casey Dilla Sauz and even a rare bigfoot sighting. It has it all.

You can check it out on our front page or, as per usual, go to YouTube, watch it there, and rate, favorite, subscribe and comment!

Enjoy!

Aside from that, as you've probably gathered, our sponsor is Holiday Inn Express. No, we don't really have to mention them in the videos, but we do think it's much funnier that way. In general, the sponsorship should be fairly unobtrusive (aside from a joke here and there that, again, we do for the hell of it) and, as I said before, it'll stretch out our episode and more content up until the end of October. What happens after?

I honestly don't know. But I will by then, maybe even sooner! So we'll let you know.

Thanks, guys! Enjoy!

-Yuri