Every Year We Make A Live Movie

****OSCAR SPECIAL SPOILERS AHEAD!!! ******

Happy Monday everyone! I'm happy to report I'm alive and well after last night's Oscar Special! 

It was late last summer that, Eric, Gregg, Katie, and I met at Eric Idle's house (where Katie and her sister Annie housesit) to start talking about season 14 and Oscar Special 11.  With the strike still in effect we were unsure when we could get started but we talked about the potential for getting the show back up on the air at the beginning of the year and running it right into the Oscar Special.  That presented a great opportunity to write the season with the Oscar Special acting as a season finale. Eventually, we landed on the idea of a business convention, heavily inspired by PDB and this other psycho Grand Cardone.  It felt like a fertile, new but not unfamiliar playground for our world. 

It felt good to have a unique, clearly defined concept for what the Oscar Special was going to look like and feel like but we still had to figure out what exactly would happen over the course of the night, how it would tie together all the various storylines and why the hell would Gregg even be there!? 

We had a pretty basic outline started by the end of the year, but lots of open questions to answer. In the new year we'd meet on weekends. Eric was now back on full-time tv show writer's room duties,  Gregg was on the road, and I was in Ohio or Toronto or wherever else acting... but we found time to meet either in person or remotely to talk through it... and talk through it.... and talk through it... 

We also had to figure out how to shoot this the right way - it felt impossible to recreate the look of a convention center on a sound stage so we went scouting at hotels to see if it was possible to just do it that way. We really lucked out on our first scout and met with a very accommodating man named VEGAN (!) who really wanted our business and made it a relatively easy decision. It wasn't cheap but it also wasn't that out of bounds for what a location had been costing us... and it was just... nice! One of the more comfortable and pleasant places to shoot that I can remember.  

With the writing taking shape, we started to know what we needed and so Katie and Annie started putting it all together - reaching out to our cast and crew and locking them in, finding The Empty Bottle players... all the nitty gritty that goes into making it work.  Magically (and a dose of love and loyalty) nearly all of our key players were available and ready to play... (Mark, sadly still stuck up in Toronto on Shadows duty) 

As the weekend approached there was the normal, time-consuming duties of writing and rewriting and problem solving that you'd expect, but it's gotten a little easier over the years as we have a better sense of what to expect - what works and what doesn't and we're just used to the stress, I guess.  

We had the space on Saturday and Sunday so Saturday we could build the set and stage and lighting etc... and pre shoot some stuff.  We had shot the Dodge Charger bit the weekend before and had the Pep Boys stuff in the can from the season 14 shoot, we were coming into the weekend with a good 15-20 minutes of pre-shot stuff. At least we had THAT!  We also got to rehearse with the Empty Bottle band, put together by Alex Jules and Eric Paparozzi (Neil Hamburger arranger) They brought in some serious heavy hitters to make the band a murders row of session folks that T clearly paid big bucks to lock in the win. 

In the video trailer (the brains of the operation) is a mini Tim and Eric Awesome Show reunion - along with Eric N, is Dan Longino, Bill Benz, Joe Stakun, and Santiago Pedroza all manning computers, pulling stills, making edits pulling music and sound effects. It's an insane collection of funny people who GET it.  Vic's at home sending new cuts of his DeNiro "tribute" (Fuck that made me laugh)  Wes is in there making sure the internet and streaming stuff is all good to go...  The big task Saturday night is shooting the Joey fight, which we get after 3 takes - later Katie and I are talking about how well it worked and she says "It's the knockout" and it hits us both how that connects to the season's theme song. I'm shocked and so happy I run out and find Gregg and Eric to tell them the news! Not in a million years would we have consciously written that, but it's just one of many examples of On Cinema Synchronicity!   

Sunday, I get up early, open up our 40-page outline, and do some last-minute cleanup - adding and editing dialogue for the teleprompter, moving some stuff around, and deleting lots of old useless stuff... I'm in a race against the clock as I'm going to Charlie's opening day for baseball in under an hour and then it's straight to the hotel to start the day... I should have done that cleanup work the week before, but I'm a lifelong procrastinator. I really should have just hired a writer's assistant for the week. 

I get into the Hotel and start getting hair and make-up - it's a good time to talk to some of the actors and walk them through the night. Some of them report to Gregg, some come to me, and I talk them through where their characters are at, storywise, emotionally,  tone... Everyone is cool and excited and probably a little nervous as we all are. 

Later, Gregg and I walk out to the main floor and have a bit of fatalist "well, here we go again" conversation and marvel as we look over the scale of everything: "How did we get HERE?"  I survey the background players and pick a few people to play some small parts, we do a very rough rehearsal of the night - really just a cue to cue led by our incredible 1st AD Jason Brown...  We get to nearly every major segment but not ALL of them, so there will be a few moments of the show that get no rehearsal at all. 

The afternoon flies by and suddenly I'm getting final touches and I'm waiting in the wings for the countdown to hit ZERO HOUR! And then we're off! The night whizzes by with some audibles, and some chaos but no actual disasters - Magic happens on more than one occasion...  In general, things just work... 

In a break, we're getting word from the video truck that things are going well and really funny, but on the floor, it feels grim to Gregg and I - the room is (intentionally) dead - the background actors are doing a great job just sitting there like bumps on a log - and it's making it impossible for us to not feel like the whole thing is dying... But I have a chance to pop back to the back of the room and see a monitor and it totally changes things for me -It's so funny when you see how it's being presented. 

I'm not drinking during the Scotch segment but by the time I pull out the Paton, I'm dipping in for a few sips, because I know things are going well and I could loosen up a little bit...  

Before we know it, the night is over and the word from the video truck is we nailed it. Sam, our social media manager comes in and says "Great. There was a little hiccup, but overall great.." I'm like "What hiccup?" Oh, Vimeo went down for a minute...." FUCK!!! 

I check with Katie and Wes and they are disappointed but assure me that everything got back on track very quickly and that it was 100 percent Vimeo's fault, which was infuriating as we had spent a lot of money to ensure a stable night, with tech support and extra bandwidth and all that. Wes says he's got the "receipts" and there will be a very angry call with them today from our time, I assume. 

But overnight, a cutdown version (minus Phil's brilliant trivia) was uploaded and we have a smooth, 2 hr and 50-minute motherfucking live movie now streaming! 

I feel so grateful and proud of the team that works their butts off to make everything so smooth and fun every year. After the dust settled we popped a big jar of peanut M&Ms and I had a waterloo and man we laughed. 

I hope you enjoyed it! Favorite moments?