Orphanette – Exposition Studios Session
Well, this is kind of a hard post to write. I’m posting something that I’m really proud of, and really feel blessed to be a part of, but am unfortunately walking away from. The video you see above is sort of the culmination of the band that I got to play the drums for these past two years in Los Angeles – a video that captures us at our tightest and shows you what we had to offer in terms of originality and dynamic as a band. Ichiro, Brandon (or Dregs, as he often goes by) and Alex (who unfortunately had to leave the band last May) were some of the greatest musicians I’ve ever met and some of the coolest, most genuine and talented guys I’ve ever had the chance of working with. I’m 30 years old now and for my entire life I’ve been trying to put a band together. If you’ve ever tried to do that yourself, you’ll know how hard that is. It’s really hard to find people who play instruments that are cool, reliable people, and even harder to find people that you just have a natural, musical chemistry with. The four of us just clicked and found our thing, and it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. It was a life-long dream to one day be in a band and play live shows, and with Orphanette I not only got to do that, but I got to have a lot of fun doing that and grow as a musician, an artist, and a person.
Because I got a great opportunity for work that is just a bit too far from Los Angeles, I have to say goodbye to Orphanette. It sucks, but I can’t thank the other guys enough and I’m really happy we have a lot of things – including this video – that we were able to make and be proud of together.
Hope you enjoy it too. If you do, be a doll and share it.
Videos from Orphanette Show (The TRiP) 7.25.14
Hello, people who accidentally stumbled across this page while looking for pornography. My band, Orphanette, for whom I play the drums, recently played a show at The TRiP in Santa Monica. So here are some videos from that show. Watch them?
Yeah, so I know you can’t really see us in them that well, but that’s us playing the songs! Anyway, if you like them, come watch our next show: The TRiP Pre-Halloween Show on 10.30.14. We’re headlining! And it’s free!
Also, keep up with any news from Orphanette or dogwater (my other music project) on the new music section of my page which can be found here.
I’m not feeling particularly creative right now, so that’s it.
Love,
Chris
Well, We Did It. We Made Our Goal. Right Hand Man is Coming.
Well, this is it. After today, I’m finished annoying you about Right Hand Man. After today, I go back to annoying you with funny-to-probably-only-me-at-that-particular-moment Twitter posts and the occasional stupid poll or Buzzfeed article that momentarily made me feel better about myself until making me feel like an asshole for wasting five minutes of my life.
For those of you who have not hidden me from your news feeds because I was annoying the hell out of you, I thank you whole-heartedly. For those of you who have contributed to and shared the campaign, I thank you more than whole-heartedly, and apologize for not thinking of a better way of saying that than “more than whole-heartedly.” As you probably know, we have already achieved our goal level of funding to produce this web series. Actually, we’ve received just a little bit more than we need, so we have a little bit of cushion to take chances (though not huge chances) and accommodate unexpected challenges, which is amazing. I can’t tell you right now how excited I am for what’s to come. I’ve never spent more than $1,000 on a project that I’ve filmed before, and that was only because I had to shoot that one on actual film. To me, $15,000 opens a whole new level of filmmaking. Consider the pieces you saw during this Indiegogo campaign – the initial video, all of the shorts, the recuts. I would be very surprised if we spent more than $500 total on those pieces. We pulled some favors and got some free equipment, a location, and several other things without spending any money, but on a mere $500, we made 13 videos and did countless other things that we’re pretty proud of.
But they’re nothing compared to this series we’ve been working on for the past six to eight months.
Most of the Right Hand Man shorts you saw were created in reaction – we pretty much never really planned to do them until after we launched the campaign. Once the campaign went live and we truly realized exactly how much money we were asking for – which to any of us is an insane amount of money because we’re all pretty low in the tax brackets right about now – we started thinking of any way possible to be creative and keep this campaign fresh and continuously present to possible donors. That’s where Will’s hilarious haiku’s came from, and that’s where the Hand Job campaign (or Right Hand Man Branded Photos) came from – it was all done in reaction. With these videos – and the idea to keep doing them – we had nothing in the bank to execute at the beginning of this. No ideas, no premises, nothing written. So we would juggle six busy, steadily employed writers’ schedules, figure out when we could meet to develop ideas (which was usually late on Friday nights), then shoot them in mornings on the weekends before Michael Mejia had to clock in for his night shift at Starbucks. We needed to make them to keep putting fresh content out there and stay visible in the public eye. Conception to post in three to four frequently interrupted days.
Why am I telling you this? I’m telling you this to better anticipate what this series is going to be. Altogether, Right Hand Man the series is about 60 pages long. We spent 6 months writing and developing that. Every episode went through extensive rewrites. We broke and re-broke the story umpteen times. I have personally storyboarded every frame of the first episode. Consider that amount of forethought and preparation in combination with any shred of creativity in our campaign videos.
And now, thanks to you, we have $15,000 to play with.
I really hope this doesn’t sound like bragging, because that is not my intention. And I really hope I don’t sound like I’m downplaying the pride I or we have in the shorts we’ve created, because that’s also not my intention. My intention here is to assure you that you’ve made an investment. A good investment. You’ve invested in the futures of six people who worked their asses off to make something they believe in. Something vulgar. Something profane. Something irreverent. But something that was made with care and really has a lot of heart in it, and that much I hope you’ll enjoy no matter who you are.
So thank you. Sincerely, thank you more than I can possibly put into words. You can’t see it, but I’m crying right now. Mostly because I’m listening to “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley (gets me every time), but some of those tears are in reaction to the amazing opportunity my friends and I have just been given thanks to the generosity of our friends and family, and we will not lose sight of how privileged we are to have this opportunity, and we will continue to work harder than we ever have before, because you’ve invested in us and now we’ve got the weight of that responsibility on our shoulders.
So again, in case that wasn’t clear: THANK YOU.
I’d also like to thank, individually and collectively, each of my five co-writers and colleagues here for putting up with me through all of this and working with me to create something greater than anything I’ve ever been a part of before. Whether it have been by gaining the respect of each of them or by some level of bullying on my part (the answer I’m sure – and hope – is somewhere in between), I have been bestowed the honor by these five amazing individuals to sort of steer the ship through this whole process and act as “showrunner.” And that means the world to me, that through all of this, these five people have continuously let me work and create among them despite my ENORMOUS flaws and honestly often-bat-shit-insane mind.
But before I go any further, Right Hand Man only is what it is because of all six of us working together. I only bring this point up in public to thank my colleagues for their tolerance and trust in me. Actually, that’s not true. There’s a certain amount of ego wrapped up in there that I can’t control and that I have to appease or it will drive me crazy. That’s shitty, but it’s honest, and it’s true, and I’d feel like more of a piece of shit if I didn’t admit that. It’s a part of me I’m certainly ashamed of and would like to work to correct, but it’s there and I can’t deny it.
Anyway, to continue the ship metaphor, everyone had stations to man, I just got to stand at the steering wheel. We were all together blowing the wind into the sails. But what’s been the engine of it for me, what’s been the thing keeping me personally working hard and wanting to see this project through, is at the end of the day, I wanted to make something amazing with people I love. I love this material. I love this story. I love the work we have done. And I love these five people I’ve created it with like family, because that’s what they’ve become to me. And I really hope this love and level of heart is apparent in the final product we’ll be giving you within the next 6 months to a year depending on various factors.
Shit, I got distracted and wrapped up in my own stupid head. Personal thank you’s (in alphabetical order).
Donald Francis William Buckingham III:
What do I say to Will? He’s the loudest, most unapologetically ignorant man I’ve ever met and I love him for that. But he’s more than that. Will is a little boy dressed up in his father’s clothing smoking a cigarette, sipping a glass of Scotch, and almost pulling it off, but we all know that behind that cigarette smoke and whiskey smell, there’s a little boy there with a big old heart. And he’s pretty damned funny and unique. So funny I wanted to make a web series about him.
Michael Eugene Butler:
Not many people know this, but Mike Butler is probably one of the most genuine people on the planet. This dude listens to people – pretty much every word a person says – processes it objectively, and analyzes it with an amazing and empathetic mind that a writer needs. He’s also a HILARIOUS actor, and none of us knew that because he’s the amazing kind of guy who never needs to tell you that he is. You just find out one day when you see him act. And those the best kind of guys in my book. Mike Butler has also been the guy who continuously throws out the weirdest, most outside-the-box idea you can think of over and over again, and although not all of them stick, he’s always the one who throws out something so out there and original that it solves the puzzle we’ve created for ourselves.
Amy Paulette Hartman:
Amy gets shit done. Amy makes shit happen. Amy has a mind for logistics, networking, and figuring out how to produce something that is nothing short of vital to the successes we’ve had as a team. We needed a place to meet because stubborn-ass, easily-distracted Chris refused to work in somebody’s apartment? Amy made that happen. We needed gear to shoot the Indiegogo video? Boom, Amy’s got it locked down before we even knew what we needed. She’s the best producer we could hope for and her talents were essential to making this happen. She’s also responsible for some of the beautiful photography in our shorts. Beyond that, she is my room-mate and puts up every single fart/laugh combo that I have suffered her through, and that deserves more thanks than I can put into words.
Matthew Duncan McRee:
Have you ever met this guy? Matt McRee is possibly the most likable guy you can imagine. He’s literally always in a good mood, making you laugh, and solving problems you didn’t even know you had. Oh, you forgot to eat before the meeting? Boom, Matt’s ordering food for the team. Oh, nobody’s been writing down any of the ideas we’ve been talking about for the last three hours? No, dumb ass. Of course Matt has. He’s on that shit. He’s always on that shit. Oh, you didn’t think about how to make a joke or story beat fit into the actual rhythm/sequence of the story? Boom, Matt just writes it right in his episode and you don’t have to worry about it. And for the record, Matt was the man responsible for what I consider to be the best and most entertaining copy I’ve ever read on an IndieGogo page. It’s like he just loved writing every word of it as much as you loved reading it.
Michael J. Mejia:
I love Michael Mejia. He’s like a diva you always want to hug. He’s the only man I know that can make you laugh about his misfortunes and feel good about them with him at the same time. He’s one of the most honest and real people I can even imagine, and I think the world is going to fall in love with him when they see he and his silly hand going on crazy adventures. Just so that everyone knows, those shorts came together so quickly we didn’t really have time to script them. 50-60% of the dialogue in those things came from an amazing improvisor and performer named Michael Mejia after he had been given little time to prepare and probably not quite-enough-information. To be honest, at the beginning of this, we hadn’t seen Michael doing too much of the man and hand act, but I think these videos go to show that he took to it quick and he’s only going to get better. If there’s anyone who can pull of such an odd and physical comedic performance, it’s the lovable Michael J. Mejia.
Well, this is quite the lengthy post that probably no one’s going to read isn’t it? Yes, it is. But this is a big moment in the life of a mumbling, lanky, awkward, alcoholic writer/”comedian”‘s life so he had to say something. He had to put it into words. He hopes you’ve enjoyed some of them, but more importantly he hopes you will remember this project is now entering the next step and will soon be shot, then edited, then ready for you to enjoy. And he hopes you stick with he and his friends along the way, because he really thinks you’ll enjoy the ride and he would like nothing more than to share a few laughs and a good story with you, so that you can then go share them with the people you love.
Okay, he’ll shut up now.
Thanks again.
-Chris
P.S. In case you haven’t seen them yet, here’s the rest of the Right Hand Man shorts. Enjoy!
Right Hand Man – Short No. 7 “Jenga” from Stray Dog Productions on Vimeo.
Right Hand Man – Short No. 8 “Idle Hand” from Stray Dog Productions on Vimeo.
Right Hand Man – Short No. 9 “Coach Will” from Stray Dog Productions on Vimeo.
Right Hand Man – Short No. 10 “Basic Bitch” from Stray Dog Productions on Vimeo.
Right Hand Man – Short No. 11 “Designated Driver” from Stray Dog Productions on Vimeo.
The Candle (Edited) & More Right Hand Man
Hi, guys. So, I don’t know how many of you are familiar with this video, but I posted it a few years ago after my performance in it was well-received and I’m pretty proud of it. It really was a landmark moment in defining my voice as an artist, storyteller and comedian. One thing I have become less proud of over the years, however, is the fact that I named the girl that it was about in the video.
That, I’m kind of ashamed of.
I’m ashamed because I kind of publicly humiliated her without realizing it, and it was selfish and stupid. She broke my heart, and I thought the best way to get back at her was to tell this story and let out a little bit of anger for my own sake, but in retrospect, that wasn’t cool. So, I’ve removed the original video, cut her name out of it, and reposted this version where she is not named. If that girl is reading this, I hope she can forgive me and that maybe one day we can be friends again.
Anyway, enough of that sappy stuff. I also wanted to just make sure everyone was up-to-date on all of the cool Right Hand Man stuff we’ve been making, so I’m posting all of the shorts we’ve made so far below this text (minus the first one which I’ve already posted). Hope you enjoy them, and if you haven’t contributed to our IndieGogo campaign, please consider donating at http://igg.me/at/RightHandMan (only 8 days left!)
Right Hand Man – Short No. 2 “Potato Salad” from Stray Dog Productions on Vimeo.
Right Hand Man – Short No. 3 “Shadow Puppets” from Stray Dog Productions on Vimeo.
Right Hand Man – Short No. 5 “Cookie Monster” from Stray Dog Productions on Vimeo.
Right Hand Man – Short No. 6 “Wake Up” from Stray Dog Productions on Vimeo.
And there’s two more coming later this week!
Right Hand Man
Hello. Chris Rebbert here. Thanks for joining me. I wanted to take some time today to talk about a very special project I’ve been involved with called Right Hand Man.
What’s a Right Hand Man, you ask? First of all, have some patience. You’re six short sentences into this blog post and you’re already demanding answers? Jesus, let me take some time to ease you into things, to entice you. I was trying to be formal and polite by introducing myself. Oh, “It’s the 21st century,” you say, and you have neither the time nor the attention span to be enticed, to read a self-indulging blog post about a rookie project with no known talent attached to it. You need a picture – an animated gif if possible, or a sound byte or a video. Alright, fine. Here’s a video so you can have your quick laugh. But do me a favor, if you like it, please come back and read the rest of this article.
Funny, right? We really hope you think so. It’s stupid, and kind of cheap, but it makes us laugh. And, well, that’s just a taste of what’s to come.
So let me really tell you about Right Hand Man. RHM is a six episode comedy web series about the unlikely friendship that emerges between two young men named Michael and Will. Michael (portrayed by Michael J. Mejia) describes himself pretty accurately by saying he is “part Tina Fey, part Beyoncé and part wookie.” He’s a hefty but lovable gay Chicano man having trouble finding love in the highly sexualized and superficial Los Angeles dating scene. One desperate night he decides to take his efforts to the next level by swallowing some artificial courage (drugs and alcohol) and just going for it in a hands-on dance club, grabbing every body part in sight. His ambitious tactics bring him some new friends, but also earn him some dangerous enemies, one of whom curses his grabby right hand to be possessed by the spirit of Will (voiced by D.F.W. Buckingham), a wise-cracking, annoying, and 80’s-movie-loving former frat boy slash hopeless [straight] romantic.
The series follows them as they try and coexist long enough to piece together what happened so they can reverse the curse and get things back to normal, but it hopefully goes a little further than that. Hopefully – if we’ve done our jobs – you’re watching an odd little friendship grow between a man and his hand.
Look, it may seem like a silly idea, but we really worked hard on this. We initially got the idea while we were joking around at a Tisch Asia party last summer, but it quickly snowballed into something we couldn’t stop talking about. We (Will Buckingham, Mike Butler, Amy Hartman, Matt McRee, Michael Mejia and myself) kept having more and more ideas until we knew we had to do something with it. It was one of those ideas that’s just got some natural momentum to it, like there’s just something in the idea that makes it the gift that keeps on giving. The momentum increased even further when the idea to cast Michael J. Mejia in the lead role came about. He was the only one of us who – at the time – had any real acting clout, and he’s such a great, vibrant and physical person/performer that the whole series just developed around him. And who’s the polar opposite of Michael Mejia? Well, we had him too. That’s our good friend D.F.W. “Will” Buckingham. He’s everyone’s favorite loud-mouthed, idiosyncratic, too-dumb-to-be-offensive man-boy with very distinct tastes. The two of them couldn’t be any further apart and both on paper and in real life they make a great odd couple you really have to experience to believe.
Once we got our players in order, we sat around and came up with some fantastic supporting characters. First, there’s Leezo (tentatively portrayed by our good friend Nevil Jackson), a suave homosexual man’s man with an answer for everything. Then, there’s Janet (casting still in process), Michael’s clingy next door neighbor who gloms onto Michael’s good nature and is obsessed with the idea of being his “fag hag.” And finally, there’s Silvanus (portrayed by yours truly, Chris Rebbert), an exotic man of mysterious heritage who is slowly and painfully discovering his homosexuality and attempting to wrestle its existence with his strict, deeply-entrenched religious beliefs. There’s also a dog, but I don’t want to give too much away.
Anyway, once we had our characters and the general dramatic situation, we took some time to sit back and outline a journey for these players, one where all five of our main cast members would see themselves completing some sort of arc and remain relevant to the story. Every time we felt like we were coming up against something predictable, we’d throw a Right Hand Man style wrench in the spokes and mix things up with something unique that would help expand this cartoonish and magical world. We spent weeks planning this out, then, when the time came, we split apart and wrote our respective episodes. But that wasn’t the end. We kept getting back together and re-wrote and re-wrote until everything was as tight as possible. As far as we see, there’s not a single opportunity for a joke that’s wasted and not a plot hole to be found in this series of scripts. All of our emotional beats are there and we butt up against some great comedy set pieces that can only exist in this world we’ve created together.
And now the time has come that we want to make this thing and share it with the world. That’s where you come in. First off, check this video:
That’s the pitch video we put together for our IndieGogo campaign. We put about 1/4 of the time and preparation into that one as we did the actual series, and you can see what we were able to achieve with just that. If you followed the link at the end of the video, it would have taken you to our IndieGogo page, where you could see our whole video gallery (including the g-rated cut of the IndieGogo video, as well as a few other shorts like the one at the top of the article), and you can also see all of the love and support we’ve received so far. It’s amazing to me that as of right now, 3:40pm on Thursday, July 31 2014 we’ve received $6,426 towards our $15,000 goal and I and the rest of the Right Hand Man team can’t thank our contributors enough for the generous amount of money they have given.
But we still have a long way to go. $15,000 may seem like an arbitrary, nice-and-round number that we just pulled off of the top of our heads, but shooting a web series (or anything independent) in Los Angeles costs money, and this is a super ambitious project for such a small budget. We’ve got a lot to pay for: locations, costumes, props, meals for the crew, camera equipment, lighting equipment, sound equipment, post-production (sound work, editing, color correction, special effects, possible animation), and so much more it’s ridiculous. We’re shooting 60 pages of material here. That’s almost as long as a feature-length film.
Before I go any further, I hope I don’t sound like I’m begging. I hope I don’t seem ungrateful for the money we’ve already gotten or the support we’ve received, I just really believe in this project. While working on this project I’ve come to realize that the other five people involved in this are some of the best, most hard-working, talented people I’ve ever met, as well as some of the best friends I’ve ever had. They’ve entrusted me with the role of showrunner, but I mean it when I say that this project belongs to all of us. More than anything I want to raise that money because my good friends here deserve to have their hard work and great talents rewarded, and I really think that if we can make this thing right, we’ll create something that a lot of people can enjoy and enjoy for free. What we’re trying to do here is essentially make a free television show of ten minute episodes and put it out there for the world to enjoy, then if they want to see what else we have to offer, hopefully we can make a career out of it.
So again, I really want this project to succeed, because my friends deserve it. If you donate to our cause, you will essentially be investing in us as filmmakers and people. The six of us have taken some pretty big risks and dedicated a lot of time to Right Hand Man, and now we’re asking you to just help us along on our journey. If you do, we [probably] will never forget you, and some time next year when Right Hand Man takes the Internet by storm, you’ll be able to say that you helped it happen.
Until next time, love and stuff.
-Chris
Update
Hi there. It’s been awhile because a) I’m busy, and I’ve got more important things to do than update my website (I don’t), and b) seriously, I have been busy. In a good way.
When I’m not PA’ing my way across Hollywood for money, I’m making stuff, and that’s good, because there’s about to be a lot coming at you. For instance, I just made this:
Okay, maybe that doesn’t warrant a proper updates, but I swear I worked on it for upwards of two hours. Rigorously.
Anyway, there’s more shit, so calm down.
In the past year, two short films I’ve written have been produced and started to see the world on the film festival circuit. The first is Godverdomme Coffee, directed by Eric Elofson (which I’m credited as co-writer. Correctly credited. I’m not being shitty and passive-aggressive, I’m just clarifying, because I co-wrote it with Eric. Well, really, he wrote a draft, I wrote two drafts, he took some of the stuff from my drafts and put them into his final draft. So we wrote it together. Separately. So, yeah. Co-wrote.). God damn it, no one’s reading this.
Anyway, click the poster below for a link to the IMDB page, and then watch the trailer because it’s a good trailer.
<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/65419912″>Godverdomme Coffee – Trailer</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/nyu”>Eric Elofson</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
Watch that? Good. You should have. You’d really be missing out on the complete website post experience if you just skipped down here and kept reading like an asshole. Anyway, that movie is premiering in the U.S. at the Boston International Film Festival on April 12, 2014. So go watch it.
The next movie is called Bull Shit, directed by Marc Wiltshire, and I don’t really know why I mentioned it because I don’t have anything to share from it. But I will! The website should be going live very soon, and I’ll be posting it right here for you to visit.
I’m proud of both of them, and I think both are worth your small amount of time if you ever get the chance to see them. I’d imagine one or both of them will be available for viewing at some point right here on the World Wide Web.
For right now, that’s all I’ve got to share, but stay tuned, because in the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting a link to the Bull Shit website; Kickstarter/Indiegogo information for a comedy web series I’ve been working on with fellow Tisch Asia alumni Will Buckingham, Mike Butler, Amy Hartman, Matt McRee, and Michael Mejia called Right Hand Man; and even the first song from my upcoming music project, dogwater, called “The Wade Eternal” (with guitars, guest vocals and lyrics by fellow Orphanette, Brandon Otani) (holy shit!).
Thanks for tuning in, kids, and expect more very soon.
Also, share my shit! I need exposure!
So, I’m in the new Walking Dead Game (400 Days)
I’m not kidding. It’s not just a striking resemblance. That’s actually me. The animators of the game took photos of me, and initially used the Soundgarden Contest Video I did as a starting point, then designed a model in my image and put me into the game. Nuts, I know. It’s pretty bad ass, isn’t it? It didn’t just happen, though. My brother, Sean Ainsworth, was the director of the episode, and knowing that I am such a fan of the Walking Dead comic, he put me into the game. The character’s called Eddie, not Chris, and he won’t have my voice (or even my amazing personality), though I did get to audition for the role. I didn’t get the role of myself. Can you believe that? It’s like something that only happens in a sitcom. What am I, David Justice? (That joke works if you’ve seen Moneyball). That’s how much I suck at acting, though. I’m as bad as David Justice. Jesus. I made it to the final round of auditions and came in second. I’m sure it was the right choice, though (not, I’m quite embittered) and I’m just pretty psyched to be in the damn game. I mean, how many video games are you in? Yeah, that’s what I thought. So be impressed.
Not only did they use my likeness, though, my fictional band – Chris Rebbert and the Hand Jobs – gets some pretty big billing as well. The logo for the band (which I designed and threw onto a t-shirt as a joke a couple of years ago), shows up on the t-shirt of Wyatt, the character Eddie is paired with. You can see it below.
Now a closer look at the original logo I designed:
What do I mean by fictional band? I mean they don’t exist, probably never will exist, and became a thing I created to amuse myself once. I know, it’s stupid, and I don’t even remember how the whole in-joke between my brother and I came about, but the name “Chris Rebbert and the Hand Jobs” as a band name (COPYRIGHTED, along with logo, by the way) was hilarious to me one day and really satisfied my crass, infantile sense of humor. Anyway, the shirt actually may become available for purchase soon, so stay tuned if you’re interested. It would be great for me to make money from gamers because of one dumb joke I made.
So yeah, that’s that.
But I am in a band, and we’ve been busy. There’s four songs on our ReverbNation page, and you can listen to them all by clicking the link. And that’s me on those drums, kid.
We also just played a show a few weeks ago at Molly Malone’s (unfortunately our guitar player’s final show), and we’re probably going to throw some video from that show up soon.
I guess that’s it for now, but stay tuned for some really cool stuff. Maybe.
Love,
Chris
Broken Maiden playing at CAAMFest
Hey, kids. So this short film I co-write while living in Singapore is playing at CAAMFest in San Francisco on both March 15th at 9:15pm and March 21 at 6:30pm as part of their One on One Shorts Presentation. For those of you not in the know, CAAM stands for Center for Asian American Media, which makes perfect sense because I’m very not Asian. But we shot it in Asia (on location in Singapore), and I’m American, so there you go. The film was directed by Maxim Dashkin (who’s Russian, not Asian), produced by Anna Dziembowska (who’s German, also not Asian), and co-written by Dean Lundquist (who’s also American, and lives in Asia). It stars Kay Tong Lim, who is probably the most accomplished Singaporean actor of all time in terms of international exposure (he was in Brokedown Palace!) I’m going to be there on the 15th to see the screening and represent the film (I think), and I’m excited because I have not seen any of the recent cuts.
Anyway, if you’re in the Bay Area, please come support me and the film and say “Hello.” There’s more information about the screening at CAAM’s website (and you’ll find the exact same image pictured above, which I stole from the same website, and in case you couldn’t tell, is obviously a screengrab from the film).
On an unrelated note, I may be going back up at the Comedy Store next Wednesday, March 13th. Come watch me be funny.
That’s it.
Love,
Chris
New Videos For You to Fucking Enjoy
Hey, fans of mine. Yes, I’m addressing all four of you. I’ve got some new videos for you to watch. The first one is a comedy video and it’s fucking hilarious. I can say that objectively. I put intense care into making it, and by intense care I mean I conceived, “wrote”, shot and edited it in the span of maybe two hours. I found out about this contest to see Soundgarden at the Artist’s Den last week and because I’m working on Larry Gaye at the moment, my weekdays are all eaten up, and my Saturday was eaten up by the Orphanette show and my stupid birthday (but more on that in a minute). Anyway, this is too much information that you can’t possibly care about. Here’s the video:
So that’s one. “Like” and “Share” that fucker. I need the exposure.
Now here’s the next one. It’s “One Little Sip,” the last song we played at the Orphanette show. You don’t see much of me, but you sure can hear the shit out of my very impressive drumming. You know they’re impressive because I just told you they were.
Here’s that video:
“Like” and “Share” that god damn thing too.
Okay, I guess that’s it. More importantly, I’m bored of typing this so I’m going to end it.
Love,
Chris
New Article Over At TheCobraPaper.com
Hey, kids. Just a quick post today to let you know that I have a new article over at TheCobraPaper.com. (Yeah. We know, Chris, you dumb asshole. You wrote that in the title of the post and tweeted it the other day. We didn’t read it then and we aren’t going to read it now.) Jesus. Fine. I’m still going to post the link, though. Here it is: Chris Rebbert of Hollywood: What It’s Like to Make It.
Thanks for reading, I guess. I mean, it sounds like you didn’t, but in the off chance that you did, I’ve thanked you (*see previous sentence).
Anyway, Saturday’s Orphanette’s next show. We’re playing at the Good Hurt (Again, Chris. You’ve already posted this, you repetitive idiot.)
… Uhm, Facebook event page.
Bye?
Chris
Comedy Store Bits
Hey. I know I just posted a video/post yesterday and it’s kind of out of character for me to do two in a row, but I actually have something to post and am too eager to wait any longer. I mean, I’ve got to get it out there right now so that twelve people will listen to it and marginally enjoy it or I’ll never forgive myself.
Anyway, it’s a bit of a mash-up of material I performed during both of my shows at the Comedy Store. I did more time on both occasions, but I’ve cut out both the stuff that you’ve heard/seen before in my other videos and the stuff that just didn’t work because only I thought it was funny or I messed up on stage (though I did leave one mess-up, because I’m pretty happy with what I did with it).
Yeah, so here’s that. Sorry for the shitty audio quality on most of it. The bits were recorded on my iPod and during the first show, the iPod was in my pocket so I didn’t have to make people wait while I set it up, but I learned the next time and put it on the stool to get better audio. God, this is boring. Why am I telling you this?
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the bits. I hope to go up again soon at the end of February with pretty much all new material. I have to wait because I’m working on a feature all next month (doing craft services, so don’t be too impressed).
I guess that’s it. Orphanette’s playing The Good Hurt again on my 29th birthday (February 9th), so come see us there and buy me drinks. We’re also playing next Saturday at some art show in downtown LA, but I don’t have the details yet. I’ll tweet them when I do.
Bye.
So, I was on the Opie & Anthony Show and I’m writing a movie with Kevin McDonald
The proof is in the pudding. Actually, it’s in the video (I don’t even have any pudding), so watch it, then continue reading below.
Okay, so I know this isn’t quite what I said it was. But it still counts! And I swear to god it’s true – I was wearing a WOW (Whip ’em Out Wednesday) shirt that my friend Kyle gave to me in the hopes that I could get Opie to sign it, but I chickened out and didn’t want to bother the dude. I was working as a Production Assistant on the show. The photo in the video was taken during the time where we filmed the “pranks” Opie mentions, and I was wearing the WOW shirt when Opie came back to shoot the staged portions and presentation. That’s why I’m not wearing the shirt in the actual video/photo.
So, while the title of this post might be somewhat misleading, it’s still kind of true and big deal to me. One of my dreams as a comic is to one day do something cool enough that it warrants a visit to the Opie & Anthony Show (preferably when Norton’s in), so I can just “shoot the shit” with those guys and inevitably be the least funny guy in the room. I kind of look at this as the first step in that direction. Most of my favorite modern comics are regulars on that show (Jim Norton, Louis CK, Patrice O’Neal was before his untimely death, “Fat” Bob Kelly), so to be on that show for real some day would be a serious dream come true. And I’m obviously a fan of Opie and Anthony themselves. In my opinion, their show is what radio should be – honest and edgy.
Anyway, yeah, I got to have this amazing experience because I was working on “Who Gets the Last Laugh?” as a Production Assistant, and I also had another completely awesome experience on that show – I got to drive Kids in the Hall’s Kevin McDonald to and from set in my car. Holy shit!
If you’re not familiar with Kids In The Hall, first of all, I don’t care about you because they’re one of the greatest comedy troupes of all time, and second of all, go Google them and change your life.
I grew up on Kids in the Hall and, very honestly, their comedy had a serious influence on my own. I was too young to catch them at their prime, but me, my brother, Nick, and some of my friends in middle school watched the re-runs on Comedy Central any time we could catch them, and more importantly, I owned (and still own) their movie, Brain Candy, on VHS and must have watched it 30 or 40 times between the ages of 12 and 15.
So, when I got to pick up Kevin McDonald and talk to him about Brain Candy, it was pretty god-damned spectacular. He told me about the original ending to Brain Candy that got cut after test screenings (I never knew they had one!); sang The Pixies’ “Monkey Gone to Heaven” acapella in an effort to make me listen to me listen to more Pixies (which I’m doing as I write this post); gave me a list of movies I needed to watch based on our mutual tastes in comedy (which was almost completely Terry Gilliam movies I haven’t seen); and talked to me in-depth about writing comedy. We both decided we write real, dramatic, oft-depressing backdrops for our comedies because we’re both in the school of thought that you can’t really have a good, cathartic laugh without real dramatic stakes. After coming to that conclusion, he joked that the two of us were meant to write a movie together, and I acted way too eager and possibly scared him a little, but oh well.
So, again, perhaps a little bit of overstatement being used in this post, but also again, fuck you. I don’t care. It was a big deal to me. I have his contact information, and as he was getting out of the car to go home he said, “I have a feeling it won’t be the last time I hear from you.” Whether he meant I was going to stalk him or I was going to succeed in comedy, I’m not sure, but I’m going to hope it’s the latter.
Speaking of which, Russell Peters was also on the show, and if you remember correctly, I “opened” for him back in November. I met him again briefly and he was a really nice guy (and well-dressed, I must say). But what I’m really getting at is that I’ll be posting some audio from that Comedy Store gig and the following one in the coming days.
Bye.
-Chris
Orphanette (That’s the band that I’m in. Duh)
So, holy shit, check this out – our first show at The Good Hurt nightclub in LA went really well. So well, in fact, that we’re playing there again on February 9th, my 29th birthday, so come buy me several drinks and listen to me beat the shit out of the drums. We have more shows coming up as well, including a show on January 4th at Central with a Led Zeppelin cover band headed by Anthrax’s Scott Ian (holier shit!)
If you missed the show this past week, you can check out two of the songs via Facebook video: “All On You” and “One Little Sip”. Also, do yourself a favor and become a fan of Orphanette over at Orphanette’s Facebook page so I don’t keep having to tell you about all this shit.
As far as comedy goes, just a reminder that I’m performing at Vargus’ show on Wednesday, January 2 at the Comedy Store in the Belly Room.
I guess that’s it.
-Chris
Another (Kind of Uneventful) Update
Hello again. Please refrain from breaking into song a la Neil Diamond. No one gets that? Okay, let’s move on to the post.
Hi. This is an update. I just did a show at the Comedy Store. It went well. Really well. Unfortunately, I don’t have video recording, but I do have audio. The copy I’ve heard so far is of pretty horrible sound quality, so I don’t think I’m going to share that, but if I get the other one and it’s good, maybe I’ll post it. You’re kind of not missing that much, a lot of it is material that you can already see here on my website or over at that YouTube site, and the stuff you haven’t heard, to be honest, I kind of want to save because I’m almost certainly going to use it again.
And there will be an again! I’m going back up at the Comedy Store on Wednesday, January 2nd. A whole nother (but not necessarily all-new) five-eight minutes. So be excited and be there. Tickets are, as usual, $10 and there’s a two drink minimum. Don’t worry, I don’t see any of that money, so if you don’t like my set, you won’t necessarily directly be supporting me, but there will probably be another comic there that you do like! Last time there were around 10 comics and they were all really funny (I was the funniest, of course). There was even a surprise appearance/set at the end of the night by the mega famous Russell Peters, so who knows who could show up next time, right? Also, I can technically say I’ve opened for Russell Peters now, can’t I? I mean, is that kosher? It’s not necessarily lying, because I did go on the same stage before him on the same night in front of the same crowd. So yeah. Fuck you, I’m saying it.
Anyway, come see me on the 2nd. I’ll be funnier there than I’m being right now, I promise.
Also, check this shit out: I’m in a band! Yup, I’m the drummer for a local LA band called Orphanette. We’re kind of a retro-alternative, not-so-indy-but-a-little-indy kind of band. And guess what. HOLY SHIT! We’re playing a show. Yup, you can find all of the relevant information HERE. It’s going to be fun. We’ve been practicing our asses off upwards of 1-2 times a week.
Hmmm, what else? I guess nothing. Isn’t that enough? Two different performances of different kinds of entertainment? What the fuck do you want from me? A ballet recital too? All right, fine, but you’re going to have to wait for the next update.
Love,
Chris
Update
How’s it going, everybody? And that’s a legitimate question. If you don’t individually respond and let me know, I’m going to be sincerely upset. Please, if you’re reading this post, let me know. A lot of people throw that phrase out as a greeting when they’re talking to people, and I don’t think it usually gets answered. It’s often met by “Hey, man. What’s up?” or something like that, but I typed it, so it’s there because I really meant it. So if you don’t answer, then I’ve immortalized those words and you didn’t even take the time to respond. How humiliated would I be? If you don’t respond, then who will? I could look like an idiot forever – my words broadcasted on the Internet – and no one takes the time to answer. That’s devastating potential. If you don’t answer, it could literally affect me for the rest of my life.
Okay, sorry. This is a stupid beginning to a post that is amusing only me for the moment – when I read it later, I’m going to think it was stupid too, so don’t worry. Anyway, I’m just kidding. I don’t care how you’re doing.
But here’s how I’m doing.
First, I’ve got big news: I’m doing a show at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles on Wednesday night (with a couple of other comics) and it’s probably the biggest stand-up opportunity I’ve had to date. If enough people come see me, I will get to come back and be part of a bigger show and there’s a possibility that I will be paid and become a professional comedian because I will be able to say I got paid to do stand-up. It probably doesn’t seem like it, but that’s a big deal to me. So please, at the rest of sounding pathetic, if you’re in LA and reading this, please come to my fucking show on Wednesday. And, as a little incentive, if you come to the show, I will personally thank you in a future blog post. I know, I know. I’m being a bit charitable and perhaps overcompensating with such promises, but this is a big deal for me.
Moving on, I’m in a band now. I play drums for a local LA band called Orphanette. We played a show this past Thursday at OTIS (which was said to be “amazing” by BOTH people in the audience) and we’re almost definitely playing another show on December 12 at The Good Hurt.
I guess that’s it. I felt the need to post something, and this is it, because this is as long as my attention span holds. Anyway, please come to my show(s) and spend money on me. I’d really appreciate it. Also, expect another collaboration with my brother, Sean Ainsworth, in the very near future as I am spending a week in San Francisco to visit him for Thanksgiving. We’re going to do something in the vein of what you’re about to see below in the sense that we’re going to conceptualize, write, star in and shoot something while I’m there, then edit it as quickly and roughly as possible.
Until next time,
Chris
Welcome, newcomers!
Yeah, so, welcome, newcomers! (Don’t worry, all of those commas were warranted. And don’t get caught up on the fact that addressing the “newcomers” assumes that there were “oldcomers.”)
Anyway, I just got finished interning/PAing on a film called Lovesick, directed by Luke Matheny and starring Matt LeBlanc, Ali Larter, Adam Rodriguez and Chevy Chase. Check it out, it should be funny. It was a great experience and if I weren‘t so lazy I would totally write about it.
During the film, I handed out a lot of business cards (upwards of 15!), so hopefully there will be a few new people running across my website.
That being said, here’s some of my best received pieces.
Stand-Up Comedy/ Storytelling:
And just for fun, the first time I ever did stand-up:
mom mom (a comedy sketch)
The Baltimore Station Band (a documentary short I wrote, directed and edited) And finally… Rites of Ash – “Burn” (a music video I co-wrote and co-directed) There’s all kinds of other shit on here you might find interesting or entertaining, and I hope to start doing stand-up again in the next week or so now that I’m out in LA, so check back for low quality videos of that. You can also check out my design work, if for some reason you’d want to. Thanks for coming. Hopefully it wasn’t a waste of your time. -ChrisOne Godverdomme Cup of Coffee
Hi.
I’m posting this here so that you give me money. Well, not directly to me, but to the film that I’m working on. The film (as I think I’ve previously mentioned, but am too lazy to check my past posts) is called One Godverdomme Cup of Coffee. It’s a short that is going to be directed by Mr. Eric Elofson, a promising filmmaker coming out of NYU Tisch. It’s about the last minutes of a man’s life before he faces execution via the electric chair in Changi prison, Singapore and how he desperately fights for the last thing he has to fight for – his final meal request. It’s of course a comedy (which should have been obvious as soon as I said “execution”) and the story was initially written by Mr. Elofson, but he’s brought me on board to do some re-writing and reconceptualizing and our collaboration is going very well so far. At least, he’s done nothing but praise my work, so I’m happy and still like him. I really think we have something neat here, so you should give us (moreso Eric) your money. For more information, watch this thing:
There. So, again, donate. Please. It could be possible I’ll see money for this (though it’s not likely), and I’ll gladly let you pay me.
On another note, I’m relocating again. This time, I’m headed to The Angels, California. That’s “Los Angeles” for all of you Spaniards. I’m going to be breaking into the industry and taking the world by storm, or at least by pesky breeze. I’ll be picking my production company (Tangled Web Productions) back up as soon as possible and making sketches and webisodes of some stupid, short comedy series (serieses? More than one) with my friends Matt McRee, Will Buckingham, Russell Clarke, Amy Hartman, and perhaps more people if they want to waste time and work on a mediocre product for no money. I’m also going to start doing stand-up again (I know I’ve been saying that for a while, and you’ve not been caring, but I’ve been stockpiling new material for the LA clubs, so look out, world, and prepare yourselves for some polite laughter).
That’s it for now. Sooner than later I’m going to redesign the Tangled Website to match the amazing design quality that this site does(n’t) have.
Adios (that’s “Goodbye” for all of you non-Spaniards),
-Chris
Oh, fuck. Almost forgot. Here’s the link to where to send money: IndieGogo/Godverdomme Cup of Coffee
Updated Design Portfolio
Hey, kids. Instead of doing what I was supposed to do last night, I took the liberty of updating my design portfolio over at http://chrisrebbert.carbonmade.com. I added a bunch of crap, including a new section called “Posters and Promotional Art,” which features six all-new pieces like the movie poster below I designed for Atsuko Hirayanagi’s Mō Ikkai. There’s also some cool new shit that I hadn’t had the chance to put on there in the section titled “Print Advertisements and Layouts,” but it’s there now so… uh.. notice it. And on a desperate sidenote, if anyone needs to hire or recommend a graphic designer, you know where to find me. Not to sound desperate, but, I’m desperate. And I need money.
In other news, I’m currently writing a short film for director Eric Elofson which he will be shooting in Singapore in early August, so keep an eye out for that. It’s going to be really awesome. Probably.
Finally, this is kind of fun (is it really, Chris?) – I’m finally on IMDB. Go check out my IMDB page and start fabricating rumors about my shady past, rising star status and alleged affairs with established Hollywood actresses on the discussion boards so that I can gain some undeserved attention and people care about me a little bit.
I guess that’s it. I’m boring today.
-Chris
Parting Words (New article at TheCobraPaper.com)
Hey, everybody. Just alerting you to an article I wrote over at The Cobra Paper. It’s pretty good, and I can say that objectively, because I wrote it.
It’s my unsolicited parting words to Tisch Asia. Enjoy. I’ve copied and pasted it here in case you can’t access it, but try to give The Cobra Paper traffic too (not that you’re reading this or giving my site traffic).
By Chris Rebbert
It’s over. Two years gone, just like that. I’ve graduated, I’ve left Singapore, and for better or for worse, I’ve come back home. Now comes the scary part: trying to find employment so I can pay back these god damned student loans (most of which were spent on upsetting amounts of alcohol and other unnecessary consumables because I’m stupid, weak, and bad with money). But before all of that – before I make the next move in my life and career – I feel like there’s some air to clear. I feel like there’s a few things I have to say before I leave Tisch Asia behind me, at least for the foreseeable future. So here they are.
First, the positive. Going to Tisch Asia was hands-down the best decision I ever made in my life; but I’d be lying if I said the decision was completely mine. Like many of you, I didn’t apply to Tisch Asia – I applied to NYU Tisch in New York. I had vivid dreams of grandeur that involved me living in the Big Apple, writing at corner coffee shops, sharing a tiny apartment with a wacky room-mate of ambiguous ethnicity who would annoy the shit out of me by making me crawl out of my cynical writers’ hole and fall in love with the world in a new and different way (and for some reason we’d solve crimes together on the side). I thought I’d get a part time job at a small bar where I’d meet all of the real friends I’d have the rest of my life and win the heart of some big-name actress who accidentally wandered in one night looking to give a writer his first big break.
None of that shit happened. I mean, I did meet some great people who I hope will be my friends for the rest of my life, but I didn’t meet them in New York. I met them in Singapore. Yes, Singapore – one of the last places in the world I’d ever have expected to find myself, but NYU asked me to come there when I didn’t get into the NYC campus. The fact that I didn’t really get into any other respectable programs and the scholarship that Tisch Asia offered sort of pulled me in that direction. Whether or not I beat out a lot of other candidates, or whether or not NYU was just interested in my money and would have taken anybody is a thought that used to plague my mind daily, but now it truly doesn’t bother me one bit. I really don’t care either way. I made good use of the two years I was there and I got an education I could never have imagined or planned – an education that wasn’t laid out in a syllabus or talked about in recruitment literature. I got an education that I worked for and was able to have a hand in creating. I learned a lot about myself, people, the world; and like many of you, I worked really fucking hard to get it. So again, I don’t know what I was supposed to receive in terms of training as an artist and writer; I don’t know whether or not this education is going to give me success in the field; and I don’t know whether or not I was given the same education I would have received in New York at the original Tisch campus. But I do know one thing: I’m a way better artist and writer now than I was two years ago.
And isn’t it obvious? You should be able to tell based on where this piece is going. I mean, it’s so well-structured it’s like you already know what I’m going to write next. Okay, let’s drop the sarcasm – I know I’m digressing, but this sort of has to be stream-of-consciousness or it’s not going to feel genuine (more on that in a moment – see, there is planning!). Plus, I got my degree in Dramatic Writing, not Journalism, so fuck you. If you don’t like it, stop reading. Now, picking up from my last thought, what does it mean to be an artist and a writer? What did I learn in the Lion City that was so special? Why was it such a good decision to go there? Calm down. Jesus. Keep reading and I’ll tell you.
The first thing I learned is that no one can teach you to be a good writer or a good artist, so don’t expect them to. It’s just not possible. The sooner you learn that, the better. Yeah, they can teach you structure. Yeah, they can teach you technique. Yeah, they can tell you what to read and what to watch – which writers and artists who came before you are worth checking out because they succeeded – but they can’t teach you how to create good art. No one can. It’s got to come from inside of you or it’s going to feel manufactured to everyone who experiences it. What your teachers can do is tell you what not to do and what steps you might be able to take to help find your way as an artist. They can help you refine your own artistic voice, so when it comes to that, make sure you listen instead of just making that voice louder and more obnoxious because you think it has so much to say.
If, as a now Master of Fine Arts, you’ll allow me to teach you something, it’s this – don’t just immerse yourself in art. Nothing’s going to make your work more sterile or inaccessible than doing nothing but watching movies, reading scripts and working on your own stuff. Whether or not life imitates art or art imitates life, the two have got to cross paths at some point. They have to inform one another. In order to comment on life, you’ve got to live. I personally think that you should take a few years to just be a person in the world before you even think about honing a craft of this nature. This is why most artists don’t get recognized until they’re older, or dead (Avoid being one of those guys if you can, but I’m not going to tell you how to live your life). To represent people in art, you need to know their struggles. Get a job that sucks, has nothing to do with art and gives you little to no emotional fulfillment; be poor; put yourself in a position where you don’t know how you’re going to find or afford your next meal; fall in love; have your heart broken; break somebody else’s heart; get confused about your sexuality (just saying – hypothetically, wasn’t part of my experience); find your vice and battle it until one of you wins; do anything and everything that people do when they’re not purposefully creating art. The more, the better. Good art comes from specificity and a particular struggle, and the best place to derive specificity is experience. You’ll be amazed how much someone will connect to a stupid, little, minute detail you put into something that you drew from your own experiences or someone else’s that you knew. The devil, after all, is in the details; and in art, the details are king.
Being at Tisch Asia helped me with that – figuring out the details and where to derive them from. For instance, I fucking hated Singapore. Sorry. Maybe that’s too harsh. Singapore just sure as shit wasn’t the place for me. It was too clean, too organized, and too safe. It wasn’t what I was used to and I felt out of place. I missed graffiti and litter on the streets – the signs of people actually having lived there. I missed looking over my shoulder constantly while walking around late at night. I missed the comforts (and, to be honest, the vices) I had found for myself at home. But, as an artist, putting myself into that position was a good thing, and you should do it too.
First off, I had to find new comforts and new vices, so I got to round out my arsenal of inspiration a bit more. No more cheap booze; Chipotle; Dunkin’ Donuts; and other, unmentionable vices meant finding new, Asia-friendly ways to ruin my body and mind, giving me more to write about and rounding out my perspective. Second, I got a chance to take a look at myself outside of my own natural habitat. It wasn’t until I moved to Singapore that I realized how truly American I was, despite my life-long apathy and misunderstanding of patriotism. For instance, I never thought I had an accent. I’ve fought against having one for as long as I can remember. If you’ve ever been to Baltimore, you’ll know why – you’ve never heard such long, horrendous O’s in your life – but apparently, the O’s snuck into my pronunciation despite my best efforts and my classmates at Tisch Asia certainly meant to remind me of this. On a more important and relevant note, I didn’t realize how deeply rooted my own morals and values were in Christian-centric, Western culture. To elaborate on this, let me turn to one of the few things I consider to be a perk of living Singapore – its proximity to other countries easily allows you to travel to and from there and see more of the world. Because of this, I went to Vietnam where eating dog was considered a delicacy. My kneejerk reaction to this custom was, “What the cute, cold-nosed puppy fuck?! How could anyone eat a dog?” But once I thought about it, why is it any different than eating a cow or a pig? After all, science shows us that both of these animals are smarter than dogs, and they’re all mammals (and tasty ones!).What it boils down to is this – someone told me once when I was younger that you shouldn’t hurt dogs, and since that moment its been ingrained in me as a moral constant, but if you take a step back and think about it, once upon a time the people there fighting for survival and their next meal probably had access to a dog when we had access to a cow, and so the tradition begin. Or at least, I’m guessing that’s how it happened (I’m too lazy to look it up). So fuck it, eat a dog. Shit, eat a puppy. It’s not my business. Okay, don’t eat a puppy, but seriously, having these experiences not only opened my eyes to my own culture’s influence upon me, but also made me look more closely at why other people act the way they do. This is something I consider to be essential when it comes to being a good artist.
This leads me to my next point and something I think is the most important thing I taught myself while at Tisch Asia: if you’re judging your characters, you’re doing it wrong. This also translates to being a good person in my humble opinion, but your job as an artist is to bring light to people and their situations, it’s not to preach (that’s why there’s preachers, stupid, and it’s also why less and less people are listening to those preachers). If you fail to find the reasons your characters act the way they do and decide to vilify the opposition (which in most cases will be your antagonist), you’re not doing anybody any good. What we do as artists in the realm of drama is bring humanity to an ideology, no matter how stupid or irrelevant that ideology is. It’s our duty to boil down that ethos to a relatable icon with a human (or in some cases, non-human) face and figure out why they tick so that we can cast a light upon them that other mediums can not. If you’re not aware of this, your characters are going to feel flat. It’s understanding this that will give your characters depth and dimension. I’m not saying I fully have a grasp on how to do this, but I am aware of its necessity.
Finally, be aware of the backlash this may bring. People don’t like to think, but it’s our job to make them do just that. They don’t want to put a face on their enemy (it’s easier just to point the finger and hate), so if you ask them to do that, chances are, they’re going to vilify you in some way or another. That is also a responsibility of ours as artists – you’ve got to be able to take the backlash if and when the time comes. You can’t and certainly shouldn’t be making dramatic art because you want other people to like you (and don’t get me started on money – if you’re doing it for the money, kill yourself). You should be making drama to tell a story, and stories, after all, are how we learn from one another. In fact, if you’re doing your job right, some people won’t like you, but shit, people learn best from conflict. Society needs artists because it needs stirrers – someone to kick some spice into the pot and make things taste a little different. We’re supposed to make people think about things in a different way – whether it be political and social situations; what human beings are really capable of under certain circumstances and how much or little we actually have control over our own actions; or, more often the case in my work, what is and isn’t acceptable in the realm of humor (dick and fart jokes are always acceptable, by the way). So rile people up and show them what they know and believe isn’t the only way (and you should know that, you go to school in Asia after all).All of that being said, hopefully any students who read this will have a new light cast upon their past, present or future education at Tisch Asia. How are these parting words? They’re my experiences and the things I learned as a Tasian. They’re what I learned, and like I said, no one can teach you how to be an artist, but you sure can learn a hell of a lot while trying to become one.
On one final note, I’d like to thank every single person I crossed paths with at Tisch Asia. I really hope to make you proud and that you do the same – that one day we can brag about the fact that we brushed shoulders far too many times in the tiny rooms and hallways of 3 Kay Siang Road. Deal? And those of you who are just arriving – those of you who are still there – take care of the place. Respect the equipment, revel in and promote our free speech in an otherwise censored country, and for god’s sake, clean up after yourselves. I know you’re busy editing, writing, animating and doing whatever the hell the producing students do, but there’s really no reason your McDonald’s bags should sit spilling sauces in the student lounges or your coffee cups and half-eaten sandwiches should stay tucked under the benches in the Black Box. With all of the things that happened this year and as much as we wanted to fight for our school, take care of the god damned place!
Well, I guess that’s it. Time for your favorite, tall, lanky, tattooed, vulgar, profane, often off-color joke-making asshole to sign out.
P.S. If anyone has some work for me, I could really use the money. Just saying.
Accolades From Graduation
Just posting a quick section of an article over at TheCobraPaper.com that talked about Matt and I’s speech at graduation. So, uh, here it is:
“Class speaker Chris Rebbert was the next to take the podium with a speech that began with a slightly shocking dose of negativity about the future of anyone hoping for a career in the arts, most especially film. There was an inkling of insincerity, however, within his words of premature expectations of absolute failure, that lead all of us to feel that something else was coming. As soon as fellow Dramatic Writer, Matt McRee started heckling his best friend from the audience, we knew that we were right. Chris was joined at the podium by McRee, Jack Daniels in hand and swigging, while the two dramatically enacted the debate that all of us students of the arts have with ourselves on a weekly, if not daily basis: To embark on an arts education or not, and is it worth it? Though our pursuit is very expensive, at times, almost impossibly difficult, and does not yield any guarantees on a future career, the guys asserted that their time at Tisch Asia has been some of the best of their lives. This sentiment, coming from a couple of hard-working, talented, yet self-branded screwballs, was especially effecting.
They found themselves as artists, a voice for their talent, a lot of joy and hope here, and most importantly, they found one another. But don’t think that all opportunity for cynicism was lost with these two. While celebrating the aspects that made Tisch Asia great for them, they also raised a bottle to the fact that we are now a part of NYU’s Global Network, to which Rebbert asked, “What does that even mean?”. The response from McRee echoed that of every member of the Tisch Asia community in the auditorium when he answered, “I have no idea.” Thank you Matt, for another priceless jab at… well, we don’t really know, do we?”
That’s it. Also, they messed up. I said, “We get to be part of a Global Network University.” Then Matt said, “What does that mean?” And I fucking followed with “I don’t know.” I know because I just copied that from the fucking script I wrote with Matt. So thank ME for that “priceless jab.” Just saying.
I’m writing my parting words for the same paper and they should be up this week, so fucking read them or else I’m doing all of this work for nothing for nothing. (That’s not a type-o, by the way. I mean, I’m not getting paid to write it, so if you don’t read it, I’m getting nothing for it monetarily – the first “for nothing” – and you’re not reading it, so it’s done in vain – the second “for nothing”. So that sentence before these parentheses makes sense. I promise. Again, just saying. Fuck me for being this person).
All right. Bye or whatever.
-Chris
The Monty Worthington Show (or “The Cradle Will Fall: My Life with Tiffany”)
Hello, buttfaces. Here’s another sketch that I wrote for the Redhill Antisocial Club show back in February. I wrote it with my friend and colleague, Craig Massey (who plays the bouncer in the video). I originally conceived it as a video sketch – something in the vein of VH1’s Behind the Music, but we had to make it play for the stage and Craig helped me do that. I’d still like to do it in that format as I think the “surprise” would play better, but we did a decent job making it work for the stage I think.
It stars Tori Keenan-Zelt, Liam McDonald, Will Buckingham, me (Chris Rebbert, duh), Craig Massey, and Nevil Jackson (with a special appearance by Craig’s daughter, Hailey (spelling?).
You probably could have read all of this on the actual video’s description, but I’m repeating it all here because I have nothing better to write. Also, you’ll notice I’m reading off of a script, and that’s because I hate acting and am too dumb to remember lines.
I guess that’s it. It’s not like you read down this far anyway.
Until next time,
Chris
Watch My Graduation! (Though why would you want to?)
Hello, hypothetical reader. I just graduated from Tisch Asia (that’s NYU’s Graduate Film school in Singapore), and I was selected to give the student speech (with a special guest, not to give anything away). We tried something a little different, and people seemed to like it, even though watching it now I seem way too nervous and boring. The speech is about 20 minutes in. It’s marginally funny, I promise. I also performed a song (again, nervously and poorly – you can see me drop the guitar pick at the end), with my good friend, Su Ching Teh (it’s the same song I post before, “Felicity”).
Anyway, here’s the video. And don’t ask why I have a horseshoe mustache in it. I don’t even know. The speech is at 00:21:17, and the performance is at 01:01:45 (and at 01:08:30 you can see me drop the pick like a retard). Finally, I walk at 01:33:48.
Also, our thesis read (mentioned below) went amazing. Amazingly? Which is it? Dammit, I just got my MFA in Dramatic Writing. I’m going with “amazingly,” because it’s an adverb, but I also don’t care enough to look it up. Anyway, we got rave reviews from our friends and other audience members, the people laughed hysterically, and I swear these are actual Facebook responses (not like the made-up quotes used before) from people who don’t really matter at the moment, but they’re my friends and colleagues, so fuck you, their opinions matter to me:
“It DESTROYED!!!!AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME SCRIPT!I will do all I can to ensure this TV series actually gets made!!” – Ishaan Kumar
“Congrats Christ and Matt ! That’s a brilliant screenplay! I can’t wait to see it on TV!♥” – Yanqiu Fei
Well, that’s it for now. I’m going to start doing stand-up again soon, so look out for videos of that shit. Moving back to the States in a week, and out to LA shortly thereafter to take on the world (and probably lose).
Keep following.
Love,
Chris
South by Northwest Reading
Tentative logo designed for the show. Drawn by Matt McRee; scanned and Photoshopped on pirated software by me, Chris Rebbert
I’m graduating from NYU Tisch Asia on May 13th, and this Monday, May 7th at 8pm, we will be holding a reading of the thesis project I wrote with my friend and classmate, Matt McRee. Our thesis is the first two episodes of a 1/2 comedy called South by Northwest. Here’s the logline:
“A single father who grew up in foster care tries to raise his eccentric, intelligent 10-year-old daughter while on the run from the FBI after robbing a bank with his estranged, screw-up older brother.”
The scripts, premise, title, and characters are all trade-marked already with the WGA, so don’t even think about stealing them shits.
If you’re in Singapore and want to join us for the reading, please come to 3 Kay Siang Road and have a seat in our comfortable Black Box theatre. It’s not comfortable at all, actually, I’m just being an ass. I think there are chairs manufactured as torture devices that are more comfortable than the benches in that damn room. But please don’t let that stop you from coming. Here’s the cast for Monday night’s reading:
Jonathan Greene…………..…….……Clayton Nance
Scott Dean……………….…..Desmond “Dez” Nance
Su Ching Teh……….………….………..Olivia Nance
Nambi E. Kelley……………………………Susan Carr
Olivia Briggs……..…………Agent Alejandra Zamora
Steven Koernig……….Kyle “Whitey” White & others
Lisa Louttit………….. Headmistress, Sandra & others
William Ledbetter….…..Peter File, Filmore & others
with Lydia Joy Cowdery reading across the page
A very talented group of people, I promise you, and it should be a lot of fun. Speaking of fun, here’s some dumb, fake, critics’ quotes that Matt and I put on the promotional posters that might make you chuckle:
“…funny…” – Matt’s Mom
“Smart, relevant and hilarious. The best new sitcom in years.” – Not Matt and Chris
“What the hell are you doing in my office with this crap? Get out.” – Mark Dickerman
That’s it. Come to the reading. It’ll be fun. Afterwards, depending on how good it went, I’ll post about it with some pictures.
Welp, see ya later!
-Chris
mom mom
Hello, boys and girls. Sorry, that was a stupid way to start a post. I hate doing this self-promotion shit and having to address my “audience.” It feels so fake and self-indulgent. Probably because it is. What makes it worse is it’s not like anybody’s paying attention to this crap.
Anyway, here’s one of the sketches I promised a little while back. It was performed and recorded in February (that’s how much of a lazy shit I am). To be honest, I did another edit that plays a little better rhythmically, but decided this one’s still a bit better on the whole. God, why would you care about this. I’m shutting up.
But before I do, here’s the sketch. It stars Christopher J. Cassetta as Tom and Deborah Emmanuel as Renee. And that’s me doing the voice of mom mom. Also, tell your friends about it, whether you like it or not, or I’ll hate you forever. That’s a promise.
I’ll post another one that you won’t watch pretty soon.
Bye.
-Chris
ChrisRebbert.com 