Reel Pop

Every now and then I rouse the Reel Pop staff from their drool-puddling torpor and send them a-mucking in the back alleys of video-sharing sites, places where the glorious light of "most viewed today" doesn't reach. And then dutifully, like a cat laying a dead mole at its master's feet, they return with their prize.

Today's video needs some explaining, and the explanation involves me meeting Elijah Wood and Alice from the Brady Bunch in a dark alleyway in Manhattan.^[1] True story.

A few weeks ago, my friend Thom Powers (who hosts the excellent Stranger than Fiction series at the IFC Theatre) introduced me to adman, doc producer and comics geek Dan Braun. Dan and I hooked up at Soho Park, and he told me about his new broadband TV project called Instant Talk Show.

I was a bit skeptical because, to me, talk shows are boring -- who needs stupid human tricks and jaywalking when you've got YouTube?

But Dan promised that this talk show would be different: There would be no set. Just a host, sitting behind a fold-out table on a street corner, chatting up the occasional famous guest and several random passerby. A talk show via heckling, if you will.

So Dan invited me to watch a taping of the show, and that's how I found myself in a dark alleyway shaking hands with Elijah Wood and Henriette Mantel, the actress who played Alice in The Brady Bunch Movie . I know. It's a dangerous and exciting life.

The idea behind Instant Talk Show makes perfect sense when you consider that our celebrity culture, previously powered by the likes of David Letterman and Jay Leno, has been open-sourced to the minicam-wielding kids creating YouTube vids. Who needs a faux skyline behind a stage set? DIY is the new professional. Besides, it's more fun.

Instant Talk Show is co-produced by Dan and his twin brother Josh, who together co-founded the advertising and production company Submarine. Dan is the executive producer of the feature documentary Kill Your Idols, which won Best New York Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival. He has produced film specials for the IFC Channel and created several award-winning broadband sites. Josh was the executive producer of A History of Violence and repped doc hits Spellbound and Super Size Me.^[2]

You can check out the Elijah and Henriette clip on Instant Talk Show's site, which launched this week. The clip below features an interview with Mo Collins and producer Marshall Cook at a gas station during this year's SXSW festival.

[1] This is a very creepy combination. Even putting aside the dark alleyway, I was still shaking hands with Frodo and the penultimately peppy den mother of six.

[2] Instant Talk Show is hosted by Nick Scoullar and filmed/edited by Harry Gellar and Allen Cordell.