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"Seriously Hilarious" was designed to be an experiment.
It was supposed to be an experiment about comedy. Furthermore,
it was supposed to BE comedy. And it was.
The show found its seeds in the
winter of 2000. It was a nice winter and Kris Saintsing was
finishing up his study at the University of North Carolina
at Greensboro. Kris was producing two video projects for
his media course. In the process, he was alerted to a
student access station that was coming in the spring semester
called "Spartan TV" (UNCG has a really lame
mascot). Kris mentioned to some of his friends (Kevin
Catalano) that it might be a good idea to start a T.V. show
for the fledgling station, kind of a "forum,"
if you will, for interesting, experimental comedy. They agreed.
Then, over Christmas, Kris
mentioned to his friend from high school, Zach Action,
that he wanted to start up a new comedy show
at college. Zach was not without talent himself and he jumped at
the chance. In fact, not only did Zach jump at the
chance but his roommates from UNCAsheville, Brad
Graham and Ryan Gilliam, jumped at the chance as well.
And that, as they say, was "that."
The first episode of "Seriously
Hilarious" aired towards the end of January on Channel
48 at UNCG. Initially, viewer response was slow to trickle
in but, by the beginning of March, the "Fan
E-mails" were flooding in. The show was hailed
as "funny," "some funny shit," "Genius.
Pure genius," and "...really one of the funniest
shows I've seen in a long time. It's like a wonderful mix
of The Kids in the Hall, a Kevin Smith movie (Clerks mostly),
and I'm not sure what else, but it's still incredibly original
at the same time..." (all real quotes). Anyway, the show
was liked well enough for two complete seasons to
be produced (basically, 12 episodes). By the time its run
was over, Zach, Kris, Brad, Kevin, and Ryan had produced countless
sketches, songs, short films, bits, and ideas for things that
never materialized but probably should have (namely, a parody
of Naked Gun-style "parody movies" that would have
been freaking hilarious and a thing about a cute, little animated
girl who teaches you all about polypeptides named "Polly
Peptide").
Then, Scott Rubin, the Editor-in-Chief of
National Lampoon, liked the series enough to commission a
pilot episode. After two years of back-and-forth development,
it was ultimately deemed "too smart" by this one
kid at Spike TV and "too young and hip" by
some suits at AMC (I'm guessing they were suits, I don't really
know). The pilot was called "the anti-comedy committee"
(you can check out the imdb listing). So there it is. Five
years later. Not much money and still quite a lot of talent
(albeit slacker-based talent but that's kind of what makes
us who we are).
We're currently working on a book that
is top-secret (although, if you're smart enough, you'll figure
out what on this site would make a good book) and a feature
film, entitled Big Kid's World. Should be pretty
awesome. Anyway, I hope you have found this brief history
of "Seriously Hilarious" both entertaining and informative
and we hope you enjoy the site. *
*If I have omitted anyone from this history, I am genuinely
sorry, Stas Kosinski, Kevin Lambert, Julie Broadway,
Zach Dotsey, Jason Revill, and Jumanah Qubain.
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